In TRLSK Nabokov often gives hints to the reader
about a particular pun or reference, but in a subreptitious way. I selected one example:
He
confused solitude with altitude and the Latin for
sun. He failed to realize that it was merely a dark corner.[...] he was
steadily cutting himself away from Life... and that the switch would not
function in his solarium.
The feeling I get is that he was still experimenting
with language ( there was no need to bring up "solarium" a few lines later,
excepet to stress his point).
And yet, I enjoy the mixture of letters ( alt/lat,
skipping an obvious "latitude") and the powerful alusions ( SK's lonely
dark corner gets no sun and is as high as an ivory
tower).
In his Foreword
to Bend Sinister his tone is more impatient:"The book teems
with stylistic distortions, such as puns crossed with anagrams[...], suggestive
neologisms[...]; parodies of narrative clichés[...]; spoonerisms[...]; and of
course the hybridization of tongues."
Therefore, he
adds:
It may be asked if it is really worth an author's while to devise
and distribute these delicate markers whose very nature requires that they be
not too conspicuous. Who will bother to notice that [...]that the urchins in the
yard (Chapter Seven) have been drawn by Saul Steinberg[...] Most people will not
even mind having missed all this; well-wishers will bring their own symbols and
mobiles, and portable radios, to my little party; ironists will point out the
fatal fatuity of my explications in this foreword and
advise me to have footnotes next
time (footnotes always seem comic to a
certain type of mind). In the long run, however, it is only the author's private
satisfaction that counts."
Fifteen years later Kinbote is
born...