Sergei
Sakoun: «What the skater retakes?» - secret! …But
seriously speaking,
multitude pointers guide us to reading from right to left all book as a
whole. See for instance, “the fellow whose/ Tracks pointed back when
he reversed his shoes”…The life and Poem of the Shade from this
standpoint is merely commentary to Kinbote’s story.Reflection and
original are rush along toward each other in the mirror of the book. Unfortunately
for Russian readers “this game” is impossible because of destructive
translation of the book.
JM: Indeed, so many Nabokovian “games”
are lost in translation - into any language – but it is sadder when it
happens with the Russian.
The
idea that “Shade’s life and poem is a commentary to Kinbote’s
story” and that “reflection and original rush toward each other”
is interesting.
And yet, Shade mentions something like “Man’s life as a commentary to abstruse
unfinished poem”,
and these lines carry their own mystery, while they contest Sergei’s
first vision (but only in part, for Nabokov himself once voiced something
related to a bamboo bridge, was it ?, bt. verse and prose.)
Nabokov’s
1942 poem (“Exile”, originally “Amphibrac”) has a set
of curious words and expressions. I copied some: “ Come, leaf, name a country beginning
with “f,” / for instance, “forget” or “farewell.”
/ Thus dimly he muses and dreamily heeds/ His eaves-dropping self as his body
recedes,/ Dissolving in sun-shattered shade.” In PF there’s a country beginning
with “Z” (“Zed”?); there’s Shade invoking
Shakespeare/Moon instead of a leaf; there is an “eaves-dropping self
that dissolves in a fragmented shade”…
Could
the pheasant’s feet (“a dot, an arrow pointing back;repeat:”) suggest something
related to metrics? Among the composite feet, most designations
have their opposites such as, for the amphibrac, there is one with a short
syllable lying between two long ones (amphimacro). Would this be another hidden
item: verses in which we find metric indicators, reversions or an unexpected caesura?
Is this what Gary or Matt are arguing, that there are different ways to read
and apply a tonic accent, thereby achieving a significant change bt. sound and syllable
counts? (quoting Gary: “These several scans amuse analysis,/ a
little puzzle, multiple solutions.”)