AS: "He
reached out his hand - the hand/ touched the wall [...] Here is a round little
knee... and here,/ Here - but why do you laugh beforehand? -/ Here it found
itself on the twin hill..." In a previous posting AS noted: "Tirza's двойной
курган ("twin hill", and not breasts are meant) somehow reminds me of Brownhill,
Ada's school for girls, and its headmistress, Miss Cleft
(1.27)."
JM: "vulval cleft." ...is another
option for the proffered association to "cleft" - one that doesn't need a
rotational motion to reach a female's "twin hills."
RSGwynn: Wouldn't "mons veneris" be
applicable here?
JM: Mons veneris, discreet
hillocks in opposition to other discrete buttocks?
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btw: I didn't find the
precise reference I was looking for, concerning "semblable/double."
The sentence, as I loosely recorded it
once, reads: "His ideal audience is composed by endless individuals
wearing a mask that reproduces his face..."- but this also sounds
very strange! It is as if it were enough, for Nabokov, to
meet an audience wearing a simulacrum, a "mask of mimicry,"
with no real eyes to stare back at him.
Kinbote writes about Shade that "His whole being constituted a
mask." It might be interesting to compare VN's use of masks in
connection to mirrors, mimicry, and
truth.