Darryl Schade: In a curious bit of "synchronicity"...KQKn dream connection...Agatha Christie's Passenger to Frankfurt ..."Pasteboard,"..."Like Alice in Wonderland...The whole damn thing is make-believe.".I love little moments like this where totally unconnected things connect suddenly within the span of a week.  Almost makes me think there is a pattern behind the world just like VN says. Aside from this I just finished reading Stephanie Merkel's article in N Studies #1 concerning KQKn & Commedia Dell' Arte ...

 

JM: Here's another bit of synchronicity:  Soon after D.Schade's posting mentioning "make-believe" and Commedia Dell'Arte, my [NABOKV-L] message with the subject  Peterson's Grouse, commedia fakes, scientific names was distributed [ "honest Van chided himself for having attempted to use a little pauper instead of the princess in the fairy tale - 'whose precious flesh must not blush with the impression of a chastising hand,' says Pierrot in Peterson's version."] followed by another [NABOKOV-L] Peterson's Grouse, Pierrot, ruffles: [ "...In relation to Peterson, it occurred to me that Peter, Peterson, Pierre are variants of the name "Pierrot."  This commedia dell'arte character is famous for his ruffle, a white torquated collar. Perhaps Nabokov was, among other things, playing with "ruffed grouse" of  rufous color and the "ruffled" collar that is found in a pheasant's neck and in the classic Pierrot's?"]

I find there are "patterns behind the world,"but they never seem to ammount to anything, at least at the level of my ability to understand their meaning. Like Shade, I register them and "submit" but, unlike him, I cannot imitate a god's playfulness or beauty by miming them in writing or any other form of artistic expression. .

btw: I remember a past  Nab-L message about the relation bt. the commedia and Blok's "balagan." The Harlequin is omnipresent in Nabokov, of course. In "Lolita" there are inceptions about other commedia characters which may be equally related to Lewis' Alice books .( Perhaps when Humbert returns to the cabin after buying a couple of bananas for Lolita...)  In "Ada" there's the mascodagama act with its inversions, like the doubled figures in cards, something we may also surmise when Ada and Lucette make love in the ranch. The card figures and the whole atmosphere remind me of Baudelaire's "Le Rire" and his comments about Deburau, a 'vicious' mime, who cut off the ruffles from his Pierrot costume and added, for effect, a black tight-fitting cap.