Dear Carolyn –and List,

 

The passage containing Shade’s eleventh birthday begins at line 140 of Canto One:

 

               A thread of subtle pain,

Tugged at by playful death, released again,

But always present, ran through me. One day,

When I’d just turned eleven, as I lay

Prone on the floor and watched a clockwork toy—

A tin wheelbarrow pushed by a tin boy—

 

And as to “the young girl who is planted on poor innocent young John Shade”, it is in fact a simile for his condition –lines 161 till the end of the same Canto:

 

But like some little lad forced by a wench

With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,

I was corrupted, terrified, allured,

And though old doctor Colt pronounced me cured

Of what, he said, were mainly growing pains,

The wonder lingers and the shame remains.

 

A. Bouazza

 

 

From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Carolyn Kunin
Sent: zondag 5 mei 2013 2:24
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Did VN know German? and a library is announced

 

Perhaps there are other cats in VN besides Hodges (there's the intriguing cat with celadon eyes that spurns milk in RLSK)  Some who understand human language and act as spies all over the house retelling gossip for example, written by ??? 

 

Dear Jansy,

 

[...]

 

The way he, Kinbote, strokes the pussy cat makes me think he is 'actually' in Kinbote World caressing Fleur de Fyler, who in 'real' New Wye is a pseudonym for the young girl who is planted on poor innocent young John Shade on his birthday - so frustrating that I can't recall and no one will help in finding which birthday it was. The birthday that gave birth to Charles Kinbote, Shade's younger brother.