Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0014527, Fri, 29 Dec 2006 10:05:54 -0200

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Re: Optics and windows in PF (CHW to JF)
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Hello, Charles

I hoped my comment on "virtual image" and "real image" ( seen in a glass and through a glass) was crystal clear. No such luck. Anyway, lots of answers to your initial prompting offered exciting perspectives.
I liked your "slightly dizzy" conclusions:
I realize now that mentally I'd always substituted "image" for "shadow" when thinking about these lines [ shadows are images, either projected or by reflection, are they not?]. That is, I'd imagined that it was the reflected image of the bird that continued to fly on through the glass, while the body lay dead on the ground outside [ so did I, but not "through" but still "in the glass"].
My lazy mind was obviously playing tricks on me: the mirror image of the bird would in any case have been flying in the opposite direction, ie back out into the air, as it were from inside the room. From the bird's point of view, it would obviously have crashed straight into its own self. Perhaps that's what the whole novel is also about, however.
Very interesting "the whole novel is also about...crashed into its own self", a confirmation of Carolyn Kunin's hypothesis (and apotheosis when Gradus, Kinbote and Shade are simultaneously confronted, at last)
How amazing that every reader seems to look from a particular perspective. You identified with the bird's vision ( like Sandy Drescher's cardinals fighting off a reflected enemy) and saw its image flying towards you and "back out into the air" ( if "it lived on" while the bird itself became "an ashen fluff"). I saw it happen from the outside, like Kinbote standing in the green lawn ( before Winter came) and the bird crossed the mirroring glass horizontally while its after-image flew on in my closed-lid remembrance of it...
A silly question to experts: do waxwings feed on red admiral butterflies, or are they strict juniperberrians?


----- Original Message -----
From: Chaswe@AOL.COM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Optics and windows in PF (CHW to JF)


In a message dated 28/12/2006 16:53:20 GMT Standard Time, NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU writes:
I think young John identified with the waxwing and
the shadow paralleling it on the ground--and still with both
as the waxwing died but the shadow lived on in his imagination
(and elsewhere?).

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