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Re: Fwd: Steinmanns and crown jewels
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Michael Donohue wrote:
". . .(Or is "steinmann" a real German term for "cairn"?)"
Yes, it is, according to my old "New Cassell's German
Dictionary". The definition is notated with (Mount.) for "mountaineering".
Michael Donohue further - much further - wrote:
". . . For the few people with the patience to read this far, I'd love to
hear your thoughts."
I have nothing to suggest, but I do love your detective work.
Mary Krimmel
>----- Forwarded message from michaeldonohue@hotmail.com -----
> Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 23:15:37 -0400
> From: Michael Donohue <michaeldonohue@hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: Michael Donohue <michaeldonohue@hotmail.com>
> Subject: Steinmanns and crown jewels
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (196 lines)
>------------------
>Dear AB and everyone else,
>
>
>I suggest that the steinmanns are important because one of them is a marker
>for the burial
>site of the Zemblan crown jewels.
>
>Let me explain. Forgive the long e-mail that follows.
>
>Of all the puzzles of Pale Fire, the one that most stands out is the hunt
>for the crown jewels. Kinbote constantly calls our attention to the mystery
>of their hiding place. When discussing the Russian pair, Niagarin and
>Andronnikov, who have been sent to find the crown jewels, Kinbote expresses,
>with more than "pardonable satisfaction," that the jewels "were, and still
>are, cached in a totally different--and quite unexpected--corner of Zembla"
>(244). He later tells us that Gradus's suitcase and raincoat are probably
>still in a train station locker, "as snug as my gemmed scepter, ruby
>necklace, and diamond-studded crown in--no matter, where" (276). The index
>entry for Charles II begs us to look up the entry for the jewels: "q.v. by
>all means" (306).
>
>It is the loudest, most emphasized puzzle in the novel, and yet it seems to
>have the least inspired solution. Everyone (Boyd, Johnson, etc.) seems to
>agree that the jewels are in Kobaltana--as of course they are. But can't we
>be more specific than that? (And perhaps someone has--please correct me
>if I've overlooked it.)
>
>Nabokov sort of called the jewel hunt to a halt by saying, in the 1967
>interview with Appel, that the jewels were "in the ruins, sir, of some old
>barracks in Kobaltana (q.v.); but do not tell it to the Russians." (Strong
>Opinions, 92).
>
>It's a disappointingly vague solution to a puzzle that calls such
>extravagant attention to itself. I used to think that it was the whole
>solution. But some of my students, over the past five years, have convinced
>me otherwise.
>
>Here is what we've come up with:
>
>The crown jewels are in Kobaltana--yes. But there's more.
>
>1) The king passes through Kobaltana, and sees the hiding place (or taynik),
>during his trek over the Bera mountain range.
>
>2)The jewels are buried under a steinmann.
>
>3) Kinbote cannot resist the temptation to call our attention to their
>precise hiding place.
>
>Let's start from the beginning. Here is the usual solution to the puzzle.
>
>1. Index: Andronikov and Niagarin: "Russian experts in search of buried
>treasure." Conclusion: the jewels are buried.
>
>2. Index: Niagarin and Andronikov: "Russian 'experts' still in search of
>buried treasure." Note the scare quotes: now they're not real experts.
>Solution: jewels' location comes somewhere between the two entries, between
>A and N.
>
>3. The most suspicious entry in the index is the one for Kobaltana: "a once
>fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks now a cold
>and desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but still remembered
>in military families and forest castles, not in the text." (310) Because of
>the entry, we can say that the jewels are buried in Kobaltana.
>
>This is where everyone usually stops. But I humbly suggest that we can go
>further. We can say where Kobaltana is; we can point directly to the taynik;
>we can even speculate about how the jewels got there.
>
>Here goes:
>
>When kept captive in the palace, Charles the Beloved was moved from his
>original room
>because he was accused of using a "fop's hand mirror" (121) to signal to
>someone. This being a Nabokov novel, we're inclined to suspect that the king
>probably was, in fact, signalling to someone. What can be seen from his
>window? Who could be receiving signals from the hand mirror?
>
>We learn (119) that "one could make out with the help of field glasses lithe
>youths diving into the swimming pool of a fairy tale sport club, and the
>English ambassador in old-fashioned flannels playing tennis with the Basque
>coach on a clay court as remote as paradise." With the "fop's hand mirror"
>he was able to signal to the tennis courts; and we just happen to know the
>identity of a certain "tennis ace" named Julius Steinmann, "son of the well
>known philanthropist" (153), after whom--perhaps?--the "steinmann" (Zemblan
>for "cairn") was named. (Or is "steinmann" a real German term for "cairn"?)
>
>Julius Steinmann is called "an especially brilliant impersonator of the
>King" (153), which will be very important in a minute. Young Steinmann
>could also have received information--and the jewels themselves--from Odon,
>since we also know that "through [Odon] the king kept in touch with numerous
>adherents, young nobles, artists, college athletes, gamblers, Black Rose
>paladins, members of fencing clubs, and other men of fashion and adventure"
>(120). The Keeper of the Treasure, one Baron Bland, "had a helper" (243),
>who we might presume was Odon. Could the king have been signalling his
>preferred hiding place for the jewels?
>
>Then the King escapes. He is dropped by Odon "at the edge of the Mandevil
>Forest" (139). Mandevil Forest is near Kobaltana: it is near a "once
>fashionable mountain resort"--something we can deduce from the following
>information. Charles's English tutor once sprained his ankle during "a
>picnic in
>the Mandevil Forest" (124). After Odon drops the king off near the Mandevil
>Forest,
>Charles remembers "the times he had picnicked hereabouts--in another part of
>the forest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy, on the
>boulderfield where Mr. Campbell had once twisted an ankle and had to be
>carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants. Rather dull
>memories, on the whole. Wasn't there a hunting box nearby--just beyond
>Silfhar Falls? Good capercaillie and woodcock shooting--a sport much enjoyed
>by his late mother Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen" (139). Sounds
>like a "mountainous resort" was nearby.
>
>So we've found the mountainous resort. Kobaltana could be nearby. But what
>about the "ruins of the old barracks"? Do we know of any military
>installations in Zembla? We know that they haven't had any wars during
>Charles's reign ("Mars never marred his record," 75) but there are a couple
>of references to military activity--indeed, there are references to
>Charles's military service. There is one time in his life when he spends
>half his time "with his regiment" (104), and when he stays in the peasant
>Griff's house he sees a "a color print" of himself as "an elegant guardsman"
>(141). This doesn't prove much, but it does associate the location--Mandevil
>Forest, where Griff lives--with Charles in a military uniform (where he
>would have made a lot of mischief in the barracks?). This is a stretch, I
>know.
>
>When the king ascends further up the mountainside (getting near the mountain
>resort where he once picnicked with Campbell), he sees a "red-sweatered,
>red-capped doubleganger" (143) whom he at first mistakes for his own
>reflection. It would take an "especially brilliant impersonator" (153) to
>give the appearance of one's own reflection; only the aforementioned Julius
>Steinmann could pull it off. After the impersonator disappears, the King
>shudders with "alfear (uncontrollable fear caused by elves)"; he murmurs "a
>family prayer," crosses himself, and moves on.
>
>Then he sees that "upon an adjacent ridge a steinmann (a heap of stones
>erected as a memento of an ascent) had donned a cap of red wool in his
>honor." The crown jewels, I think, are buried here. Why? Because immediately
>after walking on, when he reaches the pass in the very next paragraph--when
>he looks out and observes the beauty of the Bera mountain range--he
>describes the mountains as though they were jewels in a box. Look at the
>passage: he is describing a box of precious jewels:
>
>"Northward melted the green, gray, bluish mountains--Falkberg with its hood
>of snow [a pearl ring?], Mutraberg with the fan of its avalanche [isn't a
>fan a common design on earrings and pendants?], Paberg (Mt. Peacock), and
>others,--separated by narrow dim valleys with intercalated cotton-wool bits
>of cloud that seemed placed between the receding sets of ridges to prevent
>their flanks from scraping against one another [as cotton-wool separates
>jewels in a box]. Beyond them, in the final blue, loomed Mt. Glitterntin
>["glitter"], a serrated edge of bright foil ["a thin layer of metal placed
>under a gem in a closed setting to improve its color or brilliancy"
>-Webster's]; and southward, a tender haze enveloped more distant ridges
>which led to one another in an endless array, through every grade of soft
>evanescence." (144)
>
>Later, in the index, the Bera Range is described as "glittering" (305). Note
>also that Kinbote has put great emphasis on the difficulty of the
>climb--meaning that the hiding place would be, as the Kobaltana entry
>mandates, "a spot of difficult access." This is the King's surreptitious
>tribute to his family's jewelry.
>
>He is calling our attention to two things at once: the jewelry-like
>appearance of the mountains, and the strange phallus-like tribute of the
>steinmann. Remember Disa's reaction to news of their hiding place?
>"Perfunctorily she inquired about the crown jewels; he revealed to her their
>unusual hiding place, and she melted in girlish mirth as she had not done
>for years and years." (212) "Girlish mirth"? Something is funny about their
>location. Why would she laugh if they were merely hidden in some barracks?
>She laughs because the crown jewels are under an erect phallus: a
>"steinmann" with its "red cap" is above the--ahem--family jewels.
>
>If the jewels are under the steinmann, it's easier to explain
>why, at the novel's end, Kinbote puts such importance on the steinmann:
>
>"What theme?" said Shade absently, as he leaned on my arm and gradually
>recovered the use of his numb limb.
>"Our blue inenubilable Zembla, and the red-capped Steinmann, and the
>motorboat in the sea cave, and--" (288)
>
>There are problems to the solution. For example, why would
>Steinmann wait until the king escaped to go hide the jewels? Isn't this
>solution contradicted by Nabokov himself in the 1967 interview? (Why, at
>least, did Nabokov say the jewels were "in" the barracks rather than "near"
>them?) Is it an absurd leap to say that the jewels are under a steinmann
>just because we see a man likely to be Steinmann right before we see an
>especially noteworthy steinmann, followed by a jewel-like mountain range?
>
>There are probably many other problems. This, at least, is what I and some
>high school students in Brooklyn came up with. For the few people with the
>patience to read this far, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
>
>Respectfully,
>Mike Donohue
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
". . .(Or is "steinmann" a real German term for "cairn"?)"
Yes, it is, according to my old "New Cassell's German
Dictionary". The definition is notated with (Mount.) for "mountaineering".
Michael Donohue further - much further - wrote:
". . . For the few people with the patience to read this far, I'd love to
hear your thoughts."
I have nothing to suggest, but I do love your detective work.
Mary Krimmel
>----- Forwarded message from michaeldonohue@hotmail.com -----
> Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 23:15:37 -0400
> From: Michael Donohue <michaeldonohue@hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: Michael Donohue <michaeldonohue@hotmail.com>
> Subject: Steinmanns and crown jewels
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (196 lines)
>------------------
>Dear AB and everyone else,
>
>
>I suggest that the steinmanns are important because one of them is a marker
>for the burial
>site of the Zemblan crown jewels.
>
>Let me explain. Forgive the long e-mail that follows.
>
>Of all the puzzles of Pale Fire, the one that most stands out is the hunt
>for the crown jewels. Kinbote constantly calls our attention to the mystery
>of their hiding place. When discussing the Russian pair, Niagarin and
>Andronnikov, who have been sent to find the crown jewels, Kinbote expresses,
>with more than "pardonable satisfaction," that the jewels "were, and still
>are, cached in a totally different--and quite unexpected--corner of Zembla"
>(244). He later tells us that Gradus's suitcase and raincoat are probably
>still in a train station locker, "as snug as my gemmed scepter, ruby
>necklace, and diamond-studded crown in--no matter, where" (276). The index
>entry for Charles II begs us to look up the entry for the jewels: "q.v. by
>all means" (306).
>
>It is the loudest, most emphasized puzzle in the novel, and yet it seems to
>have the least inspired solution. Everyone (Boyd, Johnson, etc.) seems to
>agree that the jewels are in Kobaltana--as of course they are. But can't we
>be more specific than that? (And perhaps someone has--please correct me
>if I've overlooked it.)
>
>Nabokov sort of called the jewel hunt to a halt by saying, in the 1967
>interview with Appel, that the jewels were "in the ruins, sir, of some old
>barracks in Kobaltana (q.v.); but do not tell it to the Russians." (Strong
>Opinions, 92).
>
>It's a disappointingly vague solution to a puzzle that calls such
>extravagant attention to itself. I used to think that it was the whole
>solution. But some of my students, over the past five years, have convinced
>me otherwise.
>
>Here is what we've come up with:
>
>The crown jewels are in Kobaltana--yes. But there's more.
>
>1) The king passes through Kobaltana, and sees the hiding place (or taynik),
>during his trek over the Bera mountain range.
>
>2)The jewels are buried under a steinmann.
>
>3) Kinbote cannot resist the temptation to call our attention to their
>precise hiding place.
>
>Let's start from the beginning. Here is the usual solution to the puzzle.
>
>1. Index: Andronikov and Niagarin: "Russian experts in search of buried
>treasure." Conclusion: the jewels are buried.
>
>2. Index: Niagarin and Andronikov: "Russian 'experts' still in search of
>buried treasure." Note the scare quotes: now they're not real experts.
>Solution: jewels' location comes somewhere between the two entries, between
>A and N.
>
>3. The most suspicious entry in the index is the one for Kobaltana: "a once
>fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks now a cold
>and desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but still remembered
>in military families and forest castles, not in the text." (310) Because of
>the entry, we can say that the jewels are buried in Kobaltana.
>
>This is where everyone usually stops. But I humbly suggest that we can go
>further. We can say where Kobaltana is; we can point directly to the taynik;
>we can even speculate about how the jewels got there.
>
>Here goes:
>
>When kept captive in the palace, Charles the Beloved was moved from his
>original room
>because he was accused of using a "fop's hand mirror" (121) to signal to
>someone. This being a Nabokov novel, we're inclined to suspect that the king
>probably was, in fact, signalling to someone. What can be seen from his
>window? Who could be receiving signals from the hand mirror?
>
>We learn (119) that "one could make out with the help of field glasses lithe
>youths diving into the swimming pool of a fairy tale sport club, and the
>English ambassador in old-fashioned flannels playing tennis with the Basque
>coach on a clay court as remote as paradise." With the "fop's hand mirror"
>he was able to signal to the tennis courts; and we just happen to know the
>identity of a certain "tennis ace" named Julius Steinmann, "son of the well
>known philanthropist" (153), after whom--perhaps?--the "steinmann" (Zemblan
>for "cairn") was named. (Or is "steinmann" a real German term for "cairn"?)
>
>Julius Steinmann is called "an especially brilliant impersonator of the
>King" (153), which will be very important in a minute. Young Steinmann
>could also have received information--and the jewels themselves--from Odon,
>since we also know that "through [Odon] the king kept in touch with numerous
>adherents, young nobles, artists, college athletes, gamblers, Black Rose
>paladins, members of fencing clubs, and other men of fashion and adventure"
>(120). The Keeper of the Treasure, one Baron Bland, "had a helper" (243),
>who we might presume was Odon. Could the king have been signalling his
>preferred hiding place for the jewels?
>
>Then the King escapes. He is dropped by Odon "at the edge of the Mandevil
>Forest" (139). Mandevil Forest is near Kobaltana: it is near a "once
>fashionable mountain resort"--something we can deduce from the following
>information. Charles's English tutor once sprained his ankle during "a
>picnic in
>the Mandevil Forest" (124). After Odon drops the king off near the Mandevil
>Forest,
>Charles remembers "the times he had picnicked hereabouts--in another part of
>the forest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy, on the
>boulderfield where Mr. Campbell had once twisted an ankle and had to be
>carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants. Rather dull
>memories, on the whole. Wasn't there a hunting box nearby--just beyond
>Silfhar Falls? Good capercaillie and woodcock shooting--a sport much enjoyed
>by his late mother Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen" (139). Sounds
>like a "mountainous resort" was nearby.
>
>So we've found the mountainous resort. Kobaltana could be nearby. But what
>about the "ruins of the old barracks"? Do we know of any military
>installations in Zembla? We know that they haven't had any wars during
>Charles's reign ("Mars never marred his record," 75) but there are a couple
>of references to military activity--indeed, there are references to
>Charles's military service. There is one time in his life when he spends
>half his time "with his regiment" (104), and when he stays in the peasant
>Griff's house he sees a "a color print" of himself as "an elegant guardsman"
>(141). This doesn't prove much, but it does associate the location--Mandevil
>Forest, where Griff lives--with Charles in a military uniform (where he
>would have made a lot of mischief in the barracks?). This is a stretch, I
>know.
>
>When the king ascends further up the mountainside (getting near the mountain
>resort where he once picnicked with Campbell), he sees a "red-sweatered,
>red-capped doubleganger" (143) whom he at first mistakes for his own
>reflection. It would take an "especially brilliant impersonator" (153) to
>give the appearance of one's own reflection; only the aforementioned Julius
>Steinmann could pull it off. After the impersonator disappears, the King
>shudders with "alfear (uncontrollable fear caused by elves)"; he murmurs "a
>family prayer," crosses himself, and moves on.
>
>Then he sees that "upon an adjacent ridge a steinmann (a heap of stones
>erected as a memento of an ascent) had donned a cap of red wool in his
>honor." The crown jewels, I think, are buried here. Why? Because immediately
>after walking on, when he reaches the pass in the very next paragraph--when
>he looks out and observes the beauty of the Bera mountain range--he
>describes the mountains as though they were jewels in a box. Look at the
>passage: he is describing a box of precious jewels:
>
>"Northward melted the green, gray, bluish mountains--Falkberg with its hood
>of snow [a pearl ring?], Mutraberg with the fan of its avalanche [isn't a
>fan a common design on earrings and pendants?], Paberg (Mt. Peacock), and
>others,--separated by narrow dim valleys with intercalated cotton-wool bits
>of cloud that seemed placed between the receding sets of ridges to prevent
>their flanks from scraping against one another [as cotton-wool separates
>jewels in a box]. Beyond them, in the final blue, loomed Mt. Glitterntin
>["glitter"], a serrated edge of bright foil ["a thin layer of metal placed
>under a gem in a closed setting to improve its color or brilliancy"
>-Webster's]; and southward, a tender haze enveloped more distant ridges
>which led to one another in an endless array, through every grade of soft
>evanescence." (144)
>
>Later, in the index, the Bera Range is described as "glittering" (305). Note
>also that Kinbote has put great emphasis on the difficulty of the
>climb--meaning that the hiding place would be, as the Kobaltana entry
>mandates, "a spot of difficult access." This is the King's surreptitious
>tribute to his family's jewelry.
>
>He is calling our attention to two things at once: the jewelry-like
>appearance of the mountains, and the strange phallus-like tribute of the
>steinmann. Remember Disa's reaction to news of their hiding place?
>"Perfunctorily she inquired about the crown jewels; he revealed to her their
>unusual hiding place, and she melted in girlish mirth as she had not done
>for years and years." (212) "Girlish mirth"? Something is funny about their
>location. Why would she laugh if they were merely hidden in some barracks?
>She laughs because the crown jewels are under an erect phallus: a
>"steinmann" with its "red cap" is above the--ahem--family jewels.
>
>If the jewels are under the steinmann, it's easier to explain
>why, at the novel's end, Kinbote puts such importance on the steinmann:
>
>"What theme?" said Shade absently, as he leaned on my arm and gradually
>recovered the use of his numb limb.
>"Our blue inenubilable Zembla, and the red-capped Steinmann, and the
>motorboat in the sea cave, and--" (288)
>
>There are problems to the solution. For example, why would
>Steinmann wait until the king escaped to go hide the jewels? Isn't this
>solution contradicted by Nabokov himself in the 1967 interview? (Why, at
>least, did Nabokov say the jewels were "in" the barracks rather than "near"
>them?) Is it an absurd leap to say that the jewels are under a steinmann
>just because we see a man likely to be Steinmann right before we see an
>especially noteworthy steinmann, followed by a jewel-like mountain range?
>
>There are probably many other problems. This, at least, is what I and some
>high school students in Brooklyn came up with. For the few people with the
>patience to read this far, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
>
>Respectfully,
>Mike Donohue
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----