Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0011501, Tue, 17 May 2005 13:46:07 -0700

Subject
Re: Fwd: Steinmanns and crown jewels
Date
Body
Michael, you've mostly convinced this amateur. I like the ideas
that the king was signaling or trying to signal Julius Steinmann on
the tennis court that's visible from the tower, that Steinmann was
"an especially brilliant impersonator of the king" because he
fooled the king himself (one of those Nabokovian reverse ironies
where a statement turns out to be truer than it seems), and that
the king was near Kobaltana and Steinmann was on his mission of
hiding the jewels when he put a red cap on a steinmann "in his
[the king's or Steinmann's] honor".

I'm not convinced, though, that the jewels are under *that*
cairn, since as you say it doesn't seem to be in a ruined barracks.
I like your suggestion that the "family jewels" (possibly the real
"nuts" instead of which A. and N. find broken nutshells behind
Eystein's portrait in the note to line 130) should be near
or under a phallic symbol, but I don't know whether you've found
the right one (not that I see any other possibilities). Carolyn
thinks the scepter is enough of a phallus, but that doesn't bother
me. It's typical of Kinbote to envision lots of phalluses right
next to each other--the woodcock lives in the phallic Bera Range
on the jutting Zemblan peninsula. (By the way, "capercaillie" is
from the Gaelic for "horse of the woods", so it goes with
"woodcock", though not as neatly as Beauchamp and Campbell.)

The only jewel references that convince me are the cotton wool
(same as Carolyn) and all the glittering and foil, but you could
add "Kronberg" (presumably "crown mountain") in the paragraph
with the steinmann, and the "ruby dew" two paragraphs earlier.

By the way, Kobaltana is "remembered in military families and
forest castles" (Index). The forest castle is presumably "the
main hideout of the Karlists, a baronial castle in a fir wood on
the eastern slopes of the Bera Range" (note to line 149 again).
This just connects Kobaltana with the Karlists, though, not
necessarily with the jewels or Steinmann.

Enough for now--time to go to a meeting. But I like the picture
of you and your high-school students arguing about the Crown
Jewels!

Jerry Friedman

--- "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu> wrote:

> ----- 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 -----
>





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