CHW: "whether there might be some philosophical distinction between the independent existence of “blue” and the Juniper tree in the quad, when there’s no-one around to see it. There seems to me a difference between the human perception of colours and the perception of concrete objects..."

JM: Charles must have been quoting Bishop Berkeley ( "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really fall?") and his "ghosts of departed quantities" set out to haunt...( was it Newton?)

And yet, his choice for the tree as being a "Juniper" intrigues me. We already discussed two sets of verses about odd and quod in the past but, perhaps, I may bring them up in the present context:
There was a young man who said, "God,/ Must think it exceedingly odd/
If he finds that this tree/ Continues to be/ When there's no one about in the Quad."

With a serious reply by "God":"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd:/ I am always about in the Quad./And that's why the tree/ Continues to be,/Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."

CHW also wrote: ..."that could mean that Zembla also has reality, since it is so vividly perceived by Kinbote, and therefore also by God. Most fiction is, and most people in fiction are, I suppose, much more real than the nameless multitudes who have led “real” lives."

JM: Did you ever doubt that Zembla is as real as Kinbote? 

Nabokov's novel, even if it isn't actually being observed by VN, recreates him ( or any other author whose book we happen to be reading) as an observer of that particular universe, within its specific boundaries. Probably, if these demarcations are over-ruled or expanded by a reader, we may then imagine they have all entered into another universe in which, even though absent, Nabokov has the same fictional status ( reality) as Kinbote's, or the reader's. In that universe we may discover Kipling to be writing poetry and Frost, verse.

Jerry Friedman, in the past, already reminded us of  a monk's quandary: "am I a man who dreamt he is a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming to be a man?."   What concerns our present List, our reality virtually depends only of our EDs...
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 EDNote: As suggested in the last line of Jansy's post, I'm going to request that this discussion (regarding . . . hmmmm: colors, the quality of poetry, the "reality" of fiction and the fiction of "reality") slip through the looking glass and continue there, off list.  If anyone needs help finding the email address of a participant you would like to include, I'll be very happy to assist.  If any exciting discoveries arise--please do report to us all here, in "reality". . .  ~SB

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