Subject
[NABOKOV-L] [MEDIEVAL ANGELS AND PINS] Butterflies,
shoes and numbers
shoes and numbers
From
Date
Body
PALE FIRE, lines 879-885
... where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe./ And then I realized that this half too/ Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke/ Safe in my bed as day its eggshell broke,/ And robins walked and stopped, and on the damp/ Gemmed turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp,/ The Shade impress, the mystery inborn.
Dear List,
On Friday, 6 June, Stan K-Bootle wrote about 999 lines and also on 1001 while mentioning "mathematical modulo terms".
I've been trying to puzzle it out with the aid of my son, while we draw butterfly wings and count lines, verses and index-cards. He tries to explain the mysteries of DIV and MOD and finds a pattern of corresponding numbers, varying from canto I-IV and II-III, that are recurrent and an insistent "rest". He even found black and white oppositions forming lesser squares that ...oh, well. We checked "Nabokov's Butterflies" to find those insects which might have shorter upperwings, as in PF's "butterfly pattern". We found other images and numbers for wings, but "Pale Fire", the poem, continues to offer an "upside-down" scheme.
(In the meantime I'm still puzzling out the fourteen variants inscribed in the 12 index-cards saved from a bonfire in the second half of July ( 14, plus a non-existent one, for line 822: Fervently would I wish to report that the reading in the draft was: killing a Zemblan king / - but alas, it is not so: the card with the draft has not been preserved by Shade. )
I thought I might as well share perplexities and interesting images scanned from N's Butterflies with the wiser List members...
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
... where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe./ And then I realized that this half too/ Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke/ Safe in my bed as day its eggshell broke,/ And robins walked and stopped, and on the damp/ Gemmed turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp,/ The Shade impress, the mystery inborn.
Dear List,
On Friday, 6 June, Stan K-Bootle wrote about 999 lines and also on 1001 while mentioning "mathematical modulo terms".
I've been trying to puzzle it out with the aid of my son, while we draw butterfly wings and count lines, verses and index-cards. He tries to explain the mysteries of DIV and MOD and finds a pattern of corresponding numbers, varying from canto I-IV and II-III, that are recurrent and an insistent "rest". He even found black and white oppositions forming lesser squares that ...oh, well. We checked "Nabokov's Butterflies" to find those insects which might have shorter upperwings, as in PF's "butterfly pattern". We found other images and numbers for wings, but "Pale Fire", the poem, continues to offer an "upside-down" scheme.
(In the meantime I'm still puzzling out the fourteen variants inscribed in the 12 index-cards saved from a bonfire in the second half of July ( 14, plus a non-existent one, for line 822: Fervently would I wish to report that the reading in the draft was: killing a Zemblan king / - but alas, it is not so: the card with the draft has not been preserved by Shade. )
I thought I might as well share perplexities and interesting images scanned from N's Butterflies with the wiser List members...
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
