Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0014072, Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:52:46 -0500

Subject
Hazel and Sybil
From
Date
Body
Serge wrote: Why Shade and Sybil did want so much Hazel to be beautiful?
...
"She might have been you, me, or some quaint blend ...he wanted to see
the
"reincarnation" of Sybil...I do not think that we need some wilder
hypotheses and more complex "perversions" to explain their relationship
to
Hazel.
(Not really incestual...)
Jansy: I don't know how to fit the item I will mention now, on a
"reincarnation of Sybil". It might have been stimulated by a slight hint
of
"oedipal woes" in your note, but I couldn't help remembering Blenda,
King
Charles's mother ( also a "blend"? We know she died, as Shade did, in
July
21 - 1936).
Queen Blenda was felt as a menacing phantom to the young King (he looked
for
protection in Fleur, I think).
Carolyn Kunin might have more information about her ancestors to offer
us...The "genealogic succession" might offer some explanation for
Hazel's
rejection by her parents.
While CK narrates part of this scene he has another attack of
"excruciating
headaches", rendering sound and light stimuli unbearable to him almost
from
start.

Concerning the beautiful lines about "a jet's pink trail"...
Kinbote often mentions a similar image. His father was fond of airplanes
and
he died in a "Blenda" (or so I think. No time to check a note to line 71
and
others close by, where we read about King Alfin's headlong crash againt
a
window, an item that might have been under comparison in the entry on
"Waxwing").
There's a lot of parachuting going on, too. Chief of all there is a
reference to a "stiletto" (bodkin) of ice seen plummeting down from an
airplane and killing a farmer... Love into Hate, Life into Death...
World
games...
Jansy

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