Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0014263, Sat, 2 Dec 2006 23:05:47 -0200

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Re: "C" "K" "S" in PF solution (tongue-twisters)
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Re: [NABOKV-L] "C" "K" "S" in PF solution (tongue-twisters)SKB wrote to Alexey: "Your 'coincidences' are remarkably UNremarkable as proved by Victor Fet's recent gematria, the irony of which has escaped some recipients! Underwood Dudley's book on Numerology (is that Crank or Krank?) proves, for instance, that given ANY personal name, there exists a character-numerical mapping that gives that name a total of 666 ..."

His observations reminded me of a problem I must bring up in relation to Krank's ill-fated calculation ( I promise it's not a Fetist exercise in tautology, nor a third alternative to CHW's listing, but I may be mistaken) .

Please pick up pencil and paper and to discover Kinbote's real age at the time of his death ( you all remember how Kinbote was confused with the dates...)*.
We must check if he was 45 or 44 by a strictly scientific exercise.

1. Count how many cedars or juniper trees there were in Shade's backyard ( >0 and <10);
2. To get even with that conclusion, now multiply their number by two;
3. Add five to the total you obtained **;
4. Multiply the result by fifty ( almost like Shade's calculations, according to which five minutes are equal to forty ounces. Nevertheless here shall be following Gradus' advances using Zemblan minutes and hours );
5. Since Shade's birthday, as Kinbote's, was in July, you must now add 1756 ( ounces or SKB-tygers);
6. Subtract from this total result, the year in which Kinbote was born ( use its 4 digits);
7.The first of the three digits you have obtained corresponds to the number of Juniper trees you saw in Shade's backyard. The other two shall reveal Kinbote's age today.
8. To find out what Kinbote's age was in October 19,1959 you must now subtract 47 from the last two remaining digits.
Voilá.


*- Kinbote, in his note to line 167, "There was a time, etc.", revealed Shade's birth date as July 5 and, the year in which "Pale Fire" was written being 1959, concluded that it was "his sixtieth birthday". Next he corrected his slip and added: "change to sixty-first".
We must keep in mind that also Nabokov made a similar miscalculation. He confessed,in Speak,Memory that "Among the anomalies of a memory, whose possessor and victim should never have tried to become an autobiographer, the worst is the inclination to equate in retrospect my age with that of the century. This has led to a series or remarkably consisten chronological blunders... I was born in April 1899, and naturally, during the first third of, say, 1903, was roughly three years old; but in August of that year, the sharp '3' revealed to me...should refer to the century's age, not to mine, which was '4' and as square and resilient as a rubber pillow".

**-We know that Shade began "Canto Two" in the 6th Sunday after Trinity, and that it was the 3999th time in which... but let's skip that and continue to add five,instead of six.

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