Subject
tipsy witches
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Date
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Two unconnected items:
1.
In the same page ( Penguin,147) where we find R.Ivanovich with a powdered cheek like a "Turkish delight", I found a description that will reappear, transformed, in "Pale Fire".
"...fussing with the briefcase...he was just placing it on the table, but changed his mind and, taking it by the collar, lowered it to the floor, leaning it against a leg of his chair where it assumed the drooping position of a drunk; ..."
In Pale Fire we have on lines 991/992: "Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click.Clunck./ ( Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk") /
Grammar teaches us to investigate further who is it that looks "like a drunk" and we find, on line 990 a suggestion that it might be not Shade's "half-Shade" - but Sybil's.
Lines 989/90: "Where are you? In the garden. I can see/ Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree"...
Kinbote's note to these line informs us that Shade looked "like an old tipsy witch" ( we must assume that "tipsy witch" suggests drunkennes - Shade looked like a female inebriated witch. BUt, in Shade's poem, written the day before, we find "half-Sybil": would she be the "drunk"?
It is also in the same note that Kinbote confesses to be "capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse - I am a miserable rhymester)"
Can we believe his words and assume that he couldn't have been the author of Pale Fire poems since he cannot write poetry? Would Shade also dabble in the same kind of "blue magic" ( witch-theme?) to be able to write the commentary?
Obs: Is the spelling of "Lamppost" correct - shouldn't it be hyphenated?
2. Looking for other witches ( going back and forth from "Pale Fire" to "Invitation to a Beheading" but with no logic bt. the references):
The Nabokovian "nonnon" ( for objetct-anamorphosis) makes a reference to "minus x minus" in Cecilia C.'s words: "minus by minus equalled plus, everything was restored, everthing was fine, and the shapeless speckledness became in the mirror a wonderful, sensible image." ( Invitation, Penguin,page 115).
[ Would the "nonnon" as a "double negation" in speech be connected to the French "ni..ni" or with "le non expletif"?. The first time I saw the image of Holbein's "The Ambassadors" with the distorted skull was on the cover of one of the seminaries by Jacques Lacan (Cf. Le Séminaire Livre XI, Ed. Seuil, 1964. The chapter on "L'Anamorphose" is ch.VII). ]
Goethe's poem about the "Erlkönig" is mentioned in Pale Fire, but I haven't yet found other indications for Goethe's famous "Faust". In the latter there is a "witch-game" with numbers where the concluding line takes us to 1 x 1 ( Das Hexen-Einmaleins). I learned that over the years there have been several attempts to break the witches' (Hexen) code. Some find in it references to Leibniz and Pascal. Two others proposed as a solution the construction of "magic squares" ( when the numbers that form it, when added in any direction, always yield the same result, as when we write down four lines with four numbers in each such as 1-15-14-4/ 12-6-7-9/8-10-11-5/ 13-3-2-16/ ). In Goethe's witches puzzle we have not only 1 x 1 multiplication but also addition and subtraction.
In Goethe the words begin with: " Du musst verstehn! Aus Eins mach Zehn..." followed by a succession of subtractions until it concludes with " Und Zehn ist keins". Contrary to Cecilia C's "restoration", in Goethe we end with "nothing".
Although I see no reasonable connection between Goethe's "1 x1" and Nabokov's "minus x minus", I thought it might interest the List to read about these other "witches".
Jansy Mello
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1.
In the same page ( Penguin,147) where we find R.Ivanovich with a powdered cheek like a "Turkish delight", I found a description that will reappear, transformed, in "Pale Fire".
"...fussing with the briefcase...he was just placing it on the table, but changed his mind and, taking it by the collar, lowered it to the floor, leaning it against a leg of his chair where it assumed the drooping position of a drunk; ..."
In Pale Fire we have on lines 991/992: "Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click.Clunck./ ( Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk") /
Grammar teaches us to investigate further who is it that looks "like a drunk" and we find, on line 990 a suggestion that it might be not Shade's "half-Shade" - but Sybil's.
Lines 989/90: "Where are you? In the garden. I can see/ Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree"...
Kinbote's note to these line informs us that Shade looked "like an old tipsy witch" ( we must assume that "tipsy witch" suggests drunkennes - Shade looked like a female inebriated witch. BUt, in Shade's poem, written the day before, we find "half-Sybil": would she be the "drunk"?
It is also in the same note that Kinbote confesses to be "capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse - I am a miserable rhymester)"
Can we believe his words and assume that he couldn't have been the author of Pale Fire poems since he cannot write poetry? Would Shade also dabble in the same kind of "blue magic" ( witch-theme?) to be able to write the commentary?
Obs: Is the spelling of "Lamppost" correct - shouldn't it be hyphenated?
2. Looking for other witches ( going back and forth from "Pale Fire" to "Invitation to a Beheading" but with no logic bt. the references):
The Nabokovian "nonnon" ( for objetct-anamorphosis) makes a reference to "minus x minus" in Cecilia C.'s words: "minus by minus equalled plus, everything was restored, everthing was fine, and the shapeless speckledness became in the mirror a wonderful, sensible image." ( Invitation, Penguin,page 115).
[ Would the "nonnon" as a "double negation" in speech be connected to the French "ni..ni" or with "le non expletif"?. The first time I saw the image of Holbein's "The Ambassadors" with the distorted skull was on the cover of one of the seminaries by Jacques Lacan (Cf. Le Séminaire Livre XI, Ed. Seuil, 1964. The chapter on "L'Anamorphose" is ch.VII). ]
Goethe's poem about the "Erlkönig" is mentioned in Pale Fire, but I haven't yet found other indications for Goethe's famous "Faust". In the latter there is a "witch-game" with numbers where the concluding line takes us to 1 x 1 ( Das Hexen-Einmaleins). I learned that over the years there have been several attempts to break the witches' (Hexen) code. Some find in it references to Leibniz and Pascal. Two others proposed as a solution the construction of "magic squares" ( when the numbers that form it, when added in any direction, always yield the same result, as when we write down four lines with four numbers in each such as 1-15-14-4/ 12-6-7-9/8-10-11-5/ 13-3-2-16/ ). In Goethe's witches puzzle we have not only 1 x 1 multiplication but also addition and subtraction.
In Goethe the words begin with: " Du musst verstehn! Aus Eins mach Zehn..." followed by a succession of subtractions until it concludes with " Und Zehn ist keins". Contrary to Cecilia C's "restoration", in Goethe we end with "nothing".
Although I see no reasonable connection between Goethe's "1 x1" and Nabokov's "minus x minus", I thought it might interest the List to read about these other "witches".
Jansy Mello
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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