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Fw: Parenthetical Images
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----- Original Message -----
From: Jacob Wilkenfeld
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 3:19 PM
Subject: Re: Parenthetical Images
I came across a couple of passages where the aforementioned stylistic feature occurs in Pale Fire:
"On the other hand (he admitted) the tears of all ill-treated human beings, throughout the hopelessness of all time, mathematically equaled each other; and perhaps (he thought) one did not err too muich in tracing a family likeness (tensing of simian nostrils, sickening dulling of eyes) between the jasmine-belt lyncher and the mystical anti-Semite when under the influence of their pet obsessions." --from the note to line 470
"I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square)." --from the last paragraph in the Commentary. It occurs to me that many of these parenthetical images produce a swift associative effect which is similar to that of film montage. Has anyone touched upon this? I know that there exist studies of VN and the cinema.
There are also at least a few examples of parenthetical breaks in Pale Fire which seem to reflect Kinbote's psychological "disjunction" (eg, "He had finished his Third, penultimate Canto, and had started on Canto Four, his last (see Forward, see Foreword, at once), and would I mind very much if we started to go home--though it was only around nine--so that he could plunge back into his chaos and drag out of it, with all its wet stars, his cosmos." --from the note to line 802. (Incidentally, has anyone commented on the "see Forward/ see forward" pun here? I vaguely remember encountering something about it in Professor Boyd's study, but haven't been able to locate it today.)
Best,
Jacob Wilkenfeld
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Professor Johnson,
I am enjoying your essay. I hope to finish it soon so as to be able to say something more or less intelligent about it. The last quotation I sent in yesterday is from section/chapter 6 of The Enchanter, paragraph 22 (I noticed later that the citation was missing a chapter #). Here is that excerpt again in case you're interested:
"A short-legged, macrocephalous old fellow in an unbuttoned waistcoat--sluggish, dawdling, explaining at length and with guilty benevolence that he was only standing in for the owner who was his eldest son and who had had to leave to attend to family matters--searched for a long time in a black book, then announced that he did not have a free room with twin beds (there was a flower show in town, and many visitors) but that there was one with a double be, 'which amounts to the same thing.'"
Best regards,
Jacob
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