Jansy wrote:
Matt Roth: Gerard de Vries puts to good use both Hofstadter and Bach's "signed" fugue in his article. I think Gerard's notion is that Nabokov is similarly inscribing his own name in PF via the three main characters. I hope he will correct me if I'm mistaken.
JM: Do you think the inscribed name would be Nabokov's, not Kinbote's? How would this be effected?
MR: If you read together three or four of Gerard de Vries's articles on PF--"Fanning the Poet's Fire" is the most comprehensive--you can see him making that case that Shade, Kinbote and Gradus all represent different aspects of VN. VN is the composer of the fugue, PF is the fugue itself, and the three characters are the three parts. The three parts come together in a final cadence (on Goldsworth's lawn), spelling out for us VN's presence.
Matt