In his letter to Bunny (September 13,1942,n.500,
Volodya adds a Post-Scriptum:
"I have suddenly remembered
two cases in Pushkin similar to the Shakespearean lapse in the "daffodil" line.
In the poem which begins [...] ... all the lines are of six feet, except one
which is of five:[...] "Precipitates the moment of seminal
ejaculation." Erotic haste shortens this line quite naturally, but only
expert attention discloses this."
Compare with Kinbote's precocious labors,
towards Shade's quirky "furrow or fold" in space, in
his note on the "frame house between Goldsworth and
Wordsmith" (lines 47/48):
" I wish to convey, in making this
reference to Wordsmith briefer than the notes on the Goldsworth and Shade
houses, the fact that the college was considerably farther from them than they
were from one another. It is probably the first time that the dull pain of
distance is rendered through an effect of style and that a topographical
idea finds its verbal expression in a series of foreshortened
sentences....Dear Jesus, do something."
This "effect of style" is not Shade's
- whom Kinbote mimics anyway! He also makes this aspect more explicit
while presenting Gradus' motions hanging from paragraphs and jumping
into trains of thoughts aso (it becomes quite easy to miss the
pathos, real pain, gigantic solitude and impotence present in the
content of CK's lines, should we dwell on style alone.)
Addendum:
Alexey[ to Jansy Mello]: There are no balloons in Jules Verne's Around
the World in Eighty Days, although the book cover shows
one.
JM: Thanks for the correction.
I must have confused David Niven with the Wizard of Oz.