Subject
spelling choices Shade and Kinbote
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Both my copies of Pale Fire ( The Library of America, Everyman's Library) present the same characteristic choices for the spelling of "cancelled/canceled" "cancellation/cancelation" .
In his foreword Kinbote writes of Shade´s "misshapen body, gray mop of abundant hair..." ( LA ed, page 453) and concludes that: "He was his own cancellation".
Shade, in Canto Four, line 850 chose the American spellling (as distinguished in my Oxford Concise English Dictionary):
" A pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar
A canceled sunset or restore a star".
Perhaps Kinbote wrote a commentary on the "canceled sunset" ( I could not find it now and my recollections, as usual, are rather dim) but there are no particular notes on line 850 concerning this "cancelation" ( he deals with Lines 841-872 in one short sentence) .
If Kinbote insisted on doubling the "ll" then I would be more secure to inquire if these two different spellings for the same word were either editorial slips ( if they are not indifferently used in one way or another in the same novel?) or were they intended by VN.
Would this "authorial" suggestion serve to indicate that Kinbote and Shade probably were, indeed, two distinct writers?
Jansy
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In his foreword Kinbote writes of Shade´s "misshapen body, gray mop of abundant hair..." ( LA ed, page 453) and concludes that: "He was his own cancellation".
Shade, in Canto Four, line 850 chose the American spellling (as distinguished in my Oxford Concise English Dictionary):
" A pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar
A canceled sunset or restore a star".
Perhaps Kinbote wrote a commentary on the "canceled sunset" ( I could not find it now and my recollections, as usual, are rather dim) but there are no particular notes on line 850 concerning this "cancelation" ( he deals with Lines 841-872 in one short sentence) .
If Kinbote insisted on doubling the "ll" then I would be more secure to inquire if these two different spellings for the same word were either editorial slips ( if they are not indifferently used in one way or another in the same novel?) or were they intended by VN.
Would this "authorial" suggestion serve to indicate that Kinbote and Shade probably were, indeed, two distinct writers?
Jansy
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