A challenge to those who believe that the
roommate is Hazel's: Do you see any significance in the nun who turns up in
Kinbote's commentary to line 894 ("the widely circulated stuff about the nun")
or any relationship between this nun and the roommate who has become
one?
Andrew Brown's response:
As for the nun
disguise rumor mentioned in the commentary and the future nun in the poem, the
time frame doesn't lend itself to their being the same person. If an actual King
Charles had escaped from Zembla disguised as a nun, he could not have arrived at
Wordsmith in the form of a "future nun" while Hazel attended school.
Dear Mr Brown,
I did not mean to suggest that Charles had
become Hazel's roommate (bizarre idea and as you say, chronologically impossible
since Hazel's death precedes the revolution in Zembla), rather that the nun who
turns up in the commentary is Kinbote/Shade's memory of the roommate/nun. To me
it was interesting that Shade associates the nun with a feeling of discomfiture.
How do you interpret the second appearance of the nun in the commentary
is what I am asking.