nun jetzt in Pale Fire

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 3:55 PM

Subject: nun jetzt in Pale Fire

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?

To which Mr Brown replied:

I think that Nabokov's intention in both the reference to a future nun "roommate" (whose I don't know, but you know my thoughts on this word choice) sitting with Hazel, and the second reference, in the commentary, to a fake nun, are both separate statements of about a certain tupe of marginal person -- non-sexual persons.

Dear Mr Brown,

I take it this means you don't think they are the same person, that Nabokov is type-casting, so to speak. It's just a coincidence that he uses "a nun" in one place and "the nun" later? That would be rather uncharacteristic of Nabokov.

Do you also think the blonde, barefoot and in a black leotard, is a type, or is she a person?

But you do think that Netochka (Nezvanova?) is a person. How do you see old Natochdag - does he bear any resemblance to an old lady of that family in a 1934 bestseller? Or you have something else in mind?

Carolyn Kunin