1. young girls in a Swiss school ( Armande and Julia were teachers there) probably a first connection to the "shuttlecock" ( shuttle also means a fast way of traveling by plane, does it not?)

- After a Burning Doll house scene and the confusion of a novel´s title: "Figures in a Golden Window" ( probably a reference to Ada and Van watching the Burning Barn?) soon becomes " The Burning Window" - we reach Armande speaking ( while making acquaintance with HP):

Julia and she had both taught in the winter at a school for foreign young ladies in the Tessin ...

Ch11: HP affair with Julia in NY with a reference to an Italian newspaper (" a lot of construction was going on", informs the readers about some spacetime traveling here, and this closing sentence about construction also opens the next chapter Ch12: where we hear about Hugh´s visit to Armande´s home in Witt

"such as a workman´s empty bottle and an Italian newspaper" (...) ..a woman selling apples from a neighboring stall set him straight again. An over affectionate large white dog started to frisk..." (...) A grilled door in it led to some camp or school. The cries of shildren at play came from behind the wall and a shuttle-cock sailed over it to land at his feet. He ignored it, not being the sort of man who picks up things for strangers - a glove, a rolling coin"...

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An interpolation here: the theme of the shuttle-cock comes close to the "rolling coin" which has been widely explored by Nabokov himself on his lecture on James Joyce where he traces references to a coin during Stephen´s wanderings. Worth checking, perhaps?

Also a reference for the Chivalry theme, now in TT: Ch 23 we find at the second paragraph: In his day Hugh had carefully studied the public map, a great Carte du Tendre or Chart of Torture. (La Carte du Tendre refers to courly love).

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Ch.22 Eight years later ( to the events on Ch 11) we get a "re/tour", describing now Hugh´s burning feet and the "diabolical neatness as a shoebox" ( "cardboard box with 'Fit' of ch.2...)

We see( as on Ch.12) a woman selling vegetables from a stall, a large shivering white dog..."A blond little girl with a badminton racket crouched and picked up her shuttlecock from the sidewalk".

Also, a little onwards we find: " resulting in a red eye BURNING there through every threadbare thought. He finally shook the forest off and reached a ROCK-strewn field and a BARN he thought he recalled, but the stream (...) spanned the gap of time in his mind... takes us to ADA´s "Burning Barn and a Golden Window as photographed by Kim, plus burning doll-house and Mme.Ségur"

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The rock-strewn field also takes us back to ch.1 ( " you are thinking, and quite rightly so, of a hillside stone over which a multitude of small animals have scurried in the course of incalculable seasons") ..."the story of this stone, of that heath. I shall explain. A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread..."

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

Sent: Friday, November 12, 2004 2:11 PM

Subject: Fwd: TT-22 Introductory Notes

85.11: Brig: exists in Switzerland though Witt is not a real place. Brig is "located at an ancient European crossroads where the Simplon Pass crosses the high Alps into Italy, the small and picturesque town of Brig boasts many architectural treasures, . . . . As well as excellent skiing from Rosswald immediately aove the town . . . reached by gondola, . . . ." From "SkiEurope Report" by Louis Bignami: http://www.finetravel.com/skiing/ski_switzerland/brig.htm .

85.12-13: Nothing is ever wrapped up with such diabolical neatness as a shoebox: Why the adjective "diabolical" is used but suggesting the Eden theme? Just warning HP about the torturing sentimental journey?

85.20-21: The climb he contemplated could not be accomplished in town shoes: The first day of Ch. 14. HP ignored Jacques's advice that he should change into sturdier brogues.

86.29-30: a French ancestor of his, a Catholic poet and well-nigh a saint: Brian Boyd notes, "French poet and diplomat St. John Perse (1877-1975)." "Perse" is also related with the Eden theme.

87.03-04: without stopping to listen to the vulgar noise of the stream which could tell him nothing: HP usually fails to hear the messages from water in various shapes.

87.11: Villa Nastia, which still retained a dead old woman's absurd Russian diminutive: I wonder why "absurd"?

87.16-17: a woman was selling vegetables: She is the same woman selling apples in Ch. 12, who also helped HP who was lost on the way to Villa Nastia. The apples lead to the Eden theme as well as "yabloni" and "Diablonnet" in Ch. 12 while we only see vegetables here. That might show HP vainly looking for the lost Eden. On the other hand, we might glimpse the vegetables appearing in Chs. 24 and 26.

87.19-24: a large, white, shivering dog crawled from behind a crate and with a shock of futile recognition Hugh remembered that eight years ago he had stopped right here and had noticed that dog, which was pretty old even then and had now braved fabulous age only to serve his blind memory: A piece of the Mcfate puzzle put in a proper place. Though, as I wrote before, the dog did not look pretty old when HP first saw him eight years ago.

87.27-28: A blond little girl with a badminton racket crouched and picked up her shuttlecock from the sidewalk: As if the same shuttlecock as HP saw and ignored eight years ago had been left there for these years was being picked up by a girl who had been playing badminton since then. The girl also looks like Armande in her childhood.

87.29: now painted a celestial blue: Cf. A blue haze sufficient for paradise (Ch. 15). A heaven motif.

87.29-30: All its windows are shuttered: As if announcing HP that he would not be able to find anything there. Cf. Not all of them [the red shutters of the Ascot Hotel] shut (Ch. 2).

Akiko Nakata