Hello, Charles
I hoped my comment on "virtual image" and "real image" ( seen in a
glass and through a glass) was crystal clear. No such luck. Anyway, lots of
answers to your initial prompting offered exciting perspectives.
I liked your "slightly dizzy" conclusions:
I realize now that mentally I'd always substituted
"image" for "shadow" when thinking about these lines [
shadows are images, either projected or by reflection, are they not?].
That is, I'd imagined that it was the reflected image of the bird that
continued to fly on through the glass, while the body lay dead on the ground
outside [ so did I, but not "through" but still "in the
glass"].
My lazy mind was obviously playing tricks on me: the
mirror image of the bird would in any case have been flying in the opposite
direction, ie back out into the air, as it were from inside the room. From the
bird's point of view, it would obviously have crashed straight into its own
self. Perhaps that's what the whole novel is also about, however.
Very interesting "the whole novel is also about...crashed into its own
self", a confirmation of Carolyn Kunin's hypothesis (and apotheosis when Gradus,
Kinbote and Shade are simultaneously confronted, at last)
How amazing that every reader seems to look from a particular perspective.
You identified with the bird's vision ( like Sandy Drescher's cardinals fighting
off a reflected enemy) and saw its image flying towards you and "back out
into the air" ( if "it lived on" while the bird itself became "an ashen fluff").
I saw it happen from the outside, like Kinbote standing in the green lawn (
before Winter came) and the bird crossed the mirroring
glass horizontally while its after-image flew on in my
closed-lid remembrance of it...
A silly question to experts: do waxwings feed on red admiral butterflies,
or are they strict juniperberrians?
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 7:25
PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Optics and
windows in PF (CHW to JF)
I
think young John identified with the waxwing and
the shadow paralleling
it on the ground--and still with both
as the waxwing died but the shadow
lived on in his imagination
(and elsewhere?).