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To Stephen Blackwell: Like others, I envy you those columns
of mist. I've never heard of or seen anything like them, but
the even spacing suggests a convection phenomenon. If you
want to research them, that might be a place to start.
To Jansy: Yes, swallows perch, often lined up on wires. A
Google Image search for "swallow perch" or "swallow wire
-'wire-tailed'" will find lots of pictures.
To Victor Fet: I think I'd rather see Nabokov identified with
two literary movements rather than one--less pigeonholing that
way. Nabokov was of course not an /adherent/ of any movement,
but I (as a non-expert) am not bothered by the suggestion
that, as he wrote playful and parodic "serious" literature
when or a little before others were doing so, his work was
part of what created a trend called post-modernism.
I do sometimes consider adding a footnote to Wikipedia's short
list of Nabokov's influences, saying that he denied having
influences. Maybe the list of literary movements needs a
similar footnote.
Thanks to you and Sergei Soloviev for information on the
Russian gentry and to Charles Harrison-Wallace for the "haute
bourgeoisie" quotation. I see that VVN was a member of the
hereditary nobility (dvoryanstvo, says Sergei) till he was
stripped of the title for political dissidence. My only
question left is whether the English word "aristocracy"
includes that group or not.
To Matt Roth: I was extremely dense about connecting "waxwing"
to Icarus. However, now that people have been mentioning it,
I'm thinking that Icarus falls, while Daedalus escapes. So
as Jansy said, we could associate the "ashen fluff" with
Icarus, but also the shadow or whatever part lived on, flew
on, with Daedalus. Icarus isn't mentioned in the book, but
as Dieter Zimmer quoted recently, Daedalus is in the F. K. Lane
quotation.
In trying to think about whether we're simply talking about
the body dying and the spirit living, I'm confused between
"I am an indivisible monist" and the overtly dualistic
descriptions of Cincinnatus in /Invitation to a Beheading/.
Maybe Shade is both Icarus and Daedalus. I'm pretty sure,
though, that Kinbote (whose favorite method of suicide is
falling) ends up as ashen fluff.
I'm intrigued by your "empty grave" and your "... Walter
Campbell...". Could it be relevant to anything that the
book's Campbell leaves Zembla in 1931 according to the Index,
but in 1932 according to the note to line 71?
Jerry Friedman