SS wrote: to the line 231 we read "a
beautiful variant, with one curious gap": Poor old man Swift, poor ---, poor
Baudelaire.If, for Shade, "e" in Baudelaire is mute, then a name that fits
would be Kinbote. (As he hints.) If "e" is not mute, it would be Shade. The
reference to the line 501 adds to the ambiguity: L'if, In the
comments lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais .
Clearly, here "e" in Rabelais is mute, as indicates Kinbote, and this apparently
supports the point that for Shade "e" in Baudelaire is mute.But in the next line
... I.P.H., a lay
this mute "e" pops up! My own interpretation is
that all this indicates rather constant presence of the author (VN) and the
"play" goes far beyond the text... But other interpretations are
possible.
Jansy Mello: Beautiful (quality versus quantity) line of
argumentation. As you know in PF there are several annotations
about IPH, "L' If", if-peut-être/potato and various translational problems
with If & Yew and botany and iambic lines. This led me to VN's own
" Irregular Iambics" ( Vladimir Nabokov, Poems and
Problems) where Nabokov inserted a curious annotation about its title (
IF and Russian prosody).
I'd like to bring these notes up at the List ( not that I grasped
VN's point, entirely) hoping that it might not become simply a
parroty association ):
Note:
"Title: "Irregular" ( or "faulty,"
nepravil'nïe ) refers to the fact that in Russian prosody ésli
( if) is never scudded, as for example the word méshdu ( between) is
allowed to be by an old tradition. There is no reason, however, why this
other light and fluid disyllable should not be treated similarly, especially at
the beginning of an iambic line"
Sergei, when I wrote " Kinbote telepathically prompting Shade or
VN's playing with the idea that both Shade and CK were just one
and
the same." I thereby meant that the integrationalistic idea is
a ploy devided by VN himself, i.e, I was referring to the "rather constant
presence of the author (VN)", as you argued