R S Gwynn wrote: Shade
may have liked apples better in childhood (which he's describing here) than he
did as an adult.
JM: Apples are fortresses when one has to wear
dentures, but the previous mention of vegetables and salads by
Kinbote suggests a different kind of rejection on the part of Shade.
I had never considered until now, with the
same clarity as yours, that in the first verses of Canto
I JS was already describing his childhood.
......................................................................................................
... " And from the inside,too, IŽd
duplicate/ Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:/
...Why would Shade mention an apple right at the
start of "Pale Fire", as a part of his familiar surroundings when, later, we
find Kinbote writing that: "Shade said that with him it was the other way
around: he must make a definite effort to partake of a vegetable. Beginning a
salad..., and he had alwaysto brace himself in order to attack the fortress of
an apple." ?