Matt Roth
wrote: "I've been doing some image-collecting in VN's works and thought I'd
share what I've found (all emphases mine): Pale Fire: "She'd
criticize / Ferociously our projects, and with eyes / Expressionless sit on her
tumbled bed / Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her
head..." Context: Shade's description of Hazel
Thoughts: Is there a thread that runs though all
of these tumblings? I believe so. In each case, except for that of Hazel, there
is an obvious sexual context. ..The two occurrences of "tumbled" in PF
are interesting because the first occurrence ...Hazel's tumbled bed is presented
to us along with her "swollen feet." Given that the Greek word for "swollen
feet" is oedipus, we perhaps should consider ways in which Hazel's
tumbled bed resembles the other tumblings in VN's works."
Jansy Mello: Your
comments made me think about the rhymes about "Jack and Jill" with
its implication of a "fall" and even "fallen" in relation
to "tumble". Quite an interesting collection of examples and line of
research.
I wonder, though, about the Oedipal theme. I
don't know how informed VN was on myths and Greek but
Hazel's swollen feet, considered by themselves, are not
sufficient as an indication of paedophilia &incest.
Oedipus' father was called Laius, his
grandfather Labdacus. I cannot now remember the exact translation of their
names but all three refer to L-shaped legs and a limp: the
reference to this "claudicating lineage" is of importance ( among several
other componentes of a myth that also deals with 'royal investiture"
and appeared in a play bearing the title "Oedipus Tyrannus", a reference
to Kings that have no royal blood, as it was initially thought of
Oedipus). Shade had problems with his legs, though: would this somehow be
significant? ( I always thought
of Hazel's swollen feet and tumbled bed in relation to one of TSEliot's
poems and a girl rubbing her yellow soles)
RSGwynn
wrote: "There's also a Nabokovian twist in
"waxwing"; the very name contains a
double--"double-you--double-you"-- which is reminiscent of Poe's most famous
doppelganger story, "WilliamWilson.".
Jansy Mello:
Could the choices of waxwing and apple ( linked as they are through
ampelis and sampel) have been dictated by poetic criteria more than by
any allusion or indication?
Shade was "artistically caged" (
like a bird?) and his house, like the apple, is "a fortress".
I would like to link this "prison"
and "a bird" to Priscilla Meyer's observations about Pale Fire.
In connection
to "double darkness" (in the opening paragraph of Speak Memory) P. Meyer
brought up the Venerable Bede who compared manīs life on earth to the arrow
flight of a small sparrow crossing a lighted hall "passing
from winter into winter". In her book she also registers that "as has been
demonstrated by Jean-Christophe Castelli, Nabokov uses the metaphor of the
house, of enclosure, for the concept of mortal time, with windows as the point
of transition into and out of it".( Find What the Sailor Has
Hidden,Vladimir Nabokovīs 'Pale Fire' pg73).
Structurally speaking,
the waxwing, unlike the uneaten apple which was reflected onto the
ground, became not only a "smudge of ashen
fluff" but it also "lived on, flew on in the reflected
sky"...