Thanks for the quote; I make a note of it "for further
use", as I haven't re-read Pale Fire recently; but it seems to fit in my "idea"
of extra-textual character.
Laurence Hochard
JM:What quote you'll note for further use: is it from
Pale Fire? TT? Pnin?
The one from SO, after I reread it
when isolated from its wider context, helped me realize something
that had escaped me before (Yes, again! It took me months to realize
Van's rudeness to ADA, in his words "You
bet", even when they came close to an explanation! He'd
said: You, bête... ):
So: "they are outside my inner
self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral façade - demons placed there
merely to show that they have been booted out." when, after all, gargoyles and
monsters sculpted on a cathedral's external walls remains
as a constituent part of that same cathedral, they belong to its
stones as intimately as their equals stand inside in the
carvings of benches in a great choir.
But VN's "demons placed there to show"
are merely blocks of sculpture that serve to "show"! And they signal
that the "real" demons are no longer there by their material
presence.It should have been soooo obvious, but to me
it was not. (Can we read VN without a world within and a
world...without?)