-------- Original Message --------
VN: "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."
MR: This has always seemed to me a version of the thought expressed by
Kinbote regarding John Shade's appearance: "His misshapen body, that
gray
mop of abundant hair, the yellow nails of his pudgy fingers, the bags
under his lustreless eyes, were only intelligible if regarded as the
waste
products eliminated from his intrinsic self by the same forces of
perfection which purified and chiseled his verse. He was his own
cancellation." So was VN, artistically at least, his own cancellation?
Matt Roth