While on vacation in New Hampshire, I happened to find, in a used book store, a first edition of Housman's The Name and Nature of Poetry. As others before me have noted, this book provides the source of Kinbote's paraphrase in his note to line 920: "Housman . . . says somewhere (in a foreword?) exactly the opposite: The bristling of thrilled little hairs obstructed his barbering." When Kinbote guesses that the Housman passage is from a foreword, he is of course wrong, since the passage in question occurs towards the end of the lecture. But perhaps he is not so wrong as we thought. The edition I found still retains its original dust jacket (unlike the library copies I have seen) and it happens that the very passage paraphrased by Kinbote is quoted on the inside front flap of the jacket. Not exactly a foreword, but this may be what Kinbote/Nabokov had in mind, I think.

 

Matt Roth