Dear List,
In my transcription of book-titles ["this plot seems to follow the general idea of Thornton
Wilder's "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", a book that V. discovers in SK's
book-shelves,together with Hamlet, La morte d'Arthur, Doctor Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, South Wind, The Lady with the
Dog.[...]"(p.41) ] I followed
the wording used in VN's novel: "La morte d' Arthur", but it is incorrect, no?
It should have been Le morte d'Arthur?
Pursuing, like V., SK's dark love after following a
trail that started with his mother Virginia, passing on to Clare
and Nina, I came across "silver shoes" and "puddles" ( a variant of the
Cinderella and ghostly themes?):
1.They were all about to start and very
eager and all that, and Clare had 'phoned for a taxi and
her new silver shoes glittered and she had found her bag, when
suddenly Sebastian seemed to lose all interest in the proceedings;
2.The man is the book; the book itself is
heaving and dying [...] They are, these lives, but commentaries to the main
subject. We follow the [...] lovely tall prima donna steps in her
haste into a puddle, and her silver shoes are ruined;[Helene von Graun sings Russian songs]
3.Virginia
reappeared in 1908. She was an inveterate traveller[...] gliding move
into darkness; the passing glimpse of a lone woman touching
silver-bright things in her travelling-case on the blue plush of a
lighted compartment';
4.A woman had scrambled out
of the car right into a puddle.
'Yes, it's she all right
[Helene von Graun],"said Madame Lecerf. 'Now
you stay where you are, please.'
There are more references, thru silver, to inquisitive Mr.
Silbermann (plus the bushy-eyebrowed, patiently waiting Siller), silver
pencils, Russian silver-marshes and boats, a dying man afloat and
silver bowls...
Darkness, light and passing shadows ( a familiar trope
related to "serial souls"?).