Matt: quick spin on query 1. I don’t think “creasing her pillow” strongly implies intercourse. There are more appropriate idioms for having sex, usually involving “sheets” rather than pillows! Separate bedrooms do seem likely, but this is not uncommon for certain ages-groups and social levels. This is poetry, of course, and whether Shade is visiting Sybil’s room for love-making or chats (cf the idiom Pillow Talk!), or perhaps reading to her his work-in-progress [compare VN and Vera?], I don’t think the 4000 ‘visitations’ means more than “many years,” and it’s Kinbote who misreads the 4000 as a precise “frequency.” The choice of “crease” is intriguing. One thinks, perhaps, of “frowns” and “creased brows” with hints of a less than perfect love life? As you say, macho boasting seems out of character. Could it be the opposite? Shade hiding his impotence/inadequacy?
Thanks for the stimulating list which I’m ‘working on’ as a relatively PF novice. I await the experts’ views.
skb
On 10/02/2009 16:42, "Matthew Roth" <MRoth@MESSIAH.EDU> wrote:
Dear list,
Perhaps some of you can help me with following loose ends in PF.
1. In lines 275-280, Shade says that his head has "creased" Sybil's pillow 4000 times. Questions: Is Shade referring to how many times he and Sybil have had intercourse? If so, that means they've had sex on average twice a week for 40 years! Do we believe that? Does this imply that they sleep in separate rooms (as did VN and Vera)? Why would the normally reserved Shade tell the world how many times he has had sex with his wife? Seems out of character.
2. In his note to line 181, Kinbote seems to guess that JS and Sybil are having a pre-dawn sexual encounter. He says that he "smiled indulgently, for, according to my deductions, only two nights had passed since the three-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-ninth time--but no matter." Why does the thought of Shade and Sybil having sex cause Kinbote, who openly detests Sybil, to smile indulgently? Is this passage meant to confirm Shade's twice-a-week calculation? Kinbote refers to "the bedroom." Does this mean that Shade and Sybil share a bedroom?
3. The math of Hazel's barn transcription doesn't seem to work. In Hazel's Remarks, she says she began the alphabet eighty times but seventeen times got no response. That should leave us with 63 positive responses, but Hazel's transcription only contains 61 letters. We seem to be two letters short. Did VN (or Hazel, or Kinbote?) do the math wrong?
4. Why, in lines 357 & 978, does Shade refer to Hazel as "my darling," when throughout the rest of the poem he has addressed the poem to Sybil and, thus, used "our" ("She'd criticize ferociously our projects"; "when we lost our child")?
5. Is the image (from the Index) of Thurgus the Third "in a dressing gown of green silk, and carrying a flambeau in his raised hand" supposed to make us think of the Statue of Liberty? If so, does this reinforce the notion that the passage from the palace to the "green room" is equivalent to Botkin's passage from the Old World to green Arcady (New Wye)?
6. Is the Bera Range named after the King of Sodom (Genesis 14:2)?
7. Why does Shade blubber into Sybil's shoulder blade in the gloam of Lilac Lane? Where is Lilac Lane?
8. Has anyone managed to produce a landscape map of the Shade and Goldsworth houses? As many times as I read the note to 47-48, I cannot get it straight.
Thanks,
Matt Roth