Thanks, Joseph. That makes HH:Lo's initial DAR ("Dating-Age-Ratio" --
I share with VN this GIFT for fancy titles) slightly lower than the 4:1
we found in the Abbott/Costello skit. As I mentioned earlier, the idea
of
HH waiting until the HH:Lo DAR was less shocking to the bourgeoisie
runs
counter to the plot, although I don't think there's a precise "cut-off"
point where nymphets lose their glory. A perverse Scouse joke goes:
"She's only 14 but she has the body of a ... 12-year old."
There could be idle but fun speculation on alternative endings to
Lolita? (Wasn't that a popular 'genre,' revamping plots? Hamlet
forgives
Claudius, marries Ophelia and they all live happily ever after?
There's certainly a fad for finishing unfinished novels and symphonies)
Could Lo have tired of Quilty sooner and returned to Humbert?
Carolyn: depressed by your rejection of my proposal. You say it would
be
a "mixed marriage," but what's wrong with that? "Me father he was
Orange,
and me mother she was Green" ((c) Pat Murphy) Mixing the letters CK and
SKB promises an ideal union for Pale Fire researchers? Meanwhile, here
I
cower in my Cedarn Cave, heart and personality split asunder,
sleepless,
unamused, by the loud amusement-park noises outside, and
contemplating suicide.
L Carroll, as I recall, had an occasional nervous stammer
(suppressed homosexuality? Freudian feedback invited!) but would have
had no problem
saying "frice," my suggested portmanteau for "four times." In fact,
phonologically, "Frice" is MUCH easier than "THrice!" Proof? Cockneys
and
many non-Anglophones regularly pronounce "THrice" as "Frice." Whence
the popular Cockney paradign:
"For'y [forty with glottal stop] fousand fevvers [feathers] on a firsty
feasant's froat."
Anything, F or V or D, to avoid Dat "impossible" TH sound (or to be
precise, either of the TWO TH allophones: THis and THeta. End of
lesson.)
Incidentally, the phrase "As L Carroll might SAY," idiomatically
includes
the meaning "might WRITE." Example: "What is Nabokov _saying_ here?" In
which case, Carroll's diction don't enter into it (as they say in
Monty Python!)
We have the same potential ambiguity in English
with the idiomatic use of the pronoun YOU. When Kinbote
(or Shade, Gradus, Sybil, Hazel or even Judge Goldsmith, whoever is
YOUR
leading candidate as narrator/annotator) writes of Canto Two as
"YOUR favorite," we can interpret YOUR in several ways, as JF
pointed out in a recent posting. In the most "literal" sense, the YOU
in YOUR would relate to whomever the writer considers he/she is
addressing, singular or plural (we've "lost" the THEE and YE!
Anglo-Saxon
once had a DUAL!)
One is free to speculate on this "target audience" from all available
clues.
Let's exclude, of course, VN's target audience, namely all readers of
Pale Fire, and seek the YOU intended by the stated author who signs his
Foreword CHARLES KINBOTE, Oct 19, 1959, Cedarn, Utana. Whatever we
might
believe of this CK's "real" (as in "fictional-real!") identity and
state of mind, it's hard to pin down the "you" in "your favorite" to
Sybil
Shade, as Carolyn (my heartless rejector/murderess) seems to claim. We
can't disprove this claim, but we can ask why Kinbote (whoever)
refers to Sybil as SHE in the third- rather than second-person ("Then
she addressed her husband ...") Also, "We saw
Sybil pulling up" not "we saw you" or "we saw you, Sybil ..." Note he
adds
such a _qualification_
to "your" when he writes "YOUR snicker, MY dear Mrs C, did not escape
OUR notice ... (p 22 the Penguin, 2000 ed.) Note the other
ambiguous pronouns MY (not literal!) and OUR (Royal singular or
generic plural, "me and unspecified others?")
Generally, avoiding too much "special pleading," the PF Foreword
addresses a wide "reader-like audience" as one expects from Fore-words!
This audience can certainly be construed as including not only the
proof-readers
and publishers mentioned, but also Sybil and all the characters assumed
to be
alive, to Kinbote's own "personal knowledge," however deranged, as
at October 19, 1959. A strong indication, to my mind, against a too
specific audience
attribution, is: Why is Kinbote relating so many facts that would be
obvious
to Sybil, with the occasional, natural interjections such as "As you'll
remember," or "I'm sure you'll confirm."
Finally, briefly, what would serve as "proof" that Kinbote's
writings reveals traces of Shade's "personality," and vice-versa? We
definitely have a "moving
target" here. How much of J&S's split-thingy has been shown to
survive in
the different, proposed scenario of Shade's "one-off"
state-changing seizure/attack? Overlaps in Kinbote's and Shade's lexis
and style are not
really puzzling, given that (i) they are both Wordsmith professors, one
a
Philologer, the other a Poet (ii) they are both VN's _creatures_!
Stan Kelly-Bootle
PS: I meant to write
Why is Kinbote relating so many facts that would be obvious
to Sybil, WITHOUT the occasional, natural interjections such as "As
you'll
remember," or "I'm sure you'll confirm."
-------- Original Message --------
I welcome this clarification, Carolyn, which reached me after my last
posting. The mechanics of J&H become less relevant, but still of
interest: for example, what traces of Shade survive in Kinbote, and
what traces of Kinbote can we discern in the pre-change Shade? The
daunting, fascinating subtlety of Pale Fire starts emerging when you
consider that ALL we know of Shade has been filtered through the
suspect mind of Kinbote. We have only Kinbote's "edition" of the
Cantos (and, indeed, only Kinbote's unreliable word that Shade was
the author) together with his doubtful, self-serving anecdotes of his
_and_ Shade's lives, prior to the escape to Cedarn.
VN did reveal some extra-textual clues, one of which being that he
had planted some relatively obscure botanical and entomological _errors_
in Kinbote's writings, presumably to warn the careful reader that
Kinbote was not 100% reliable, even in the sense that authors are
allowed to grant their fictional characters all kinds of "real" tall
tales. Is Alice "lying" about her adventures? Which bits are "untrue"
about King Kinbote's New Wye, never mind Zembla? I know both these
places
as well as Wonderland, Llareggub, Erewhon, and, yes, ANEDASAP!
CTaH
Quoting Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET>:
>
> On Mar 8, 2009, at 6:54 PM, jansymello wrote: it is still possible
> to conjecture that Kinbote had been referring to himself (your
> favorite=my favorite) ...
>
> Dear Jansy,
>
> I am feeling a little slow - - could you give me another example
where
> "your x" = "my x" (spare me casas) or explain what you mean. I
can't
> see it. I'm also not sure if you are arguing for this
interpretation?
>
> Jansy also wrote: the composite Jekyll can be horrified at Hyde...
> while Hyde is in action ( not when he stares at himself in the
mirror
> and finds Hyde or feels his evil inclinations while recognizes
them as
> also being his own).Cp. with "Hyde persona's actual activities"
> instead of "the theoretical nature" of Kinbote's.
>
> I would also like to clarify that just because J&H helps the
reader
> understand PF, it does not necessarily follow that the situations
in
> the two stories are the same. Nabokov has changed the relationship
> between the two personae - - instead of the shifts back and forth
as
> in J&H, in PF one persona "is shot" and is succeeded by the
other.
> Once Shade goes insane he is "dead" in a psychic but very real
way. He
> will not return except in the memory of those who knew and loved
him
> and in the ravings of Kinbote - - and in his poetry of course.
>
> Carolyn
>