CKunin [Stan Kelly-Bootle
wrote: btw: Speaking of incorporation, Kinbote, in a preterist mood,
thought he'd found an incorporated Zemblan counterpart of the Elder
Edda...] Dear Sir, This does raise the still unresolved question of the
word preterist in Pale Fire. Do you in saying "in a preterist mood" pun on the
grammatical meaning of the word, or something else? [...]"
JM: Carolyn, the lines about
incorporation were not written by SKB, neither has he (luckily) incorporated any
of my incomprehensible ideas to be able to answer them in my
stead.
I mentioned "preterist mood" meaning that
Kinbote was inclined to look back in order to examine or refer
to something in the past.
There were no apocalyptic annunciations intended, no
reference to mysterious religious signs in heaven.
It is true that Shade wrote,
in line 79: "A preterist: one who collects cold nests." - but I have
no idea about what he'd meant.
Perhaps there's a hint about something held back, omitted, a
preterition, a pretermission concerning a "cold clue"? The verse,
untypically, seems odd to me, gratuitous, even when it serves to define a
particular taste in "collecting" items. .
A few lines before he'd mentioned that his parents had
been ornithologists (that might explain the choice of "nest") and,
in line 80, he adds: "Here was my bedroom, now reserved for
guests." Shade might have been merely pointing out to the reader that
he no longer sleeps in his former bedroom, or that there were
no guests staying at his house at the time, that it had been
turned into a "cold nest". In recent
years psychologists have dealt with a "syndrome of the abandoned
nest" ( when it's the children, not the parents who have left home),
but I doubt VN had this in mind.
You stressed the
word preterist. Do you have any interpretations of your own?