On Mar 30, 2009, at 8:41 PM, jansymello wrote: You stressed the word preterist. Do you have any interpretations of your own?

Dear Jansy,

The word has only two usages that I am aware of -- one is grammatical (Hebrew has a preterist "mood" if you like, neither passé composé  nor passé simple), the other is a particular, according to some "heretical", interpretation of the bible.* Neither of which makes sense in the context of the poem, except possibly in the sense of "heretic", which at least works grammatically but still needs explanation. In the wilder flights of my own reading of PF, I have conjectured the possibility of parricide (a word which does occur in the poem) which would in this case mean matricide, and the fact that Charles Kinbote's name bears an uncanny resemblance to Carolyn Lukin's. I have thought it interesting that the Shade house lies between that of a judge and that of Shade's (possibly mental) physician. I have conjectured that the two were each keeping an eye on the troubled quandam youth, who may have been the six-year old offender mentioned in the poem.

As this remains even to me wildly conjectural, I wondered if there are any other more plausible interpretations as to what Nabokov &/or Shade intended or why, which is why I asked.