Does anyone know the lay-out of Kinbote's
basement with a pair of ping-pong tables, or to what kind of fun
and games is he alluding to when he fantasizes a third table?
Does "table tennis" indicate ping-pong?
"Another tormentor inquired if it was true that
I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a
crime? No, he said, but why two? "Is that a crime?" I countered, and they all
laughed." (Foreword)
"I was about to have a kind of little seminar at
home followed by some table tennis, with two charming identical twins*
and another boy, another boy." (Foreword)
"waiting, in certain
amber-and-rose crepuscules, for a ping-pong friend, or for old John
Shade."(line 334)
"a...party at the Hurleys’, to which one of my
second ping-pong table partners, a pal of the Hurley boys..." (line
629)
"As to my own activities, they
were I am afraid most unsatisfactory from all points of view — emotional,
creative, and social. That jinxy streak had started on the eve when I had been
kind enough to offer a young friend — a candidate for my third ping-pong
table."(line 181)
John
Shade mentions a "twinned Iris" (the flowers? a pair
of eyes? Iris Acht, ie. 8?) and it seems that "twins" carry a
special meaning, beside being a reference to mirror reflections and to
symmetry. Curious, too, is CK's reference to twins that ends
with "another boy, another boy."
Kinbote describes the structure of Shade's poem as
having "two identical central parts, solid and ample, forming together
with the shorter flanks twin wings of five hundred verses each" and his reference to wings has stimulated the image of a
butterfly-shaped poem (focusing on its "wings", not on a "solid and
ample, doubled central part").
Nevertheless, a few lines later, the analogy undergoes a shift, or
a clarification. Not only does Kinbote consider now the poem like a crystal
but, as it occurs during crystalization, it carries a "predictable
growth," dependent on its closure with line 1000.
What did he mean by
this reference to " predictable growth"?**
CK: "I cannot imagine that he intended to
deform the faces of his crystal by meddling with its predictable growth."
(foreword)
(I haven't yet checked P.Meyer's, B.Boyd's or
D.Zimmer's annotations and solutions)
.................................................................................................................
* "the White twins (nice fraternity boys accepted by the Shades)" (line
347) ???????
**I've seen "baby" crystals inside a transparent bigger
piece of stone. Did he imply added growths,
internal or external? It's not applicable to his
commentary - I'm sure.