Andrea Pitzer: The Wilson baize door
information is strange and interesting. Perhaps Jansy said this somewhere in her
posts, but there are in fact two green doors in Pale Fire. The first is labeled
as such twice--once during the advanture with Oleg (p.127) and later during the
king's escape (p. 133). The second is a side door that Gradus sees on the villa
before he is shown the main entrance (p. 199).
JM:
Following Andrea's indications:
"Pale Fire":
1.Oleg and Charles enter a
burrow ( measuring 1,888 yards, ie, a mile-long corridor),
holding the "magic key of the lumber room
closet" which eased itself into "the keyhole of a
green door." They were stopped by "a burst
of strange sounds coming from behind the door," the sounds of
a quarrelling couple screaming in "Gutnish as
spoken by the fisher-folk of Western Zembla." (King Thurgus and
Iris?)
Thirty years later Charles pursues the remembered corridors, finding
"a headless statue of Mercury, conductor of souls to the
Lower World, and a cracked krater with two black figures shown dicing under a
black palm." This time the King pushes the green door open to face a
curtain of heavy black drapery, smelling of chocolate. Finally he reached
the " lumbarkamer which had once been Iris
Acht’s dressing room in the Royal Theater," and her meeting place
with King Thurgus.
2. Gradus is greeted by an elderly footman in green who comes
out from "a green side door" and leads him away into the music room of
Lavender's Villa Libitina.
In "Ada": When Van and Ada begin to explore
the attic in Ardis, they feel spurred on by an obscure
premonition of a hidden pattern that joins them (physically). After
a synesthetic visitation, when Ada hears Van say "Far enough, fair
enough" and sees the uttered words as a verse in violet letters changing
into orange, we reach an intriguing reference, inside brackets, almost
like an after-thought: "(Van was already unlocking the door
— the green door against which they were to bang so often with boneless fists in
their later separate dreams.)"
In "Lolita," after Lo's
hospitalization which had separated her and HH for the first time
in two years, HH begins to muse about "the development of a theme — that it
had the same taste and tone as the series of linked impressions which had
puzzled and tormented me during our journey." In his case, scents and colors
yielded an intuition about a secret lover who might have been prowling
around them. In the early morning hours ( an a reference to goddess Aurora and
to lavender!) HH returns to the hospital ( a dungeon where a mysterious "serum"
(sparrow's sperm or dugong's dung) is administered to Lolita. He starts
"knocking upon its green doors."
In one of VN's short-stories (not those
I ennumerated before, but "The Assistant Producer", ch.5), an even more
promising "green door" is mentioned in relation to General Fedchenko's abduction
(he was frisked through it and was never seen again) We learn that this
report was untrue: "... an optical trick. There is no green
door, but only a gray one, which no human strength can burst open."
Not one of these examples suggest any opening into another world or
a lost paradise glimpsed in childhood (except, perhaps, in the
sentence from "Ada"). Events in "A Visit to the Museum" are equally
nightmarish. The link with a theatrical scene, gender issues and a violent
death is often clear (confirming the elements found in B.Boyd's article and
in Jim Twiggs excellent connections). Another important element seems
to be color (synesthesia: lavender,violet, orange, green, gray), distance
("far far away") and guilt feelings.
There's a whole avenue of half-revealed elements to explore, should they be
novel (it seldom is!). I haven't really stopped to examine the items, and I may
not find the time for it in the future. Having brought up H.G.Wells' "green
door" was an accidental find,a whimsical association to an emotional
climate of loss and longing, which I thought would be interesting to
share with the efficient List.