One curiosity related to
Sybil:(944-56) and Gradus in their effect (at least, Sybil's) on Shade's
inspiration, composition and his odd muse. Was Kinbote, himself, influenced
by these lines when he related Gradus's progression
to Shade's iambic motor? There's a definite (slightly paranoid) connection
between Gradus, Sybil and a versipellous
muse.
"You drive me to the library. We
dine
At half past six. And that odd muse of
mine,
My versipel, is with me
everywhere,
In carrel and in car, and in my
chair.
And all the time, and all the time, my
love,
You too are there, beneath the word,
above
The syllable, to underscore and
stress
The vital rhythm. One heard a woman’s
dress
Rustle in days of yore. I’ve often
caught
The sound and sense of your approaching
thought"
(by John Shade)
Gradus: "...through the entire length of the poem,
following the road of its rhythm, riding past in a rhyme, skidding around the
corner of a run-on, breathing with the caesura, swinging down to the foot of the
page from line to line as from branch to branch, hiding between two
words...reappearing on the horizon of a new canto, steadily marching nearer in
iambic motion, crossing streets, moving up with his valise on the escalator of
the pentameter, stepping off, boarding a new train of thought, entering the hall
of a hotel, putting out the bedlight, while Shade blots out a word, and falling
asleep as the poet lays down his pen for the night." ( by Charles Kinbote
)
On the whole, we find an insinuation of progress, probably a
cyclical one, related to the alphabet (from A to Z, from Z to
A): "Mrs. Goldsworth’s boudoir, her intellectual
interests were fully developed, going as they did from Amber to
Zen." and "... way from distant dim
Zembla to green Appalachia..."
The importance
of amber (against prude "antiamberians") is stronger in ADA (in
PF Kinbote embalms the ant in amber, although Shade
describes it as being simply "gum-logged"): Cf. pg.25 and Darkbloom's
entry: lammer: amber (Fr: l’ambre), allusion to electricity.
.