NPPF: Notes C.47-48 (part one)

[Jasper Fidget]

C.47-48
pg 82
"the 'frame house on its square of green' was five miles west of the Wordsmith campus but only fifty yards or so distant from my east windows"

A clearer picture of the setting is evolved in this Note -- the Goldsworth residence is west of Shade's, and a chess pattern is superimposed (see "rented castle" on pg. 20 and "white-and-black" on pg. 82).  Kinbote as the black pieces and Shade as the white, this idea will return.

pg 82
"charming, charmingly vague lady": Sylvia O'Donnell (246-), and see also "Alfin the Vague" on pg 101, K/C's father.

pg 82
"[The Goldsworth house] was an old, dismal, white-and-black, half-timbered house, of the type termed /wodnaggen/ in my country": 

The Old English "wod" means "wood" (as in a stand of trees somewhere between a grove and a forest in size), also something (usually a ship) made from wood (as well as "to go, advance, move onward" ("[He] wod þa ðurh ðone wælrec;" --Beowulf)), so presumably /wodnaggen/ could mean "wood cabin"; but also the Anglo-Saxon "wod" [wʊd] meaning "mad" or "raving like a maniac."  

"Naggen" is a woodland village in Sweden where guests "reside in comfort at Bäverhyddan (The Beaver Lodge)" and may "take part in a thrilling beaver hunt in a 17,000 hectare hunting ground".

http://www.ange.se/4.ab444f391a09e107fff7848.html

Also apparently means "to abide" in Hebrew (?), but also the Low German "(g)naggen" means "to irritate, provoke" (evolves into "nag"), so "wodnaggen" might be "irritate to madness."  Alternatively, let "naggen" == noggin and you have "crazy in the head".  Also "wod" leads to "Wodin", Wotan, Odin, the Norse boss god, so /wodnaggen/ could be "to provoke the god".  Also, the Indo-European "wod" is a variant of "wed" for the modern English "wet".

http://www.wordreference.com/English/definition.asp?en=Wood
http://koapp.narod.ru/english/diction/book5n.htm
	
In Bede's _Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation_ (as translated into Anglo Saxon by King Alfred the Great, who will become more significant later), the word "wod" is applied to Eadbald, son of St. Aethelbert (540-616 CE), King of Kent.  Eadbald, according to Bede, "not only refused to embrace the faith of Christ, but was also defiled with such a sort of fornication, as the apostle testifies, was not heard of, even among the Gentiles; for he kept his father's wife."  Bede continues: "Nor did the perfidious king escape without Divine punishment and correction; for he was troubled with frequent fits of madness, and possessed by an evil spirit." (Bede, Book II, Chapter 5).

http://www.ccel.org/b/bede/history/htm/iii.htm#iii
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book2.html
http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/Bede_Miller.pdf


pg 83
"Alphina (9), Betty (10), Candida (12), and Dee (14)": 

Here the invention of Zembla may (or may not) evolve (or begin), as Kinbote translates the objects in the Goldsworth house into his fantasy.  Boyd writes:

"'Alphina' and 'Betty' all but embody the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, and the reversed order of daughters and letters implies a deliberate countdown, a comically confident case of family planning.  But the girls' names also oddly prefigure the names of the four principals of the Zemblan royal family, in descending order of age, King Alfin, Queen Blenda, their son Charles and his queen Disa.  The unique 'Alphina' especially seems to have inspired the equally unprecedented 'Alfin,' to serve as a starting point, as her name implies, for the whole Zemblan saga, and the first character Kinbote introduces in his first long Zemblan note is indeed Alfin the Vague" (_Magic of Artistic Discovery_, 97).

See also pg 295 where K hides the manuscript in the Goldsworth closet, and exits "as if it had been the end of a secret passage that had taken me all the way out of my enchanted castle and right from Zembla to /this/ Arcady."  Boyd writes, "has the Goldsworth closet somehow expanded in Kinbote's mind to become the Zemblan closet leading to the secret passage that makes possible the King's escape?" (ibid, 98).

The "reversed order" also makes me think of the "reversed footprints" (pg 34, 78).

pg 83
"Mrs. G. resembling Malenkov": Georgi Malenkov (1902–1988), premier of the Soviet Union after Stalin (1953-1955) and perhaps the most progressive Soviet leader before Gorbachev.  Forced to resign by Khrushchev.

http://members.fortunecity.com/stalinmao/Soviet/Malenkov/Malenkov.html
(Mrs. G must have been a handsome woman!)
http://www.coldwar.org/articles/50s/georgy_malenkov.php3

Malenkov may be something of a Coriolanus figure as he was a soldier betrayed by comrades, and was forced to resign his office due to the failure of his government's agricultural policy.

pg. 83
"her intellectual interests were fully developed, going as they did from Amber to Zen": 

"[...] suggests Kathleen Winsor's _Forever Amber_ (1944), a steamy-for-the-time historical blockbuster [...] of romantic intrigues centering on the court of England's Charles II" (ibid, 98), noted by VN in a 1964 letter to his French translator, Maurice-Edgar Coindreau.  "Zen" may suggest J.D. Salinger and his "then-recent stories about the Glass family, which chime in curious harmony with Zembla, that 'crystal land' (C.12, 74) whose revolution 'flickered first' in its Glass Factory (C.130, 120)" (Boyd, 98).

Boyd finishes this section by arguing, "In the solitude of the Goldsworth castle, doubly dislocated from the Russia of his birth and the Scandinavia where he had felt sexually free, still harrowed by a sense of persecution but exhilarated to have a great American poet for neighbor and occasional companion, the dangerously egomaniacal Kinbote rapidly develops a fantasy that sublimates his past and will carry him forever into the future, if only he can persuade Shade to turn his vision into verse.  [...] the alphabetic hints of the Goldsworth chateau consolidate in his mind until they form the almost entirely self-enclosed delusions that in the Index guide us methodically through Zembla from A to Z" (ibid, 98).


pg 83
"a morocco-bound album in which the judge had lovingly pasted the life histories and pictures of people he had sent to prison or condemned to death: [...] the close-set merciless eyes of a homicidal maniac (somewhat resembling, I admit, the late Jacques d'Argus)":

Jacques d'Argus, of course, is a pseudonym for Jakob Gradus, helping to set up the strong theory that Jack Grey was aiming for Judge Goldsworth when he shot John Shade (who resembles Judge Goldsworth).  See also pg 85: "this or that beast lying in prison and positively dying of /raghdirst/ (thirst for revenge) [...]"

pg 84
"the diet of the black cat": see epigraph.

pg 85
"/damnum infectum/": In Roman law, "damage (damnum) not done, but apprehended," "damage which [a person] has reason to fear."

http://www.ku.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Damnum.html

Jasper Fidget
(I'll try to get the rest of C.47-48 done later today or tomorrow)