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

[Jasper Fidget]

pg 86
"Let us turn to our poet's windows."  A subject of great preoccupation for
Kinbote, and the main theme of the rest of the note.

pg 86
"I have no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous /apparatus criticus/
into the monstrous semblance of a novel."

apparatus criticus: "A collection of material, as variant readings and other
palaeographical and critical matter, for the textual study of a document."
(OED)

VN seems to be commenting on his current project itself through the irony of
Kinbote's assertion.

pg 86
"the coming of summer presented a problem in optics: the encroaching foliage
did not always see eye to eye with me: it confused a green monocle with an
opaque occludent, and the idea of protection with that obstruction."

As I believe I mentioned before, Kinbote's frustration with the natural
world's hindrance to his spying on Shade may imply the *unnaturalness* of
his behavior (I think of Huysmans' _À Rebours_ (1884) when imagining Kinbote
in that house all alone), that the patterns of the natural world that help
Shade toward his goal do the opposite for artificial Kinbote, perhaps even
*protect* Shade from Kinbote's aggression.  

Also I like the parallelism of "eye to eye": Kinbote's eye meeting nature's
eye: the word "eye" as a hole in something: "An object resembling the eye in
appearance, shape, function, or relative position" (OED) and "an object
resembling an eye on a plant; esp. (a) an axillary bud or leaf bud; (b) the
centre of a flower; (c) the remains of the calyx on a fruit" (OED).  "Eye"
can also mean "the opening through which the water of a fountain or spring
wells up" (OED), recalling Shade's fountain of (false) salvation and Poe's
fountain of creative inspiration.

"Monocle: A single eyeglass" (OED) as in the thing Col. Klink wears.
"Occludent: noun & adjective (rare) (a thing) that occludes" (OED).

Kinbote wants to see *through* nature to whatever interests him beyond it,
so in this sense he may parallel Shade.  Where Shade's interests lie in the
otherworldly, however, Kinbote's lie in the here-and-now.

See also on pg 86: "Sybil whom a shrub had screened from my falcon eye"
(87), "he never pulled down the shades (*she* did)" (87), and "interference
by framework or leaves" (89).

pg 86
"on July 3 according to my agenda"

"Agenda" as both a memorandum book and a plan for matters to be attended to.

pg 87
"People who live in glass houses should not write poems"

Perhaps another allusion to Salinger?  Glass here also as the windows
between Shade at work and Kinbote's eye, so a lens as if on a microscope --
Kinbote treats Shade in this note as an insect or an animal that a scientist
wishes to observe and document.

pg 87
"led me to indulge in an orgy of spying which no considerations of pride
could stop"

Admits to spying and casts it into negative terms; Kinbote apparently knows
his behavior is wrong but is unable to stop.

pg 87
"_Hero of Our Time_", "_Time Lost_": indicating the novels of Lermontov and
Proust respectively.  Lermontov's novel concerns a corrupted anti-hero who
goes to great lengths to combat the boredom of his aristocratic society.
Much the same might be said of Proust's Marcel.

pg 87
"I found, at the end of the veranda, an ivied corner from which I could view
rather amply the front of the poet's house." etc -- this large passage has
Kinbote orienting himself based on the location of Shade's house and
scouting out positions from which he can spy on three of its sides (and if
you're playing along as a good Nabokovian reader, by the end of this section
you should have a decent map of Kinbote and Shade's adjacent properties).
Kinbote's geography has Shade in something of a bear-hug, enveloping him, as
the pieces on a chess board might seek to envelop an opponent (Kinbote has
bishops controlling the oblique lines and Rooks attacking the open files to
Shade's front porch -- we have a position out of a chess-problem).

pg 87
"my bodyguard of black junipers" -- the junipers in Kinbote's rented garden,
suggesting perhaps the "Black Rose Paladins" (did they act as Charles'
bodyguards in Zembla?).  Also suggests chess again: black pawns.

pg 87
"patch of pale light under the lone streetlamp": again flirting with the
title.  The streetlamp is mentioned several times -- I wonder if it has a
function beyond supporting the image of loneliness and melancholy?

pg 87-88
"[I] rather enjoyed following in the dark a weedy and rocky easterly
projection of my grounds ending in a locust grove on a slightly higher level
than the north side of the poet's house."

Kinbote may be confusing locusts with the cicadas Shade writes about in his
poem.  We also learn that the Goldsworth property has a higher elevation
than Shade's, putting Kinbote geologically above the other.

pg 88
"Once, three decades ago [...]"

This passage may recount Kinbote's first sexual experience with "a tall,
pale, long-nosed, dark-haired young minister."  Using very Romantic images,
he writes, "Into these roses and thorns there walked a black shadow" (88),
"Guilty disgust contorted his thin lips" (88), "His clenched hands seemed to
be gripping invisible prison bars.  But there is no bound to the measure of
grace which man may be able to receive.  All at once his look changed to one
of rapture and reverence.  I had never seen such a blaze of bliss before"
(88).  All this sexual innuendo seems a parallel for Shade's Aunt Maud
passages, although for Kinbote it's all mixed up with religious imagery.  It
culminates in a linkage between the minister and John Shade.

pg 88-89
"My binoculars would seek him out and focus upon him from afar in his
various places of labor" 

Kinbote using a technological device to help satisfy his sexual urge toward
Shade.  Hey, that sounds Pynchonesque!


++Jasper Fidget--