NPPF Comm 2: Parents, part 3

[Don Corathers]

p 104

Kinbote's take on the king's (his) mother is remarkable mostly for its cool
remoteness. He devotes one line to a physical description, one line to her
death (on the fateful July 21). Much of the rest of the two pages he writes
about the night she died are concerned with describing his attendance at an
all-night ball with friends.

And to Mr. Campbell, his tutor, who seems like he might be a kind of Zemblan
analogue of Aunt Maud--he was apparently the most important adult in
Charles's life from age seven to seventeen--except that he "preferred ladies
to laddies."

We meet Otar, Charles's "platonic pal," and the sisters Fifalda and Fleur de
Fyler ("flower defiler"). There follows an intricately detailed description
of the scene at dawn--which comes early in this northern latitude in the
summer, around four o'clock--the moment before Charles learns of his
mother's death. As soon as Charles receives the word from the Countess de
Fyler, the narrative abruptly shifts to Kinbote's p.o.v. and to a "rather
handsomely drawn plan of the chambers, terraces, bastions, and pleasure
grounds of the Onhava Palace," which is "clearly signed with a black
chess-king crown after 'Kinbote'...." Kinbote had prepared it for John Shade
as a visual aid in support of the Zembla poem and now he's desperate to get
it back from Sybil. It seems likely that he wants it back so badly because
he *can't* redraw it in all its precise detail--because it was drawn not
from memory but from his imagination.

  *Lord Ronald's Coronach*. Lyric by Walter Scott, based on a Scottish folk
tale that involves a couple of hunters who encounter a couple of green-clad
maidens one night in the Highlands forest.

All dropping wet her garments seem;
Chill'd was her cheek, her bosom bare,
As, bending o'er the dying gleam,
She wrung the moisture from her hair.

That kind of action, and one of the hunters goes into the woods with one of
the ladies and wakes up dead. The other one survives by scaring off the
second dewy, chill'd, bare-bosomed maiden with prayer and some wicked harp
playing.

"The drunk started to sing a ribald ballad about 'Karlie-Garlie'..." Seems
likely this might be a bit of folk wisdom about Charles's sexual
orientation.

demilune. Half-moon or crescent? Not found in the old MW10, which is all I
have access to at the moment.

"these excruciating headaches..." Kinbote is not in good shape in that cabin
out in Utana.

Don