NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 1

[Don Corathers]

Line 80: my bedroom (p 108)

Abandoning all pretense of relating his notes to Shade's poem, Kinbote
spends five pages describing Prince Charles's domestic tribulations during
the forty days between the death of Queen Blenda and his coronation, as
Countess de Fyler contrived to make her daughter Fleur his queen.

Fleur is young, beautiful and sexy. Since Kinbote/Charles is "certainly no
expert in these tender matters," he enlists the testimony of his
heterosexual friend Otar to describe her charms, to which the prince is
profoundly indifferent. He occasionally enjoys Fleur's company as a kind of
platonic respite from his normal routine of "manlier pleasures."

As part of her campaign to employ her daughter to assure her a continued
position in the court, the countess hires a medium to contact Blenda's
spirit, who urges Charles through a seance to "take take cherish love flower
flower flower.' And a psychiatrist who applies a Freudian analysis to
Charles's affection for sodomy.

None of it--even Fleur moving into his bedroom in a Frederick's of Onhava
wardrobe--has any effect on Charles except to induce insomnia. Finally the
Prime Councilor and three Representatives of the People call a halt to the
enterprise, apparently on the basis of Fleur's insufficiently noble family
heritage. Exit Fleur and her mom. Enter the flock of coronation gift-boys.

"porcelain cup and Cinderella's slipper..." It does not seem to me that
Arnor's motives were purely artistic. The porcelain cup, incidentally, is
reminiscent of the story that the classic Champagne glass was cast from a
mold of one of Marie Antionette's breasts.

*Lilith Calling Back Adam* Another invocation--as in "Lord Ronald's
Coronach" a few pages ago--of a Dangerous Woman, a minor theme for Kinbote.
>From the Wikipedia:

In some kabbalistic texts Lilith is a female demon, a succubus, who was
Adam's first wife, before Eve. The original name in Sumerian was "Lilitu",
and the transliteration from the Hebrew may be as "Lilith," "Lillith," or
"Lilit". Various versions of the Lilith myth exist; the original Lilith was
a Mesopotamian night demon with a penchant for destroying children.
Hieronymus associated Lilith with the mythical Greek Lamia, a Libyan queen
who mated with Zeus. After Zeus abandoned Lamia, Hera stole Lamia's
children, and Lamia took revenge by stealing other women's children.

According to Jewish folklore, Lilith refused to assume a subservient role to
Adam during sexual intercourse and eventually deserted Adam. Lilith then
went on to mate with Asmodai and various other demons she found beside the
Red Sea, creating countless lilin. Another version of the Lilith myth has
Lilith seducing Adam after the fall of man and giving birth to various
immortal demons. In both of these versions, Lilith is reputed to be immortal
because she did not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as Adam
and Eve had done.

More at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith

The subject matter of Arnor's sculpture nicely echoes the failed
Fleur-Charles seduction that unfolds on the next few pages.

"On sagaren..." This seems to be the Zemblan version of the lines quoted in
English immediately before it. At least "tri phantana" is recognizable as
"three fountains." Perhaps it's not coincidental that we're shown some
fountains right before we encounter the afterlife again on the next page.

p 109

"He had had no love for his mother, and the hopeless and helpless remorse he
now felt degenerated into a sickly physical fear of her phantom."
Kinbote/Charles believes in ghosts. Cf. Hazel in the haunted barn, pp
185-193.

planchette. a small triangular or heart-shaped board supported on casters at
two points and a vertical pencil at a third and believed to produce
automatic writing when lightly touched by the fingers. (MW10)

"Charles take take cherish..." The rhythm and repetition of this
otherworldly communication might offer some guidance to deciphering the
message Hazel received in the barn (p 188).

Thermodus Torfaeus. Icelandic writer, 1636-1719, commissioned by Christian V
of Denmark as a historiographer. Wrote a history of the Orkney Islands
titled "Orcades, seu rerum Orcadiensium Historiae." Of perhaps greater
interest to those of us participating in both sides of the current
discussion is his work "Historia Vinlandiae Antiquae," an account of the
maritime adventures of the Norwegians and their discovery of America five
hundred years before Columbus.

A. R. (Alfred Rusell) Wallace, English naturalist and geographer, 1823-1913,
pursued a theory of natural selection at about the same time Darwin was
working on *On the Origin of Species,* later dabbled in spiritualism.

Right now, *my* bedroom is calling my name. I'll wrap this up tomorrow.

Don