NPPF: CANTO ONE NOTES

[Jasper Fidget]

[continuing on behalf of Charles -jf]

Shall we call this the slightly more nuanced reading?

As has been suggested of the Foreword, Canto One introduces, and develops
narrative elements, but also delves more deeply into the symbolic themes and
structural clues which intend to both illuminate and obscure the path ahead.
The symbolic themes of man vs. nature, longing, the prodigal, and
resurrection are introduced. Color keys are offered - the red AND grey of
the waxwing, echoing the red associated with the Zemblan throne as well as
the grey of Shade and Gradus (ashen). There is the obvious seasonal cycle,
which is re-enforced  (after the opening couplets) by the shift from mono-
to multi-chromatic color schemes and back again. We are offered patterns in
shapes, circles- and their more convoluted cousins, torques, vermiculates,
paperclips, the prone eight of "infinity"and  lemniscates. We also get the
recurring "V"s, waxwing, the "wings" of "foretime" and "aftertime". The
"author/reader" relationship is certainly hinted at, explicitly, by way of
the aforementioned debate on illusion, but also implicitly by the use of
ambiguous, often "circular" clues, the distortion of the "senses", and the
employment of paradox.

What opens as an orthodox elegiac piece, deftly skirts "mawkishness" by
turning from the poignant opening image to the disputation on the nature of
illusion. The doubt about "narrator" is enhanced by his/her identification
with both the shadow of the waxwing, as well as the "illusionist"
manipulating the images described with the glass. The palpably real on
either side of the pane is juxtaposed in such a way as to defy reason while
satisfying the eye "chair and bed exactly stand/upon that snow".......

The next verse confirms the circular ( and "re-incarnative") theme with
"REtake the falling snow", and offers the paradoxical contrast of white on
white " a dull dark white against the day's pale white". There is a distinct
echo of the pale fire of Timon of Athens and (this is where I will expose
myself to potential ridicule), G. K. Chesterton and his The Man Who Would Be
Thursday. Take this, from page 48 "The moon was so strong and full, that (by
a paradox often to be noticed) it seemed like a weaker sun. It gave, not the
sense of bright moonshine, but rather, of a dead daylight."

Chesterton's novel is subtitled "A Nightmare", but is presented in a
straight narrative format, with the dreaming protagonist uncertain, even
upon waking at the end of the novel, whether or not it has all been real.
The story, richly allegorical, begins as a dispute between an anarchist and
"conservative", which resolves itself in a bet with twisted repercussions.
The simple version is that the conservative winds up on THE "anarchists'"
committee (named for the days of the week, his slot is "Thursday"), after
having been recruited by an "off the book" division of Scotland Yard
concerned with the maintenance of order and tradition. The "committee" has
planned an assassination in France, and the first deputy of the chief has
been sent ahead for preparations. The conservative determines to foil the
plan, and one by one goes through the other committee members only to
discover that they too are all double agents employed by the "Yard". They
join forces to go after the deputy, and after a smashing sword fight, in
which our  hero literally hacks pieces off the "body" of the deputy (all
disguise, natch), it is found that he is with the forces of good as well. A
spectacular chase, involving carriages and hot air balloons, ensues; the
head anarchist is finally sufficiently proximate, before disappearing, to
confirm that he is, in fact, the mysterious man who assigned our hero his
task at Scotland Yard.

But beyond the obvious parallel concerns with identities, N and C, both
employ paradox to establish an essentially "manichean" faces of any
particular object or phenomenon. But Nabokov's use is slightly different, I
believe. Jbor has commented that Nabokov likely "failed" in this effort to
harness "ambiguity" in his service, and I am not qualified to take on that
argument on Jbor's terms. I will suggest that the example of the use of
paradox MAY be a hint at a greater  "strategy". Given the undeniable
authorial imprint on any effort, and the "narrow  genesis" of its
development, it is hard to fathom how one might incorporate the ambiguity,
the unpredictability, of "real  life", into a work of art. I propose that
Nabokov employs devices like "doubtful directions", outright illusion, and
paradoxes to simulate such a  "fuzziness". I am reminded of the "anime
verite" technique of "Squigglevision", as employed in the series Dr.
Katz(WARNING  PLUG! - and brilliantly incorporated into the movie
State&Main). By means of a "flickering" of color and lines, the animators
achieve an "acceptable" level of realism to the physical "dimension' of the
characters. A similar "flickering" aura surrounds the elements and clues of
PF.

Paradoxes often posit a counterintuitive property of a object or process,
and in PF, objects and processes are interlaced, torqued, if you will, in a
relational manic minuet, intended to both delight and frustrate....