NPPF - Canto One - more notes

[Jasper Fidget]

[from jasper this time, not charles, although you may debate the *internal*
authorship]

ln 39-40: see pg 79 for Kinbote's variant.

ln 48: "Goldsworth and Wordsmith on its square of green."

Goldsworth: the value of gold, see "Golconda" page 17; Judge Goldsworth,
whose home Kinbote rents and who Jack Grey intends to shoot.

Goldsmith: "a worker in gold, a manufacturer of gold articles, (formerly
acting also as a banker)" (OED 5th Ed.); Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), Irish
writer of novels, poetry, plays, and essays.

Goldwin Smith Hall: where VN had his office at Cornell, a university known
for its Wordsworth collection.

Wordsmith: a skilled user or maker of words (OED 5th Ed.), from "smith", A
person who works in iron or other metals; esp. a blacksmith. Also, a skilled
worker in other arts or crafts. Freq. as 2nd elem. of comb. blacksmith,
goldsmith, locksmith, silversmith, wordsmith, etc. (OED 5th Ed.)

Wordsworth: William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English Romantic poet whose work
was inspired by the Lake District where he spent most of his life.

square of green: chess; and green is Gerald Emerald's color (just saying is
all).

ln 55-56: "White butterflies turn lavender as they / Pass through its
shade": The inverse of Kinbote's "black butterflies" (pg 15).

ln 62: "Of the stiff vane so often visited": see Nabokov's "The Vane
Sisters".  From Boyd: "the ghosts of two dead women waylay the narrator's
attention through tricks of light and shade, and without his realizing,
guide his actions and words, even as he expresses explicitly the
hopelessness of his attempt to discern some glimpse of the sisters beyond
death."  (Boyd, _The Magic of Artistic Discovery_, 138)

ln 70: see pg 99 for Kinbote's "in the draft" addendum.

ln 79: see pg 107 for Kinbote's variant.

ln 98: "_On Chapman's Homer_, thumbtacked to the door.": 

George Chapman translated _The Odyssey_ (1614-16); John Keats wrote "On
First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" (1816); Ben Chapman played for the Red
Sox (1937-1938), and hit a total of 13 home runs.  

http://www.bartleby.com/111/
http://www.online-literature.com/keats/483/
http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/chapmbe01.shtml

ln: 99-100: "My God died young. Theolatry I found / Degrading, and its
premises, unsound.": Nietzsche?

ln 102: "How fully I felt nature glued to me": echoes from Tintern Abbey (I
think so anyway).  Note the sweep of literary history here: Homer -> Keats
-> Worsworth -> Shade.  Also c.f. Keith's Shocking Theory.

ln 108: "Twinned Iris": 

(OED) "A rainbow, esp. (freq. Iris) personified; a many-coloured refraction
of light from drops of water; a rainbow-like or iridescent appearance; a
coloured halo; a combination of brilliant colours."

(OED) "Photography & Cinematography. In full iris diaphragm. An adjustable
diaphragm of thin overlapping plates for regulating the size of a control
hole, esp. for admitting light to a lens or lens system."  (i.e. another
spiral....)

Iris, goddess of the rainbow and messenger of Olympus; see Note to 130 for
Iris Acht and a slew of twinning.

Jasper