CANTO ONE: "slain/By"

[Jasper Fidget]

> 
> "slain / By the false azure in the windowpane,"
> "slain / By the feigned remoteness of the windowpane,"
> 


I think VN had a lot of fun with the numbers of the poem, since he could
count on them being the same in any edition (unlike page numbers).  Many
numbers in the Commentary are linked to line numbers in more ways than as
cross-references.

>From hacking with the numbers in Note to Line 130 (with which I'll be
flooding the list when we get there), I find something possibly interesting
on ln 131 (the reprise "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain").  In K's
Commentary, the numbers 1888 and 1881 become visually important: 1888 as an
infinite serious beyond a fixed point (wall infinity infinity infinity),
i.e. the future; and 1881 as infinity between two fixed barriers (wall
infinity infinity wall), i.e. life.  But then the number 3 also takes on
some more significance as 1/2 infinity -- 3 as visually half of 8.  So the
number 131, as in line 131, becomes 1/2 infinity between two fixed points
(wall 1/2infinity wall).

What the hell does that mean?

Maybe it's worth remembering that the window is attached to a house.  There
is a good deal of personal involvement with this house for Shade: he has
lived his entire life there, grew up in it, brought his new wife to it, his
newborn baby, wrote poetry upstairs, and while sitting there learned that
his daughter was gone.  It is in a way a container for his life -- the
external equivalent of himself -- and a record of that life (in slight
parallel to the poem).  The window offers a view into his house -- his
memory -- and through the window his house projects the objects of his life
to the world outside (as the poet offers up his memories through verse).
Inside and outside of the house are joined by the transparent mirror window,
the surface of mortality and his memory reflecting an illusory continuance
of life beyond death, a false symbol as later with the fountain / mountain.

Isn't PF in some ways about the ultimate failure of symbols, and the greater
promise of patterns for pointing beyond nature and the self?  If the
transparent mirror window is intended for use as a symbol that the poet can
use in order to transcend space, time, mortality, etc, it's only half
capable of the task, an illusion, a failure.  The mirror is a vicious circle
where Shade can only ultimately see himself and never beyond it -- it's a
cage linked to memory.  So 1/2 infinity = the illusion of infinity from the
perspective of a being trapped in life.

And so on,
JasperF