NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (1)

[Jasper Fidget]

p. 224
"She had weaned her husband not only from the Episcopal Church of his
fathers, but from all forms of sacramental worship"

K blames Sybil for Shade's apostasy.

p. 224
"nebulation"

>From Webster's 1913:

neb"u*la`ted (?), a. Clouded with indistinct color markings, as an animal.

p. 224
"Confession with us is auricular"

auricular "Of confession: spoken into the ear, private. LME" (OED).

p. 224
"shaped almost exactly as the coronation chair of a Scottish king"

Perhaps alluding to the "Stone of Scone" or Stone of Destiny, reputedly
first referred to in Genesis 28:18 as Jacob's pillow, passed on to the
Egyptians and then to the King of Spain.  In 700 BCE it supposedly traveled
to Ireland with an invasion force led by Simon Brech, the Spanish King's
son, and placed atop the sacred Hill of Tara where it was called the Stone
of Desinty ("Lia-Fail" or the "fatal" stone).  When an Irish king sat on it
during his coronation, it was said to groan aloud if the king was of the
royal race but remain silent if he was a pretender.  Something like a
millennium later it was brought to Scotland by Fergus Mor MacEirc, the
founder of the Scottish monarchy, and later installed in the monastery of
Scone in Perthshire where it remained as the seat of the throne upon which
the kings of Scotland were crowned.  In 1296 King Edward I brought it to
Westminster Abbey and installed it in a new Coronation Chair.  For a long
time thereafter it became a symbol of oppression for Scottish nationalists,
who eventually managed to steal it in 1950.  It was recovered a few months
later and stored in a vault until 1996 when John Major had it returned
finally to Scotland.  It can now be seen in Edinburgh Castle, but will
travel back to Westminster for the next coronation.

http://www.westminster-abbey.org/tour/coronation_chair/


p. 224
"SHADE:" etc

The dramatic format of the next several pages parallels a number of similar
passages from Boswell's Life of Johnson, notably:

BOSWELL. 'But you would not have me to bind myself by a solemn obligation?'
JOHNSON. (much agitated,) 'What! a vow--O, no, Sir, a vow is a horrible
thing, it is a snare for sin. The man who cannot go to Heaven without a
vow-- may go--' Here, standing erect, in the middle of his library, and
rolling grand, his pause was truly a curious compound of the solemn and the
ludicrous; he half-whistled in his usual way, when pleasant, and he paused,
as if checked by religious awe. Methought he would have added--to Hell--but
was restrained. I humoured the dilemma. 'What! Sir, (said I,) In caelum
jusseris ibit?' alluding to his imitation of it,-- 

'And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes.' 

(Boswell, Chapter XXIX)

p. 225
"L'homme est né bon"

Man was born good.

p. 225
"SHADE: Life is a great surprise.  I do not see why death should not be an
even greater one."

See Emerson's "Circles": "Life is a series of surprises.  We do not guess
to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow."

http://www.emersoncentral.com/circles.htm

Shade's speech reinforces the surprise / death connection, as with Dim Gulf
/ Gulf of Surprise (p. 68, 138).


p. 226
"psychopompos"

"A mythical conductor of souls to the place of the dead. Also, the spiritual
guide of a (living) person's soul" (OED)

p. 227
"St Augustine said"

The quote is from Augustine's _De Trinitate_ (On the Trinity).

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1301.htm
http://phil.flet.mita.keio.ac.jp/person/nakagawa/texts.html#august


p. 228
"I have no time for such stupidities"

He doesn't have time because he will be dead soon.  He's making amends for
any of his perceived sins in anticipation of having just one to report
(suicide) when he arrives in the afterlife.


p. 228
"Far be it from me to hint at the existence of some other woman in my
friend's life."

Kinbote then does exactly that.


p. 229
"A farcical pedant of whom the less said the better"

In reference to Professor Pnin from VN's novel of the same name.  Note that
_Pnin_ is shorter than _Pale Fire_.


Jasper Fidget