NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143-

[Jasper Fidget]

> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of Michael Joseph

[...]
> 
> The red-capped cairn also alludes back to the text Kinbote is enacting by
> assiduously avoiding, and once more telescopes Shade and Kinbote. The
> steinmann Charles recapitulates Shade's "my age of stone" (line 155)--just
> as Charles' "shiver of alfear" (p. 143) recalls the first part of that
> line, "an icy shiver down . . .." (line 155) Shade and Kinbote seem to be
> texturally and viscerally spliced--and perhaps the implication is that the
> deranged mysoginist, the fake or failed king, is redeemed by such
> recondite similarities with the authentic poet as may appear in the eye of
> a playful reader.
> 
> 
> Michael
> 
> 

Great stuff, thanks.  

Steinmann -- Stone-man is the intersection of a word motif and progression.
We also have:

"Rodstein" on p. 88: "the sectile mosaic of the court -- realistic rose
petals cut out of rodstein and large almost palpable thorns cut out of green
marble."  (This is the scene with the minister who resembles St. Augustine
and Charles' sexual reaction to watching him.)  "Stone rod" -- "rod" a
symbol of office, a magician's wand, and yes, it's also slang for penis.  Oh
rose, thou art sick!

"Bechstein" on p. 129: "The King sat down at the Bechstein" (a piano).  This
is in the music room of the palace.

"Eystein" on p. 130: "the huge oils of Eystein had fascinated several
generations of Zemblan princes and princesses."  (Linked to an Archbishop
renowned for building things with stone.)  This is in the gallery of the
palace.

"Julius Steinmann" (also) becomes the cairn personified on p. 153: "An
especially brilliant impersonator of the King, the tennis ace Julius
Steinmann (son of the well-known philanthropist), had eluded for several
months the police who had been driven to the limits of exasperation by his
mimicking to perfection the voice of Charles the Beloved in a series of
underground radio speeches deriding the government."

"Buchmann" on p. 161: "In front of their garage, on the ground, I noticed a
/buchmann/, a little pillar of library books which Sybil had obviously
forgotten there."  Obviously: book-man.

All this comes together in the Note to 1000 where Gradus has "decided to
play a new role" and ignores Kinbote as if he were "a stone king on a stone
charger in the Tessera Square of Onhava" (295).  I'll leave the notion of a
"tesseract square" for later or never, but a stone king would be a
"Steinkönig" (and a stone horse a "Steinpferd") connecting steinmann to
Erlkönig.  It is certainly no accident that the /steinmann/ on p. 143 is
adjacent to /alfear/.  The Erlkönig is the Alder King, so -> alderman, "A
man of noble or high rank" (OED), and also: tree-man.  

Therefore: tree-man, stone-man, book-man.  A progression of man through time
defined by the tools he uses.  Or wood-man, cave-man, library-man; a
progression of man defined by his dwellings.  Also add: church-man,
conservatory-man, gallery-man.

I like where Michael is going with this "depersonification" idea.  Where the
steinmann is personified on p. 153, Kinbote depersonifies himself on p. 295;
he turns to stone, becomes the steinmann, the stone-man.  He is left behind
in history.  The world no longer needs kings.  (The book no longer needs
Kinbote?)

Rodstein, if transformed the same way as the alder, becomes rodmann: a
"rodman," according to the OED, is both "an angler" (see p. 116) and "a
gunman" (see Note to 1000 and elsewhere).

Jasper Fidget