NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued

[Michael Joseph]

Wm. Gass has said that sentences are little shimmied lengths of words
endeavoring to be stretches of human awareness.

Charles, the "real" king counterfeited in the counterfeit Kinbote's
counterfeit commentary upon Shade's poem encounters on p. 143 a series of
(distorted)  mirror images--the "ripple-warped reflection" in the water, a
phallic "steinmann" wearing a red cap, even, implicitly, the deity --
"High up in the deep-blue sky jutted the empty ledge whereon a counterfeit
king had just stood." (And what do we make of the "ripple-warped"
proliferation of selves? Is there a sense of raw fertility, a primal,
atavistic power of the imagination run amok? If Nabokov is ascribing being
to the imagination, or suggesting that the imagination is a mode of
consciousness, is it logical to assume that relational imaginative
exchange constitutes a real, deeply human, mode of being, according to
Nabokov, which, perhaps, may be symbolized by "proleptic" poem and
"nostalgic" commentary?)


Note that Charles's heart is described as "a conical ache poking him from
below." A conical shape is of course a mound. At the heart of Charles is
there another [phallic/hermetic/memento mori] steinmann/cairn/herm?

No longer charmed by the discomfiture of the wench, Charles (the second)
is confused by the puzzle of the multiplying Charleses; over him hangs the
doom of choice as he loses the most basic powers of intuition.

"... after a while he stopped again to take stock of conditions and decide
whether to scramble up the steep debris slope in front of him or to strike
off to the right along a strip of grass, gay with gentians, that went
winding between lichened rocks." (143) The choice seems as clear as, say,
the choice between sex and death, and yet it takes Charles--a king, whose
royal function is to choose--a second or two to choose.

Charles finishes his ascent at the top of p. 144, and begins his descent
about halfway down the page. The geometry of the page signifies as Charles
the signifier passes from recto to verso, from page bottom to top.

Oddly, Charles's perceptions (which are consubstantial with Kinbote's)
embrace imagery of violently forced sexual abstinence.

"Falkberg with its hood of snow" (144) suggests a penis covered by a
leperous foreskin (rather than a hardon with a ruddy head or an
upright leader with a crown)

"Paberg (Mt. Peacock), and others,--separated by narrow dim valleys with
intercalated cotton-wool bits of cloud that seemed placed ... to prevent
their flanks from scraping against one another" (144) suggests a kind of
sexual restraint inhibiting consenting thighs.

"Mt. Glitterntin a serrated edge of bright foil" (144) suggests a menacing
gelding knife.

"a tender haze enveloped more distant ridges" (144) suggests the painful,
fading memory of one's one-time ridged (manly) self.

".. an endless array, through every grade of soft evanescence" (144)
suggests disintegration, though perhaps ecstatic disintegration: a rainbow
of indistinctiveness; the full monty of death.

Is Charles unmanned by his transformation from king to commoner/subject?
(or, perhaps, from a king fleeing his kingdom incognito to a commoner with
a dirty secret, a not-quite-subject).

Charles's complete escape from his subject position is modeled in his
comedic encounter with the police (144) (and note the concidence of
identity between the "black police car" and the "little negro of painted
tin" (137): a Finnagin's Wake (HCE) moment).

The policeman's ironic inability to recogize the "real" king has a
pathetic edge. Charles is really now just an ordinary Charlie. Authority
has divested him ("take off that red fufa. And the cap. Give them here")
of his command and his name. Perhaps for the delusory Kinbote, the
incapacity of the police to unmask Charles, which confirms him in his
feigned identity (not a king, not a subject, something lost in
translation), limns his own vast sense of loss.

The policeman's interrogation:  "What's your real name Charlie," is
reminiscent of the soldier, Bernardo's interrogation "Who's there?" the
first line of Hamlet, which is of course another text that probes
questions of identity, and, like this the narrative at the bottom of p 144
(the nadir of the verso), deals directly with the apparition of a king.



Michael