NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued

[Michael Joseph]

On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Ghetta Life wrote:

>
> Wow! Some of Michael's commentary on the Commentary is as surreal as
> Kinbote's.  I'll just skip around to a few points:
>
> >"... 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.
>
> You are playing with a Freudian take on a novel by an author who's professed
> disdain for Freud.  Of course, still, even Nabokov can pe psychoanalized..
>
I wasn't aware that I was actually being Freudian, but, you are right.
Anyone can be pyschoanalized, because psychological realities are real
whether one chooses to recognize them or not. They have a kind of vitality
of their own--like religious realities or ideological realities. Being
disposed to it, a reader can see their abstract patterns beneath the horny
surface of the narrative. Pale Fire is obviously interested in ways these
patterns out themselves, reveal themselves. The miracle of the lemniscate
is conveyed by the idea these patterns occur automatically, as a kind of
perpetuum mobile, without authorial intervention.


> >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)
>
> Please!  I've just finished my lunch!  But really, I can't see this
> "suggestion."
>
Who knew you were eating? Sorry.

> >"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.
>
> Or maybe detumescence, yeah, I think I'm getting it...
>
> Crazy, but sort of fun...
>
Sort of sends us back to Hamlet ...

Michael