NPPF commentary line 149 -- some notes

[Jasper Fidget]

p. 138
"Aros and Grindelwod"

Both suggest towns in Switzerland: Arosa and Grindelwald (see Grindelwod
again p. 105).

p. 138
"Bregberg" "Bregberg Pass" (139)

Could this imply the German "Burgberg" or Mountain Fortress (e.g. Harzburg
or Colditz (from which a number of POWs escaped via tunnels))?

p. 138, 149
"Gulf of Surprise"

Charles II escaped England into exile on board the Surprise (later renamed
the Royal Escape).  Also points back to Dim Gulf (ln 957); see Poe's "To One
in Paradise":

A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!"-but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

If Dim Gulf is the past (Shade's first book), then Gulf of Surprise is the
future, so another time parallel.

p. 139
"Thunder was rumbling in the terrible brown sky."

This made me think of Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" -- the dog, the
farmhouse, the dosing off, the stranger sighted from a distance, and some of
the mountain descriptions add to it.  Also "the ripple-warped reflection"
(p. 143), and "the Rippleson Caves" (p. 145).

p. 139
"after pushing through the black wall of the forest"

Reminiscent of the "heavy black drapery" (p. 133) at the entrance to the
Royal Theater from the secret tunnel.

p. 139
"His mother was an American from New Wye in New England"

Sylvia O'Donnell, see p. 247

p. 140
Griff

Anglo-Indian abbreviation for Griffin (OED)

p. 143
"Great fallen crags diversified the wayside."

See Wordsworth's "The Prelude": "Black drizzling crags that spake by the
way-side" (Bk 6 ln 631).

http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww292.html

p.145
"'War?' queried her consort.  'That must have been the explosion at the
Glass Works in 1951 -- not war.'"

Connects back to "Extremists from the famous Glass Factory where the
revolution had flickered first" (p. 120) and "the 1950 Exposition of Glass
Animals, when part of it was almost destroyed by fire" (p. 112).

Three years after his ascension to the throne in 1685, James II (brother of
Charles II) was forced to repeat his brother's escape routine and flee to
France after attempting to convert England to Roman Catholicism.  (He was
replaced in Whitehall by the Protestant William III of Orange and his wife
Mary, James' daughter, in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688.)  James II, his
son James III, and his grandson Charles's long-term campaign to recapture
the throne was supported by the so-called Jacobites, whose secret societies
were banned by the monarchy, and who would engrave the bowls and glasses
they used to toast their "King over the sea" with Jacobite symbols.  The
most common symbol engraved on this "Jacobite glass" is a rose.

http://www.cosmos-club.org/journals/1999/kaplan.html

I'm at a loss to find an analog for the fire (unless it's London's Great
Fire of 1666, which happened during the Restoration and is unconnected to
any revolution), but this at least supplies a nexus for the glass, Charles
II, and rose patterns.

p. 146
"all the art of plastic surgery had only resulted in a hideous tessellated
texture with parts of pattern and parts of outline seeming to change, to
fuse or to separate, like fluctuating cheeks and chins in a distortive
mirror"

The face seems a(nother) parody of _Pale Fire_ itself.

p. 146
"sat knitting", "on one side of her lay a pair of carpet slippers and on the
other a ball of red wool"

Part of the engine of creation motif: the knitting woman the engine of the
masquerade (see the opening stanzas of Canto 4).

p. 147
"I was looking for /shpiks/ [plainclothesmen]"

Why is this definition bracketed instead of parenthetical like the rest of
them in this section?  Compare to bore, grunter, alfear, steinmann, nippern,
all defined in parentheses.

p. 147
"Let those Russians vanish"

Awaiting the disappearance of the Russians, who will be replaced by Soviets.

p. 147
"I trust the reader has enjoyed this note."

See index under Kinbote: "his trusting the reader enjoyed the note."
Anybody have any thoughts on this?

Jasper Fidget