NPPF: Summary Line 287 - Line 334

[Scott Badger]

> Line 287: humming as you pack
> 
> On July 7th, the day Shade pens this line, Kinbote has a doctors 
> appointment and, on the way, self medicates so as not to mislead 
> "credulous science". His nervousness he blames on the appointment 
> itself, but we might suspect that he's a little anxious about the 
> previous day's "gifts" to the Shades. On seeing Sybil leaving a 
> shop with a new "traveling grip", the sight of the grip grips 
> Kinbote with panic. It turns out, though, that their travel plans 
> aren't till the end of the month, after Shade finishes his poem. 
> Kinbote tries to find out where, but Sybil prevaricates - the 
> sought, of the last commentary, is now the seeker. By chance, or 
> perhaps through the machinations of "black winged fate" (see 
> previous commentary), Kinbote gleans the information from their 
> mutual doctor and immediately makes reservations for a cabin "on 
> the mountainside above Cedarn". In the Tirolean fantasies that 
> ensue, Kinbote prefers the version "conjured" by Shade, "Among 
> the lupines and the aspens", to the doctor's "stolid" accounting. 
> The doctor, of course, is right; "dry", "drear" and dead. 
> Black-winged fate, indeed; when Kinbote arrives at the cabin, 
> Shade is dead, and his own "work" is about to begin.
> 
> If "Utana" is Utah/Montana and "Idoming" is Idaho/Wyoming then what is
> Cedarn? Cedar barn? It's in the cabin at Cedarn where Kinbote 
> inaccurately transcribes the words of Shade,...*Kinbote's* 
> ghostly visitor?...
> 
> 
> 
> Line 293: She
> 
> Short (Commentary discursions aside), pertinently informative, to the
> point,-to the poem even-...not many "she"'s in Kinbote's life I guess...
> 
> 
> 
> Line 316: The Toothwort White haunted our woods in May
> 
> Frankly, Kinbote's uncertainty here makes me uncertain. 
> "Toothwort" seems unconnected with butterflies and, though 
> "White" is a common appellation for butterflies, is it so oddly 
> used here in connection with a white flower? Why is Kinbote so 
> intent on linking this line to butterflies and winged "folklore 
> characters", subverting the ghostly imagery the line evokes? 
> Going so far as to write a wholly unconvincing variant as 
> support. (Interestingly, I googled a message from a Nabakov 
> Yahoo! Group where the author claims, mistakenly I think, "The 
> Toothwort White is Pieris virginienses[sic]". Pieris virginiensis 
> is, in fact, the West Virginia White.)
> 
> 
> Line 319: wood duck
> 
> Kinbote's description is spot on, and entirely reminiscent of his lost
> Zembla, particularly as lost to the swan-like "yellowing ivory 
> tower" of Shade's poem. An American trait, Kinbote laments, that 
> extends to the "science" of naming animals, not to mention to the 
> very foundation of the American state of mind...
> 
> Line 334: Would never come for her
> 
> "Would he ever come for me?", pines Kinbote, though he never did 
> for Disa....BTW, "ping-pong"...joined twins, but with one back-to?...
> 
> 
> Scott Badger