NPPR Commentary Lines 80, 91, 130,

[Glenn Scheper]

If Pynchon has lost our tantric faith, surely not VN.
I sought evidence of a specific VN tantric awareness,
that is: that a tantric meditation irrupts into the
past, surprising even the perpetrator, as if it were
changing the past to agree with forced revised memory.

http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/seifrid1.htm
nabokov's poetics of vision

 One early work in particular (Kamera obskura, 1933;
 Laughter in the Dark, 1938/1965) dwells on Tolstoy with a
 concentration that might induce us to wonder about the
 nature of the Tolstoyan influence on Nabokov's early
 fiction...
 a closer reading in fact suggests that Tolstoy remains
 obstinately committed to an opposite mode of seeing: the
 post-Renaissance paradigm of direct perspective, with its
 solitary eye gazing on the world through a window, frame, or
 aperture.

http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/shrayer1.htm
 a dozen notes to nabokov's short stories

 To add to Simpson's fascination, McGore shares a
 "secret": years of dealing with paintings have taught him
 that through an act of concentrated will one can enter the
 space of a given painting and explore it from within.

 "La Veneziana" embodies several key elements to become
 central to Nabokov's poetics. Afloat in the story's
 enchanting and elegant syntax, and never fully synthesized
 and harmonized, these elements call for scrutiny. One should
 start paying increasing attention to Nabokov's concern with
 the problem of entering a space whose parameters differ from
 the regular space enveloping a character.

Sitetracked reading the Silvery Light, which appears to be
a VN work in which a biographer Kinbote seeks out dead VN;
I found that theme, and my favorite things, AF innuendoes:
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/silver1.htm (2,3,...)

Ch 3:
 and the book's final paragraphs, gradually affirm the
 existence of a Mary wholly his own, an image with more
 substance in his own head and heart than the flesh-and-blood
 stranger, another man's wife, due to arrive Saturday next.
 In the end it is this mental simulacrum which gains
 ascendancy over dull reality, inevitably disappointing when
 compared with imagination's timeless, sparkling, infinitely
 plastic realm:

 ending of Bend Sinister, in which "comfortably
 Krug returns unto the bosom of his maker,"

Ch 4: (read - as marking an appositive:)
 the possibility that human existence, with its
 stomach-sucking abyss of laughter and tears

Ch 5:
 Kafka
 On Sunday K. explained to me a story he had written years
 ago about a man who wakes up to find himself transformed
 into a giant insect. He seemed much amused by this and began
 coughing so strenuously that I feared the effort would be
 too much for his wasted frame. I asked him about how he came
 to have this idea. He responded immediately, SWALLOWING HARD
 between phrases, but still very cheerful, ... (my caps)

Ch 6: I found another hover! Moth=self, as also Ch 9.
 This Hovering Honeyed Mist

 A moth was bouncing off the
 smoky ceiling around it in inverted parabolas, like a small
 resilient object caught in the gravity of some upside-down
 dimension interpenetrating our own.

 I swallowed what little spit I had and gulped a mouthful of
 spiced air.

 ...the moth. I paused to look. It lay on its back, its
 furry feet flimmering frantically, soundlessly, in the air
 above it. Then the wings took up the rapid rhythm...

Ch 8: (I say AF as poetic) dying; That ineffable name.
 That Nabokov did not die of natural causes is only now
 beginning to be publicly acknowledged. His "mysterious"
 death, variously attributed to a fall, a viral infection,
 pneumonia, or mundane cardiac arrest, is now known to have
 been caused, or at least hastened along, by a special,
 nearly untraceable poison whose unpronounceable name I will
 not reveal here for fear that some unbalanced individual
 bearing a grudge against a family member, former love, noisy
 neighbor, or Department Head
 might seek it out. The substance is readily available. It
 is odorless, flavorless, and difficult to detect unless a
 thorough autopsy is performed by an experienced medical
 examiner soon after the victim's death.

Ch 9:
 The first of
 these was a poisoning viciously perpetrated on Pushkin's
 birthday, June 6, 1944, which failed when an acutely ill VN,
 then studying the genitalia of Malaysian lepidoptera at the
 Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
 stepped outside the building to vomit profusely--thereby
 expelling the poison, a mixture of strychnine and tannin,
 from his aching stomach.

Ch 9: (two hands signifies a metamorphosis)
 Even as a young child, then, our lonely king has his mantle,
 but it is not until he reaches seedy manhood that he
 receives a crown, and, simultaneously, a queen:
 (Russian snipped)
 And to all this was added a veiled bride, and a crown that
 trembled in the air over his very head and looked as if it
 might fall at any minute [again the theme of falling, and
 again a reference to the heartrending precariousness of
 kingship]. He squinted at it cautiously and it seemed to him
 once or twice that the invisible hand of someone holding the
 crown passed it to another, also invisible, hand
 
Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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