NPPF: Commentary 5 (notes) Lines 433-434

[Jasper Fidget]

> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of bekah

> 
> ** "Sybil is idealized, but then, Kinbote has romanticized and idealized
> his vision of Zembla as well as his relationship with Shade so he's
> obviously going to defend the whole process. Idealization as reflection,
> mirror?  Reading as mirror?
> 
> 

OR to what extent is Disa is mirror of Sybil, a reflection in Kinbote's past
of Shade's present?  He's even worked out where Sybil *should* be -- exiled
in some other country.  Supporting your idea, there's some proximity to the
reference to the Frost poem with it's "two closing lines identical in every
syllable, but one personal and physical, and the other metaphysical and
universal" -- Sybil and Disa?  Sybil and Sybil-idealized?

> 
> page 210
> 
> ** Charles betrayed Disa with Phrynia or Timandra?  (is this a
> heterosexual reference or a scholarly one? Did he spend too much time with
> his studies of Shakespeare? Or did he actually bed the ladies?
> 
> Phrynia:
> Origin: Shakespearean
> Meaning: 'The Life of Timon of Athens'
> 

Phrynia and Timandra, Mistresses to Alcibiades.  Timon calls them harlots,
whores, and sluts, and they agree that they'll "do anything for gold"
(IV:iii).  I think the reference is both sexual and scholarly for Kinbote,
as he's mixed (or confused) the two elsewhere.  I doubt they stand in for
two real women in Charles' life though.

Just to take note of it, in this same passage there's another reprise of the
endless mirror reflection of Fleur nymphs in Charles' tower (p. 111), then
mirrored with "an endless sequence of green-shorted Kinbotes" (p. 183):

"This love was like an endless wringing of hands, like a blundering of the
soul through an infinite maze of hopelessness and remorse" (p. 210).  

Unlike Shade, Kinbote seems quite tormented by infinite sequences.  Could it
be he fears the afterlife while consciously yearning for it?

Jasper Fidget