NPPF: Notes C.47-48 (part two)

[Jasper Fidget]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jasper Fidget [mailto:jasper at hatguild.org]
> Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 2:57 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: NPPF: Notes C.47-48 (part two)
> 
 
> pg 88
> "Once, three decades ago [...]"
> 
> This passage may recount Kinbote's first sexual experience with "a tall,
> pale, long-nosed, dark-haired young minister."  Using very Romantic
> images, he writes, "Into these roses and thorns there walked a black
> shadow" (88), "Guilty disgust contorted his thin lips" (88), "His clenched
> hands seemed to be gripping invisible prison bars.  But there is no bound
> to the measure of grace which man may be able to receive.  All at once his
> look changed to one of rapture and reverence.  I had never seen such a
> blaze of bliss before" (88).  All this sexual innuendo seems a parallel
> for Shade's Aunt Maud passages, although for Kinbote it's all mixed up
> with religious imagery.  It culminates in a linkage between the minister
> and John Shade.
> 

The "so-called Rose Court at the back of the Ducal Chapel" where Kinbote
sees the minister "making contact with God" may be an allusion to St.
Augustine in the very process of converting from guilt to renewed
commitment.

Note that Alfred translated Augustine.