NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2

[Don Corathers]

Where are all of the Hamlet references headed? They point to Botkin, and
they prepare us for Kinbote's contemplation of suicide. Is there a larger
significance than we've seen on the ground in Zembla? If Fleur = Ophelia,
does her mother = Polonius? Where's Claudius? Or is it just Hamlet as
comedy, the joke being that Zembla, unlike Elsinore, can't even mount a
proper palace intrigue? The two hapless Danish tourists as R&G, now that's
funny.

Don


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper at hatguild.org>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 12:49 PM
Subject: RE: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2


> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Don Corathers
> > Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 9:41 PM
> > To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> > Subject: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> > viola d'amore. [It., viol of love, ca. 1700] : a tenor viol having
usually
> > seven gut and seven wire strings. (MW10)
> >
>
> This must be why Fleur de Fyler reminded me of Joyce -- "Sir Tristram,
> violer d'amores" (FW:3).  Embedded in the Zemblan couplet on p. 108 is the
> word "tristan," and also -- expanding 3 letters -- "kin-tristan," casting
> Kinbote into the unlikely role of Tristan (but note again Balthasar the
> gardener -- if Charles can be a reversed Hamlet, then Kinbote can be a
> reversed Tristan/Romeo).
>
> > Whoever made the mirror invested it with magical power that not only
> > directs
> > light but bends time: "a secret device of reflection gathered an
infinite
> > number of nudes in its depths, garlands of girls in graceful and
sorrowful
> > groups, diminishing in the limpid distance, or breaking into individual
> > nymphs, some of whom, she murmured, must resemble her ancestors when
they
> > were young--little peasant garlien combing their hair in shallow water
as
> > far as the eye could reach, and then the wistful mermaid from an old
tale,
> > and then nothing." Quite a mirror. Quite a paragraph.
> >
>
> More references to Hamlet -- Fleur as Ophelia: "in its depths, garlands of
> girls in graceful and sorrowful groups, diminishing in the limpid distance
> [...] combing their hair in shallow water" (see _Hamlet_ 4.5).  "Sudarg of
> Bokay", in addition to being a mirror of Gradus, marks the origin of the
> mirror in flowers.
>
> Like the Balthasar in _Much Ado About Nothing_, Ophelia sings a "hey
nonny"
> song.  I don't know whether to try to make anything of that.
>
> The phrases "little peasant /garlien/" and "the wistful mermaid from an
old
> tale" suggest the fairy tales that will pop up later.  See also "The
Merman"
> (p. 129) and "mermaid azure."
>
> See also p. 183 for a mirror of this mirror and "an endless sequence of
> green-shorted Kinbotes."
>
> Sudarg signs his name with a diamond while Kinbote signs his name with a
> King.  Both playing card suits.  Just saying is all.
>
> The mirror here acts out in miniature a process that much of the novel's
> mirroring serves: transformations in time into art and eternity.  Female
> linked to time, mortality, death, also reminds me of Joyce and Faulkner.
> What's that Joyce quote that has people linked by umbilical cords flying
> through eternity?
>
> Tempus Fugit
>