NPPF Aunt Maud

[jbor]

>> One wonders though -- Kinbote answering Keith here perhaps -- whether there
>> is something in this superimposition of Hazel onto Maud. Given the lesbian
>> and incest speculations, the mirroring effects in the goings-on in the
>> Zemblan court and the Shade household, the lack of any mention in the poem
>> of Maud's presence as Hazel was growing up, and Hazel's latent emotional
>> disorders, is there cause to consider Maud as *Hazel's* seducer? Perhaps the
>> imagery in Shade's poem is a subconscious manifestation of the *parental*
>> shame and remorse he has tried to submerge since his daughter's suicide?

on 5/9/03 12:22 AM, David Morris wrote:

> Hazel is sixteen when Maude dies, well into high school, so it is curious that
> she is invisible in any interaction with Hazel (or Sybil) in the poem.
> Shade's
> occupation of the house is continuous from childhood through his own death.
> Woldn't it seem likely that Maude would stay on there as well?  BTW, I
> speculated Maude's abuse of Hazel and Shade's guilt a long while back, but the
> evidence is so thin...

I think the implication is that Maud lived in the house until her death in
1950, when she would have been 80 or 81. I agree that the evidence is thin,
but there is something in the buildup of imagery which Keith catalogued. But
credit to you for initially positing the secondary incest theory.

I can see now Kinbote's misreading of line 90 in the poem -- "She lived to
hear the next babe cry." Shade communicates the information that Maud loved
babies and infants. Kinbote has misinterpreted the idiomatic phrase he has
used -- "She lived to ... " -- which renders the meaning that it was the joy
of her life, something she really relished. He has interpreted it literally,
prosaically, to mean that she only "lived to", or survived, to the time of
Hazel's birth. Partly this can be attributed to Kinbote's unfamiliarity with
English colloquial idioms, but I think the more salient feature is the way
Nabokov shows us again just how clumsy and off-base Kinbote is as a reader
and critic, making an absolute mess of it here, as in his opening note, as
in the majority of the relatively few notes where he does attempt to address
the content of Shade's poem. Kinbote's claim to be an academic "expert" in
the field of American poetry seems a patent lie.

best