NPPF Comm3: Mirrors

[Jasper Fidget]

References to mirrors and doubled pairs occur with great frequency prior to
Charles' escape in C.130: "the swimming pool" that Charles spies upon with
his field glasses (119), the two men playing tennis (119), Iris Acht's
"broad bare shoulders" (122), the chamber door "flanked by two banished
engravings" (122), Charles stripped by his "former valet's valet" (122) and
given "two morocco bed slippers" (122), the two tutors playing chess (126)
mirrored by the two soldiers playing cards (122) near a lantern around which
"a batlike moth blindly flapped" (123) (the moth another mirror object
linked to Gradus transformed into a bat on p. 133).

What's the deal with all the twins and mirrors?

In much of VN's fiction, the mirror indicates a solipsistic condition from
which the protagonist seeks escape.  Mirrors serve to convey the borders of
time, memory (a distorted mirror), and exile.  Both Shade and Kinbote mirror
themselves in their texts, as they mirror one another, and Kinbote in
particular is surrounded by mirrors that reflect the condition of soul, his
incapacity to see beyond himself into the lives of others.  

In his Introduction to the 1970 Random House edition to _Lolita_, Alfred
Appel Jr notes, "Nabokov's are emotional and spiritual exiles, turned back
upon themselves, trapped by their obsessive memories and desires in a
solipsistic 'prison of mirrors' where they cannot distinguish the glass from
themselves." 

While Charles is trapped in his fairy tale castle, Kinbote is trapped in his
solipsistic prison of mirrors, each of them seeking some means of escape.
For the Charles, it lies through the secret passage: his route to the Royal
theater; for Kinbote, it lies through John Shade's poem: his route to
Zembla.  For both of them, the liberating destination is art.  (And so also
an explanation for all the literary characters and artistic allusions that
pop up in Kinbote's fantasy.)

Jasper Fidget