NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (6)

[Jasper Fidget]

p. 132
"eighteen invisible steps"

Charles must descend "eighteen invisible steps" to transition from the
lumber room to the tunnel, once more the same concrete pattern 18 (coming to
indicate any important transition I'm starting to think). 

p. 132
"The dim light he discharged at last was now his dearest companion, Oleg's
ghost, the phantom of freedom"

By "discharged" Kinbote means "(Allow to) escape or flow out; pour forth,
emit; (of a river) empty (itself), flow into" (OED), which also has some
parallel sexual connotations given the vessel of the tunnel into which his
light is discharged ("He experienced a blend of anguish and exultation, a
kind of amorous joy" (p. 132)); but also "Send away; let go" (OED), an
exorcism of Oleg's spirit into the tunnel through which it will guide the
king toward freedom.  But "the phantom of freedom" implies an illusion, a
figment of the imagination, an unreality (OED), while also suggesting the
will o' the wisp connected to Gradus in the form of Jack (-o'-lantern,
/ignis fatuus/, the "false fire" that will lead one astray).

"Phantom" also recalls Shade's first reference to Hazel: "The phantom of my
little daughter's swing" (ln 57), and the light recalls Hazel's description
of "a roundlet of pale light" (p. 188) in the barn.  

p. 133
"the pretty page"

Charles associates the memory of Oleg with the day of his coronation and the
hair oil aroma of his "pretty page" (Baron Mandevil -- see p. 147).  The
page had bent over in order to "brush a rose petal off the footstool," and
that rose petal has now become Charles himself, who discovers he is
"hideously garbed in bright red" (p. 133).

p. 133
"The secret passage seemed to have grown more squalid"

It's run down now, the "intrusion of its surroundings was even more
evident."  The perfect fantasy of his youth, the discovery and mystery that
this tunnel led him through with Oleg, and the new experience of sex no
longer has the same power to enthrall him the way it once did: it's only a
part of his past now, "a remembered spread of colored sand [that] bore the
thirty-year-old patterned imprint of Oleg's shoe"; its relationship with the
world is more obvious, its exterior connections more noticeable to his adult
mind "at the spot where the passage went through the foundations of a
museum" (133).

p. 133
"The pool of opalescent ditch water had grown in length; along its edge
walked a sick bat like a cripple with a broken umbrella."

Gradus making a cameo in the tunnel.  See Gradus' "urgent and blind flight"
(p. 135), and his poor eyesight (p. 232).  Right now he's in a holding
pattern like that monoplane Kinbote sees flying in circles at WU, but soon
his vicious circle, like Charles' own, will break loose and fly outward.
That the pool has "grown in length" may imply Yeats' spiraling circle in
"The Second Coming" -- this would be Charles' second coming through this
tunnel.

Gradus must have landed here after being knocked down on p. 123: "Around the
lantern that stood on the bench a batlike moth blindly flapped -- until the
punter knocked it down with his cap" (122-123).

p. 133
"thirty-year-old patterned imprint of Oleg's shoe"

30 is visually half 80 -- Charles is at the halfway point in the tunnel and
Oleg's ghost is still guiding him toward his destination at the Royal
Theater.

p. 133
"there had somehow wandered down, to exile and disposal, a headless statue
of Mercury, conductor of souls to the Lower World"

Believed to be derived from the Latin "merx" or "mercator" meaning
"merchant," Mercury is also the god of trade, profit, and commerce, here
cast into subterranean exile by the Zemblan revolution.  Luckily for
Charles, Mercury is also the protector of travelers, as well as the creator
of all art.  Associated with the Greek Hermes and the Celtic Lugus (Rome as
the nexus of cultures once again -- Caesar noted of the Celts, "of all the
gods they most worship Mercury").

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury/God
http://www.mabinogion.info/Lugus.htm

p. 133
"a cracked krater with two black figures shown dicing under a black palm"

A brief reprise of the mirrored cage dualism in the two black figures
dicing, but the image is cracked now and historical, a remnant of the past
(like all symbols?).

A krater is a Greek bowl with two handles and a foot, often decorated with
scenes of people relaxing, and often used for mixing wine and water at
symposia.  May suggest Keat's urn, "foster-child of Silence and slow Time."

http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/kl/krater.html
http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html

p. 133
"contained an accumulation of loose boards"

The secret passage begins in the "lumber room" and ends with an "accumlation
of loose boards," a clear origin and destination.  The green room at the
back of the theater is Charles' synthesis, his means of escape *into*
theater (which will take the instance of _Henry IV_ with all those
counterfeit kings running around -- see p. 143), into literature and
imagination, into art -- into Iris Acht's dressing room.  

p. 133
"a heavy black drapery"

Immediately beyond the green door is a "heavy black drapery," the wall of
the unknown.  While grappling to pass through it his flashlight ("torch")
"rolled its hopeless eye and went out," and when Charles drops it "it fell
into muffled nothingness" (133).  Oleg's spirit in the form of the light
cannot follow Charles beyond the tunnel -- there is nothing left for it to
cast itself into, space has run out and only time remains; the king is
released and Oleg must remain in the past.  Is the "phantom of freedom" also
dispelled?

p. 134
"the Sunday attire of Gutnish fishermen, and his fist still clenched the
cardboard knife with which he had just dispatched his sweetheart."

A strange folding of time at the Royal Theater -- what are the odds that
Odon and his troupe of actors should be performing the very same play that
Charles and Oleg overheard in rehearsal thirty years ago?!  (See p. 127.)
As Odon says, in parallel to his predecessor: "Good God."  

p. 134
"Plucking a couple of cloaks from a heap of fantastic raiments"

It is fitting that Charles should don a "fantastic cloak" for his journey
into fairy tales about to commence.

p. 135
"a puddle reflected his scarlet silhouette"

A return of the mirror.  Charles has escaped his physical cage but his
spiritual captivity persists.

Jasper Fidget