NPPR: Commentary Line 137 Lemniscate

[Jasper Fidget]

> 
> I wonder how much of möbius is in S's lemniscate?  Follow the outer edge
> of
> one arc and you transition to the inner edge of the other.  And to what
> extent does this pattern relate to the (iambic) motor motif, given the use
> of möbius-lemniscate shaped belts in engines that would have been in use
> at
> the time?  Is the lemniscate a belt drive for the iambic motor?
> 
> Jasper Fidget
> 

The lemniscate then might also represent the union of the two worlds of PF,
one of them a "real" world (or an *exterior* world, given the möbius
pattern) where V. Botkin takes evening rambles with John Shade; and the
other a "false" world (*interior*) filled with kings and shadows and fairy
tales.  The intersection would be Kinbote, who bridges those two worlds, and
stands with one foot in both but lives in neither (thus also a *reason* for
Kinbote, the subject of some debate here).

This structure may also serve as a model for Shade and his poem and his
preoccupation with life-after-death, or, as Michael indicates, with author
and reader and the creative interpretive act; in both cases the
identification and creative use of a pattern that facilitates the derivation
of another world or condition, or at least represents the *striving* toward
that other world or condition.  (I'm beginning to see how Heidegger might
fit here.)

(See Johnson's _World's in Regression_ for an extensive discussion of the
"two worlds" theme in much of VN's fiction.) 

Jasper Kludget