NPPR: Commentary Line 137 Lemniscate

[Michael Joseph]

JF, Excellent connection between lemn. and iambic motor. Why not also the
lemniscate figure represents the rhymed couplet, whose second, imitative,
sound completes by echoing the first, originary sound (and thus welds
unrelated concepts into something more complex). In fact in his commentary
on lemniscate (which suggests the second foil and thus makes Shade's use
of the term something it would not otherwise have been, the first foil),
Kinbote does fix upon the sound of the word. (I think this kind of
iinterpretive mirrorplay as consensual validation, as knitting up
resources, as holding things together, is part of the matrix. Want to stay
on message.)

Michael






On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Jasper Fidget wrote:

> >
> > 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
>
>
>