VLVL Danish

[Glenn Scheper]

> Now HERE's a passage that will have Mr. Glenn Scheper chompin' at the bit!

Somethin' t'eat?

I have a tidbit about eating I posted on the Nabokov list:

Yesterday at work I read Dane Gill's questions:
> Did anyone else find it odd that the angel had
> wings of fur instead of feathers?
> ... did anyone else find this story REALLY creepy?

I savored all day catching VN in too obvious a trope:
to demonstrate he knows well this occult taboo realm
where furry wings are not merely possible, but exact.

Guessing Wingstroke was a short story, I pulled _The
Stories of Vladimir Nabokov_ from two feet of books,
skimmed it on the spot in the store. At the opening
line I divided excitedly: are crossed ski tips the
first allusion into our domain? More words poured.

I recall the same with _Despair_. I started excitedly
spoting correspondences. The next day, I re-read the
same pages and depaired of proving a thing. Despair's
character admitted outright, he lies -- my consolation.

I remembered Nabokov's job is not a tidy structural
exposition of our domain, wherein I feel singularly
alone, hard to be believed; rather his the weaving
of literature, cooking a dish where one does not say,
I can notice this particular spice.

To guarantee a contrast, I surfed: The Web shows little
else of furry wings, albeit 3 of 4 are about butterflies:
http://www.mic-d.com/gallery/butterfly/fourbarswallowtailb1.html
http://www.mic-d.com/gallery/butterfly/lemonyellowgiantorangetipd3.html
http://www.olympusmicro.com/micd/galleries/butterfly/cruiserb3.html
http://www.gavinrymill.com/dinosaurs/feathers/dinos.html

So into a lacking simulacrum, I will now posit the referent.

There are two relevant descriptions of six-winged creatures:
one of seraphs, and another of non-seraphim beasts in the KJV
(but Ezekiel 1 is not related, where wing is merely extremity).
These are both human females: Count 'em: Six labia: Six wings.

The monadic tantric Seraphim covers her face with two wings,
covers her feet (an obvious euphemism for genitalia on the
well-known model of the ancient idiom, hand) with two wings;
And just recently, I was reading a web harvest wherein I saw
zebub, as in Baalzebub, means not only fly, but flit, a word
that also appears in Wingstroke. One of my favorite resources
from the web is a free MPEG movie of one such seraphim using
her tongue to avidly flit the remaining two of her six wings.

Both sources continue about the difficulty relating the idea,
and one source has sea of glass, where Nabokov wrote mirrors:


        Isaiah:

6:1 - 6:9 (snipped)

        Revelation:

4:6 - 5:4 (snipped)

To pick up some other loose ends, the four beasts of Revelation,
(which adds the eye/opthamos/hole fact) were whores, not angels.
A cherubim ('sword') is the male angel, having only two wings.

Anyway, Isabel is the angel herself. The mirrored wardrobe and
the pistol represents Kern's two acts with her: oral & phallic.
That he is a novice, and melanchoic, suggests Kern is a cherub,
alo suggested by the pistol in the grip, like a small wardrobe,
and at the end willing to demonstrate the act for the preacher.

The spookiness would arise because such beings are ontically
different from the rest of humans, an alienation like death.
This is our crucifixion, a term also mentioned in Wingstroke.

The crushed ribcase is a human form problem, alluded to by
both Millay and Dickenson (my favorite female death expert).

If somebody else would pick away at these tropes, we'd soon
have all the referents, and a modern ontology to distinguish
cherubs, Christ from Satan, and usher in the next millenium.
It's important. As Kafka said, one's very being is at stake.

Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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