Wednesday, November 4, 2009

messy notes that almost lead somewhere

(I learned how to use a scanner so I'm abusing its power)
-this is a copy of my notes to a phrase on page 246 (click the image to get a clearer view)
the name Fra Pandolf got me got me researching (wikiing) and i came up with the painter who painted the portrait discussed in Robert Browning's My Last Duchess. Which was interstingly refferd to on page 240, but Kinbote seems to be mistaken in that Shade's appears nowhere in Browning's Untamed Seahorse My Last Duchess. I started to look deeper into Browing and his wife, stuff about ties to Shelly and his drowning death, Poe. One interesting thing that i couldn't really follow up on but my wiki wandering led me to a point in reference to Elizabeth Brownings Aurora Leigh and how it's Nine books were significant in that Nine is the woman's number in reference to the Nine books of Sybil. And that tied back to the 900 years of family legacy that King Alfonso ( the speaker of Browning's My Last Duchess) gave to his wife- though she cared not for it. I found all sorts of these threads that i thought would go somewhere but ended up not really amounting to much. It was fun, though disappointing, but i thought i would show you guys what it's often been like reading Pale Fire: a lot of these mad ideas that grow from the text but don't always seem to fruit.
you can see it all here on my messy notes (again click the image to see a better view) so some cool stuff, but i don't really think any of it was intended. I think i'm trying to find a zembla that sadly was not meant to be.

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