The Memory Palace and children's books

Our brief discussion on Tuesday about memory palaces brought to mind two of my favorite childhood books that combine spacial associations and repetition. The Napping House, by Audrey Wood, is about people and animals napping on a bed. Bears in the Night, by Stan and Jan Berenstain, is about seven bear siblings that sneak out of the house at night and go on an adventure.

The Napping House begins with a grandmother sleeping on a bed. A boy climbs on top of her to sleep, then a dog, cat, mouse, and finally a flea. Each person or animal becomes gradually smaller until the barely visible flea flies on top and wakes everyone up. Each page tells what is already on the bed, in addition to what just climbed on top. For each new napping thing on the bed, there is a specific adjective that accompanies it and reappears on each page with it. This and the fact that each thing gets smaller and smaller as they get higher and higher on the bed helps children to remember what comes next.

Bears in the Night remains to this day my favorite childhood story because I first learned to read from it. The bears sneak out their window at night, climb down the side of the house, go across the lawn and over the bridge, through the woods and up a hill, until they get scared by an owl in a nearby tree and retrace their path back into bed. Each page consists of what has previously been said about their path, in addition to their next movement. This was my favorite book as a child, and my parents read it to me so much that I eventually memorized it. I then began to associate the words that were said with what was written on the page, and thus began to read. What made this book so easy to memorize was the pictures that describes the ad-on on each page. I have even clearer memories of the vines on the side of the house, the brick bridge with the stream underneath, and the bug-eyed owl in the tree than I have of the exact words. Remembering the path that the bears took - where they were going - helped me to memorize the simple statements that were made about that path.

The use of spacial awareness in both these books acts as a sort of memory palace within each story. Remembering a path one takes or where one is sandwiched between other things helps us to remember the order that things occur.

Discoveries

Shatranj is an old form of chess that originally came from India. The games (both the modernized, western version and the original) are games of royalty; since Kinbote is royalty, it makes sense that he would identify with this game. The original shatranj utilized the same pieces and was played on a board of the same size (8X8). The names of the pieces are Persian, with some Arabic influence. What we know today as the bishop was called 'pil' (Persian for 'elephant'). The Arabic word for 'the' is 'al,' and was sometimes attached as a prefix, with the p changing to f - 'alfil.' When shatranj was first introduced to the western world, Europeans altered the name slightly to 'alfin,' which happens to be the name of Kinbote's father and the former king of Zembla. It makes sense that in Kinbote's narcissistic imagination, he has his father be not the king or even the queen in his royal game of chess, but the bishop - a person of power and importance, but not the biggest fish in the sea. Kinbote, in his narcissism, saves that position for himself in his fantasy world.

The name Mandevil keeps popping up as some mysterious noble family from Zembla. We are introduced to Baron Mandevil when the King is fleeing his country and sees what appears to be an old woman knitting on the beach. Odon informs the King that it is actually "Baron Mandevil--chap who had that duel last year" (147). Apparently in this duel the Baron was disfigured and now resembles an old woman. Kinbote mentions the name 3 pages later when trying to describe Gradus' appearance. He says that Gradus' "grotesque figure... was not much odder than... a mad Mandevil who had lost a leg in trying to make anti-matter." Again, the Mandevil being described is deformed. There is also a Mandevil Forest that is mentioned on page 139 when Kinbote and his friends go for a drive. When they reach the edge of Mandevil Forest, "thunder rumble[s] in the terrible brown sky." I didn't think much about the odd name (which is probably pronounced with a stressed first syllable, but I can't help pronouncing it 'Man-devil') until I read Kinbote's opinion of demons on page 226. He tells Shade, "goetic magic does not always work. The demons in their prismatic malice betray the agreement between us and them, and we are again in the chaos of chance." (According to Wikipedia, Goetia "refers to a practice which includes the invocation of angels or the evocation of demons.") In other words, a human denies God and calls upon a demon to serve him so that he can control what goes on around him, but the demon is a colorful character and does not keep his word, so the human has no control and his destiny is left to chance - which, as Kinbote states on the previous page, is dreadful because Chance denies the existence of God. This passage reminded me of the Mandevil family and the Mandevil Forest, so I went back and looked at the passages where the name occurs. On pages 147 and 150, the men with the last name of Mandevil are both mishapen - they look like something that they are not. Demons are known to take the form of something other than a demon when called upon by a human (as in goetic magic). On page 139, thunder rumbles when Mandevil Forest is mentioned. In literature, the sound of thunder is often used to show that God is angry with humans. Using goetic magic - which itself denies God and also necessarily ends in the "chaos of chance" (which is another, more roundabout way of denying God) - would certainly anger God and result in rumbling thunder. So perhaps it is more than coincidence that the name Mandevil is spelled "Man-devil." Maybe the Mandevil family is comprised of demons.

At the bottom of page 83, Kinbote is looking at the "morocco-bound album in which the judge had lovingly pasted the life histories and pictures of people he had sent to prison..." The Morocco binding is a special kind of binding and covering for books that is made of leather and known for its high cost, aesthetic appeal, and durability. On the cover of the book is what appears to be a picture of a match with a leather frame. I take liberties in calling the 'picture' Moroccan-bound. I did spend some time closely examining (both figuratively and literally) this black border, and realized that the "picture" is in fact a mirror (the edges of it where it touches the leather was my clue). Moving beyond what we've already discussed in class about mirrors in the book, I discovered that the idea of the mirror reflecting a match and words rather than my own face is similar to the mirror in Velasquez's painting, which reflects something that is not seen by the viewer. I also noticed that, because of the angles of the shadows of the leather border onto the grey page and the leather border onto the purple reflection, the mirror must be inlaid from the leather. The light is coming from some source not seen on the cover - just as the light source in Velasquez's painting is unseen to the viewer - just off the top left corner.

*Several hours after the discovery of the mirror on the cover, I went back to looking at the match itself. With the title Pale Fire, one might think that a match on the cover would be lit (perhaps with a small flame), producing a pale fire. Smoke, while pale, is after all not actually fire. I did decide, however, that the color of the smoke from the match is similar to the color of the moon. There are plenty of references throughout the novel to the moon, its luminescence, and its reflection of the sun. On page 105, Fifalda and Fleur wear earrings that "catch and lose the fire of the sun," just as the moon catches and loses the fire of the sun every night. On page 108, Kinbote further describes Fleur as having a "pale face" with "luminous eyes and... dark hair." The pale face and luminous eyes surrounded by dark hair are like the moon surrounded by the dark night. On page 111, Kinbote talks of waking in the night and, in an attempt to get her to put clothes on, would pour water "onto Fleur's naked shoulder so as to extinguish upon it the weak gleam of a moonbeam." The word "extinguish" obviously relates to the cover of the book - the flame of the match has been extinguished so it emits smoke rather than fire. The phrase "the weak gleam of a moonbeam" is yet another reference to the moon's reflection of the sun. These three quotes all have to do with Fleur, but I keep finding more and more as I read. The repetition of the moon and references to it all draw attention to the fact that the moon is a reflection of the light from the sun - or rather, the moon is the smoke of the fire that is the sun. The moon relates to the smoke that is on the cover of the book, which is a reflection in a mirror. So maybe the actual, physical match that we cannot see is alight with flame, and its reflection is merely the "pale light" (227) that we see as smoke.

Gradus and the poem

"We shall accompany Gradus in constant thought, as he makes his way from distant dim Zembla to green Appalachia, through the entire length of the poem, following the road of its rhythm, riding past in a rhyme, skidding around the corner of a run-on, breathing with the caesura, swinging down to the foot of the page from line to line as from branch to branch, hiding between two words, reappearing on the horizon of a new canto, steadily marching nearer in iambic motion, crossing streets, moving up with his valise on the escalator of the pentameter, stepping off, boarding a new train of thought, entering the hall of a hotel, putting out the bedlight, while Shade blots out a word, and falling asleep as the poet lays down his pen for the night" (78)

It was said on Tuesday (I think by Morgan) that Shade might not exist--that he simply isn't. This passage leads me to believe that Gradus doesn't exist. He is seen as the personification of the poem, almost as if he is inside the poem, running through the pages and hanging out in the different stanzas. It could possibly be that Gradus is just a deeper layer of the poem. Perhaps the commentator won't meet him until he gets to the ninth rung of the ladder. Shade coincidentally finished the poem on the very day that he died, but maybe it isn't a coincidence at all. Maybe, in the act of finishing the poem, Shade felt that his life was finished as well--that his life was the poem. By finishing the poem, Gradus, this deepest layer, sprang from the poem in some mystical, sci-fi/fantasy way, shot Shade, and jumped back into the pages. Or, maybe after having completed the poem Shade decided that his life was over and that he should shoot himself and push the blame onto Gradus, that deepest layer of his poem.

Five Facts

1. Nabokov was very smart

2. Nabokov was a writer

3. Nabokov was a scientist

4. Nabokov was a United States immigrant

5. Nabokov was bilingual

Representations quotes

Forgot to say -
Quotations are from A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, pages 19-20 and 21-22

Representations

“Today I had to meet a man I haven’t see for ten years. And all that time I had thought I was remembering him well—how he looked and spoke and the sort of things he said. The first five minutes of the real man shattered the image completely. Not that he had changed. On the contrary. I kept on thinking, ‘Yes, of course, of course. I’d forgotten that he thought that—or disliked this, or knew so-and-so—or jerked his head back that way.’ I had known all these things once and I recognized them the moment I met them again. But they had all faded out of my mental picture of him, and when they were all replaced by his actual presence the total effect was quite astonishingly different from the image I had carried about with me for those ten years...

“I remember being rather horrified one summer morning long ago when a burly, cheerful labouring man, carrying a hoe and a watering pot came into our churchyard and, as he pulled the gate behind him, shouted over his shoulder to two friends, ‘See you later, I’m just going to visit Mum.’ He meant he was going to weed and water and generally tidy up her grave…. A six-by-three-foot flower-bed had become Mum. That was his symbol for her, his link with her. Caring for it was visiting her. May this not be in one way better than preserving and caressing an image in one’s own memory? The grave and the image are equally links with the irrecoverable and symbols for the unimaginable. But the image has the added disadvantage that it will do whatever you want. It will smile or frown, be tender, gay, ribald, or argumentative just as your mood demands. It is a puppet of which you hold the strings…. The fatal obedience of the image, its insipid dependence on me, is bound to increase. The flower-bed on the other hand is an obstinate, resistant, often intractable bit of reality, just as Mum in her lifetime doubtless was.”

Our mental images of scenes and of people changes over time. We typically forget that a person is such a way, or we simply might be projecting our own qualities or the qualities of others that we know onto a person we haven’t seen in years. In the two versions of Las Meninas that Dusty gave us in class, we have two depictions of an image that Velasquez held in his mind. The painting by Velasquez is a representation of that image that he thought of; Picasso’s painting is a representation of that representation.

The image that Velasquez saw in his mind might have changed over time, and might have changed even while he was creating the painting. Likewise, the image that Picasso saw in his mind of a rendition of Velasquez’s image may have changed over time as well. However, once each of the paintings was completed, the dynamic of the image held in the respective artists’ minds ceased to matter. (One could even argue that the dynamic ceased to exist altogether). The images as we see them today are static and unchanging, much like a six-by-three-foot flower-bed.

The change that happens to the paintings occurs within our own minds. More specifically, it occurs in the memory. With the exception of people with eidetic memory, we the viewers cannot remember perfectly what each painting looks like down to the last hair on the princess’s head. If we go a few years without looking at either painting, we might forget some small and even some large details—yes, the painter is the same height as the canvas in Picasso’s painting but not in Velasquez’s; the boy in the bottom-right corner is in fact stepping on the dog; the hooks on the ceiling are almost impossible to see in Velasquez’s painting. These details will slip from our memories over time, and we will be left with a general idea of the paintings but unable to recall the exact image.

The Concept and the Idea of Order

Dusty discussed Saussure’s idea that all signifiers are part of the same order, and all signifieds are part of the same order, but the pairing of signifier and signified is completely accidental. This brings to mind “The Idea of Order at Key West”, and that “The water never formed to mind or voice.” It seems the water is neither a signified—mind—nor a signifier—voice. The speaker is so enthralled with the woman that, although he acknowledges the sea, he does not bother to attach meaning to it or to give much more thought to it other than the fact that it is in all ways inferior to the woman. The sea is “merely a place by which she walked to sing,” and therefore it is not an entity itself—it is more like the scenery than a subject or even an object.