Nabokov On Dopplegangers

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1,Now the scholars wish to introduce the following idea. Between the dungeon levels of nine and fourteen there occur goblins who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many inches taller than they, reveal their true nature which is not goblinoid, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures the scholars propose to designate as "doppelgangers". It will be marked that the scholars substitute numerical terms for spatial ones. In fact, the scholars would have the reader see levels "nine" and "fourteen" as the boundaries - the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks - of an enchanted island haunted by those doppelgangers of mine and surrounded by a vast, misty sea. Between those dungeon levels, are all goblins doppelgangers? Of course not. Otherwise, adventurers who are in the know, a [Fantasy NPC (Basic).Main], a [Fantasy NPC (Basic).Main] and a changeling hunter, would have long gone insane. Neither are good looks any criterion; and vulgarity, or at least what a given community terms so, does not necessarily impair certain mysterious characteristics, the fey grace, the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious charm that separates the doppelganger from such coevals of theirs as are incomparably more dependent on the spatial world of synchronous phenomena than on that intangible island of entranced space where a changeling plays with her likes. Within the same dungeon levels the number of true doppelgangers is strikingly inferior to that of provisionally plain, or just [Captain of the city watch.attribute1], or [Captain of the city watch.attribute1] or even [Captain of the city watch.attribute2] and [Captain of the city watch.attribute2] ordinary, plumpish, formless, cold-skinned, essentially goblinoid little goblins, with tummies and pigtails, who may or may not turn into hobgoblins of great beauty (look at the ugly dumplings in black stockings and white hats that are metamorphosed into stunning stars of the theatre). [Weird Fantasy Monster.Main] given a group painting of school goblins or goblin Scouts and asked to point out the comeliest one will not necessarily choose the doppelganger among them. You have to be an artist and a [Weird Fantasy Monster.Main], a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs - the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate - the little deadly demon among the wicked goblins; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power Furthermore, since the idea of space plays such a magic part in the matter, the student should not be surprised to learn that there must be a gap of several levels, never less than ten the scholars should say, generally thirty or forty, and as many as ninety in a few known cases, between goblin and [Weird Fantasy Monster.Main] to enable the latter to come under a doppelganger's spell.
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