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My understanding of Plato's philosophy is extremely limited; it is based on (a) vaguely remembered study of the Apology and a couple of dialogues in my freshman year of college; and (b) hearing people talk about how Plato is the foundation of Western mind/body dualism -- which is probably the worst way of learning what he actually said; I am getting a reference to "Plato" as a concept, wrapped in multiple filters (my own and whoever's is speaking, and those of the milieu in which the discussion takes place).

That said, I find myself quite preoccupied from time to time, with the question of mind and body -- are they one or two things? Nabokov (or rather, Cincinnatus C.) seems to come down pretty squarely on the side of them being two separate things -- the whole concept of "gnostic turpitude" and personal transparence/opacity is rooted in a dualistic view. I've gotta go now but I'd like to write more about why this is true (and eventually about my own feelings on the issue) later on.

I think what I'm trying to get at with the term "dualism", is the feeling I get from the text, that Cincinnatus has another essence more real than his physical presence. This comes up again and again, for instance on p. 120:

The subject now will be the precious quality of Cincinnatus; his fleshy incompleteness; the fact that the greater part of him was in a quite different place, while only an insignificant portion of it was wandering, perplexed, here[.]

Also, the idea that his death will be a release -- if I am not reading this into the text -- seems to contain in it a notion of a separate spiritual or intellectual reality.