Subject
Re: THOUGHT on Shade as poet
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Date
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In a message dated 1/19/2010 9:40:52 AM Central Standard Time,
morris.jr@COMCAST.NET writes:
>
> I'd love to know if VN included this stanza in his recital.
>
> He did indeed. His thick Russian accent can sound unintentionally
> ironic, of course, but I hear him reading the entire death-of- Hazel section with
> pathos and compassion. Does anyone know if these readings are in fact
> available digitally? If they're not, and if there's no copyright issue, I'd
> be glad to digitize them and upload them someplace.
>
> A final thought: Ever since I first read "Pale Fire" the novel, and began
> discussing it with other readers, I've been fascinated to realize that
> there is immense disagreement about the merits of "Pale Fire" the poem. I can
> only say that the stanza Stan quotes seems pretty darn good to me. Does
> the melodrama seem overdone, Stan, or perhaps the cadence of the words
> themselves doesn't make music for you? I've heard both these criticisms
> leveled, not unreasonably, at the poem, but . . . works for me!
>
>
Some of VN's Harvard readings are here:
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/realaud.htm
Only prose from PF though. It appears that the Harvard library released a
two-cassette compilation in 1988. It's a shame there isn't more available
online.
I've been following this with interest. "PF" strikes me as the best poem
VN could write for his fictional poet. He said that it was the hardest
writing he'd ever done and excitedly read passages to Vera as soon as they were
finished.
Shade's university doesn't sound "red-brick" to me. I wonder why one
poster used that phrase.
If Frost was considered the major American poet of his era and if Shade is
mentioned (on TV) as being only "one oozy footstep" behind him, then Shade
must have been conceived by VN as more than "minor."
I have written elsewhere about the use of heroic couplets in poems
contemporary with "PF." The chief example is Robert Lowell's The Mills of the
Kavanaughs, which uses couplets extensively. I do think that VN (through JS) was
trying to top Lowell in "PF." He and RL got along early on but became
estranged over the Onegin controversy. I've also suggested that VN may have had
his sometime friend Yvor Winters in mind in conceiving Shade. There are
many interesting parallels between JS and Winters, especially in their
fondness for heroic couplets.
A 999-line narrative poem is surely going to nod from time to time, and
scrutinizing short passages as closely as one would look, say, at a sonnet is
bound to bring up some phrases that may seem less than excellent. But these
phrases, in the larger context of Shade's narrative, may in fact do the job
pretty well, just as taking "PF" in the larger context of PF should allow us
to cut the poem a little slack. Certainly Kinbote, crazy as he is, thinks
it a masterpiece.
If JS is a "lousy" poet, then the cause is VN's failure to provide him with
a better poem. But, as I've said before, I think that VN provided him with
a pretty good one.
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morris.jr@COMCAST.NET writes:
>
> I'd love to know if VN included this stanza in his recital.
>
> He did indeed. His thick Russian accent can sound unintentionally
> ironic, of course, but I hear him reading the entire death-of- Hazel section with
> pathos and compassion. Does anyone know if these readings are in fact
> available digitally? If they're not, and if there's no copyright issue, I'd
> be glad to digitize them and upload them someplace.
>
> A final thought: Ever since I first read "Pale Fire" the novel, and began
> discussing it with other readers, I've been fascinated to realize that
> there is immense disagreement about the merits of "Pale Fire" the poem. I can
> only say that the stanza Stan quotes seems pretty darn good to me. Does
> the melodrama seem overdone, Stan, or perhaps the cadence of the words
> themselves doesn't make music for you? I've heard both these criticisms
> leveled, not unreasonably, at the poem, but . . . works for me!
>
>
Some of VN's Harvard readings are here:
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/realaud.htm
Only prose from PF though. It appears that the Harvard library released a
two-cassette compilation in 1988. It's a shame there isn't more available
online.
I've been following this with interest. "PF" strikes me as the best poem
VN could write for his fictional poet. He said that it was the hardest
writing he'd ever done and excitedly read passages to Vera as soon as they were
finished.
Shade's university doesn't sound "red-brick" to me. I wonder why one
poster used that phrase.
If Frost was considered the major American poet of his era and if Shade is
mentioned (on TV) as being only "one oozy footstep" behind him, then Shade
must have been conceived by VN as more than "minor."
I have written elsewhere about the use of heroic couplets in poems
contemporary with "PF." The chief example is Robert Lowell's The Mills of the
Kavanaughs, which uses couplets extensively. I do think that VN (through JS) was
trying to top Lowell in "PF." He and RL got along early on but became
estranged over the Onegin controversy. I've also suggested that VN may have had
his sometime friend Yvor Winters in mind in conceiving Shade. There are
many interesting parallels between JS and Winters, especially in their
fondness for heroic couplets.
A 999-line narrative poem is surely going to nod from time to time, and
scrutinizing short passages as closely as one would look, say, at a sonnet is
bound to bring up some phrases that may seem less than excellent. But these
phrases, in the larger context of Shade's narrative, may in fact do the job
pretty well, just as taking "PF" in the larger context of PF should allow us
to cut the poem a little slack. Certainly Kinbote, crazy as he is, thinks
it a masterpiece.
If JS is a "lousy" poet, then the cause is VN's failure to provide him with
a better poem. But, as I've said before, I think that VN provided him with
a pretty good one.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/