Subject
THOUGHTS on Shade's Litany of Hates
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On Apr 25, 2010, at 9:26 PM, NABOKV-L wrote:
> [Jim Twiggs' post was apparently misplaced during the birthday
> celebrations on Friday. Here it is now! -- SES]
> ... I've always thought there's a corresponding point near the end
> of Shade's poem. It comes here, in lines 923-930:
>
> Now I shall speak of evil as none has
> Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;
> The white-hosed moron torturing a black
> Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;
> Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;
> Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;
> Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx
> Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.
>
> Everything after "I loathe" is not Shade but rather pure Nabokov...
> as if Shade had stopped writing and a pre-cut set of pet peeves had
> been pasted in--that I assume it's VN's way of winking at us from
> behind the character he's created and is now making fun of.
>
> If ... VN was trying in every line to write the best poem he could
> write, then these lines strike me as being among the weakest in the
> poem--weak because... they're downright silly.
>
> ...In his letter to Rust Hills dated March 23, 1961, offering the
> poem to Esquire, he said: "If you want this poem despite its being
> rather racy and tricky, and unpleasant, and bizarre, I must ask you
> to publish all four cantos." Those are adjectives that some readers
> would prefer not to apply to Shade's poem ...
>
> Jim Twiggs
Your remarks anticipate somethings I've wanted to write about for
sometime about this passage and Canto 4 in general. Right now though
only a few thoughts.
You are right that almost all of the items in the shit-list can be
attributed to VN,
although Jazz is supported by Kinbote's the first quawk of Jazz and
apparently shared by VN.
Bull-fighting, Picasso's art (abstractist bric-a-brac; / Primitivist
folk-masks),
and probably progressive schools; / Music in supermarkets– are
particular to VN.
swimming pools is an outlier that bears further consideration.
Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, are things everyone
dislikes.
Freud is disliked by both VN and Shade, if Kinbote can be believed.
Marx of course is particularly disliked by VN.
Fake thinkers may be taken as referring to, and generalizing upon, the
just mentioned Freud & Marx.
puffed-up poets, if taken to include, especially, T. S. Eliot, is
shared by Shade & VN.
Who likes frauds and sharks? (not investors or swimmers).
Overall, there doesn't appear to be much order to the list, and this
is worth noting.
Swimming pools may remind Shade of Hazel's death. Far-fetched?
You might like to go back and read the entire canto with this question
in mind:
For each metaphor how decipherable is it?
I'm not going to go into that kind of detail here but simply point to
the passage closely following the above one and ask how it gets decoded:
And now a silent liner docks, and now
Sunglassers tour Beirut, and now I plough
Old Zembla’s fields where my gray stubble grows,
And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose.
The disjointed thoughts, which begin right from the start of the
canto, the looseness of metaphor throughout, the obsession with the
act of shaving, and the litany of hates, some of which seem odd, all
point to the notion that Shade is truly loosing his grip on reality;
and perhaps his sense of identity!
The unprepared inclusion of VN's pet peeves in Shade's litany of
hates, along with the remote swimming pools, is intended to confuse,
and secondarily amuse, the reader and make him ask if Shade isn't
losing his mind.
One's take on this question depends a lot upon how one takes, as in
recites, the litany of hates passage.
Is it merely petulant, let's say, or truly mad, i.e., raging?
On the question of the goodness of Pale Fire as poem, and this is a
standing, strong, opinion of mine: one should evaluate any poem based
mainly upon one's own experience of it and without much recourse to
extra-libra opinions, be it the author's or some augustly received
critic's. This is, I think, the way this act has traditionally been
performed. (The missionary position?) One might ask the dinner partner
how he or she likes a particular dish but one shouldn't be dependent
upon outside opinion as to whether or not it tastes good.
as per usual,
–GSL
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