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[NABOKOV-L] TRLSK mismatches,
"an unofficial rose" and a parallel with PF.
"an unofficial rose" and a parallel with PF.
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Dear List,
Although it is difficult to imagine that the ideas presented below have not been exaustively discussed before, or refered by many other articles not mentioned here, I thought it might be interesting to bring up two ironic items (which will reappear in relation to SK's death) I came across while reading Chs.2 and 3 of TRLSK:
(a) Sebastian's bout of nostalgia in Roquebrune, Monte Carlo, before he learns that his English mother had died in another city, namely, Roquebrune, Var. (cf.p.20);
(b) The narrator, SK's all Russian half-brother, assuming that, in SK's book "Lost Property", he is describing his feelings towards Russia - whereas the reference seems to be to exiled R. Brooke's longing for England.
[ Cp. Rupert Brooke's poem, written in 1912 in Berlin, titled "The Old Vicarage, Granchester"* and (on p.27) a quote from SK's Lost Property: "that one of the purest emotions is that of the banished man pining after the land of his birth[...]the blue remembered hills and the happy highways, the hedge with its unofficial rose and the field with its rabbits, the distant spire...". if we keep in mind that this passage was selected to confirm that " the romantic - and let me add, somewhat artificial - passion for his mother's land, could not, I am sure, exclude the real affection for the country where he had born and bred".]
Following links about R.Brooke, through Google, I reached Andrey Babikov's paper: "On Germination of Nabokov's "Main Theme" in his Story "Natasha", in which he informs us that in the spring of 1921 Nabokov wrote an essay on "Rupert Brooke" and that, for D.B.Johnson, "Rupert Brooke played a crucial role in the formulation of the potustoronnost' [or "hereafter"] theme that was central to much of Nabokov's later art and life.". A.Babikov also mentions Alexander Dolinin's "The Real Life of the Writer Sirin," in which he "draws our attention to the presence of the theme of the hereafter in Nabokov's 1920's Berlin poems, in which he tries to express "the mysterious unseen connections of the living with the dead".
It was when I realized that hidden behind this theme we come to another: Nabokov's own sufferings in Berlin, at the time his father was shot, is hinted by a line that is reminiscent of Bede's sparrow.
TRLSK: (page 18):"Sebastian's image does not appear as part of my boyhood [...] it comes to me in a few bright patches, as if he were not a constant member of our family, but some erratic visitor passing across a lighted room and then for a long interval fading into the night."
In The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, The Venerable Bede (AD673/AD735) compares man´s life on earth to the arrow flight of a small sparrow crossing a lighted hall "passing from winter into winter". Priscilla Meyer [ Find What the Sailor Has Hidden,Vladimir Nabokov´s 'Pale Fire' (pg.73) notes, in relation to VN's father's assassination and Bede, that "Nabokov uses the metaphor of the house, of enclosure, for the concept of mortal time, with windows as the point of transition into and out of it".
..........................................................
* - R.Brooke:
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
A slippered Hesper[...]
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Although it is difficult to imagine that the ideas presented below have not been exaustively discussed before, or refered by many other articles not mentioned here, I thought it might be interesting to bring up two ironic items (which will reappear in relation to SK's death) I came across while reading Chs.2 and 3 of TRLSK:
(a) Sebastian's bout of nostalgia in Roquebrune, Monte Carlo, before he learns that his English mother had died in another city, namely, Roquebrune, Var. (cf.p.20);
(b) The narrator, SK's all Russian half-brother, assuming that, in SK's book "Lost Property", he is describing his feelings towards Russia - whereas the reference seems to be to exiled R. Brooke's longing for England.
[ Cp. Rupert Brooke's poem, written in 1912 in Berlin, titled "The Old Vicarage, Granchester"* and (on p.27) a quote from SK's Lost Property: "that one of the purest emotions is that of the banished man pining after the land of his birth[...]the blue remembered hills and the happy highways, the hedge with its unofficial rose and the field with its rabbits, the distant spire...". if we keep in mind that this passage was selected to confirm that " the romantic - and let me add, somewhat artificial - passion for his mother's land, could not, I am sure, exclude the real affection for the country where he had born and bred".]
Following links about R.Brooke, through Google, I reached Andrey Babikov's paper: "On Germination of Nabokov's "Main Theme" in his Story "Natasha", in which he informs us that in the spring of 1921 Nabokov wrote an essay on "Rupert Brooke" and that, for D.B.Johnson, "Rupert Brooke played a crucial role in the formulation of the potustoronnost' [or "hereafter"] theme that was central to much of Nabokov's later art and life.". A.Babikov also mentions Alexander Dolinin's "The Real Life of the Writer Sirin," in which he "draws our attention to the presence of the theme of the hereafter in Nabokov's 1920's Berlin poems, in which he tries to express "the mysterious unseen connections of the living with the dead".
It was when I realized that hidden behind this theme we come to another: Nabokov's own sufferings in Berlin, at the time his father was shot, is hinted by a line that is reminiscent of Bede's sparrow.
TRLSK: (page 18):"Sebastian's image does not appear as part of my boyhood [...] it comes to me in a few bright patches, as if he were not a constant member of our family, but some erratic visitor passing across a lighted room and then for a long interval fading into the night."
In The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, The Venerable Bede (AD673/AD735) compares man´s life on earth to the arrow flight of a small sparrow crossing a lighted hall "passing from winter into winter". Priscilla Meyer [ Find What the Sailor Has Hidden,Vladimir Nabokov´s 'Pale Fire' (pg.73) notes, in relation to VN's father's assassination and Bede, that "Nabokov uses the metaphor of the house, of enclosure, for the concept of mortal time, with windows as the point of transition into and out of it".
..........................................................
* - R.Brooke:
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star,
A slippered Hesper[...]
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/