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S.S. re: E. Darwin's poem, CHW reply
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Dear Charles
I must confess, I think your demands concerning the poetic quality of the PF
(the poem) seem to me a bit too dogmatic. While I agree that the question
how high is its quality is important, I do not see why the dependency should be
"linear" (higher the quality – better for the whole novel - and for VN; from
your postings I had the impression that this is your firm belief).
Dear Sergei,
Sadly, I fear I have been giving you completely the wrong impression. My
admiration for VN’s Pale Fire is boundless. To my mind it is a comic masterpiece
of stratospheric dimension. I bought the paperback on a railway station in
1964, and shook with laughter so violently that the train passengers started
staring at me. Since then I have read it again and again. However, I have a
confession. After scanning the appetizing hors d’oeuvre, I set about the first
course. Pretty soon, a distinct sense of indigestion began to spoil my
repast. After glumly chewing over lines 58-70 I seriously doubted my ability to
last the distance for another 920, and skipped straight to the Commentary.
Within two pages I was totally hooked. This was no pudding, this was a champagne
soufflé. Well into the second half of the C20th, here was scintillating
satire and mordant wit, screamingly funny, and as darkly sparkling as anything
written by Bierce or Beerbohm, West or Waugh, during the preceding 60 years.
I had no a priori conception of Shade’s composition, but my reaction to both
book and poem seemed to me not unlike that of others. William Boyd’s 1998
choice of PF as his Daily Telegraph Book of the Century comments “perhaps most
importantly, it is brilliantly and brutally comic”. Pre-empted by Boyd,
Auberon Waugh settled for Lolita, in the same slot, 4 months later, but he also
hailed PF’s “finer writing”, suggesting that VN had overestimated the
intelligence of his audience. Where W.Boyd and A.Waugh strongly disagreed, however
was on the nature of Shade’s cantos. W.Boyd remarked that the poem was “
beautiful” and “a wonderful achievement in its own right”. Waugh, I think with
deliberate brutality, called it “999 lines of gibberish verse”, signalling his
vigorous opposition to Boyd’s verdict on this point. William Boyd’s more
recent comment appears to emphasize yet again how extremely funny the book is,
but I believe he was silent on the cantos. My further confession is that it
was several months before I finally struggled through them in their
entirety.
In one of my own recent posts I remarked that “the entire discussion of
Pale Fire the novel still seems to me to hinge on the reader’s judgement of the
aesthetic quality of Shade’s verse”, and this post crossed with Matthew Roth’
s, where he said almost the same thing, namely: I also agree with Sergei (I
think) who said that this discussion somewhat misses the point. What is
actually important is how the poem's goodness or badness relates to the novel as
a whole. If VN intended the poem to be good but the poem is bad, the novel
is deeply flawed. The more difficult question is what happens when we say
that VN intended to poem to be a mediocrity. For me, this interpretation
presents great aesthetic problems for the novel, but I will save them for now.
Earlier I had also said: “Shade's poem, and its quality, is obviously an
absolutely crucial and critical feature of VN's book. Perhaps one's whole
understanding of the book hinges on the poetic quality one attaches to the poem.” (Our
discussion goes round in circles, and my memory is definitely limping these
days.)
I make no “demands” at all concerning the quality of (the poem). You
yourself, Sergei, have also said: I think that the opinion that the poem in itself
is "weak" and not a good poetry (forcefully presented at this list) is
justified by several really weak and even ridiculous places in the text. But it
could be much farther form the final version planned by Shade, than Kinbote
wants us to believe! I think Vic Perry also made the good point about the
poem being in itself unfinished. But I do not believe that the “quality” of
Shade’s writing necessarily has any bearing whatsoever on the “quality” of the
novel. I do believe that a well-considered judgement of the quality of the
poem completely determines one’s understanding, and the nature of one's
enjoyment, of the novel.
Opinion is clearly seriously divided about Shade’s abilities as a poet, on
the evidence presented by his creator. I was rather puzzled by the EDNote: ….
I'm going to request that this discussion (regarding . . . hmmmm: colors, the
quality of poetry, the "reality" of fiction and the fiction of "reality")
slip through the looking glass and continue there, off list. These topics all
seem to me unavoidably central in any consideration of VN as a writer, and I
do not understand how they can be shunted off-list, if this forum is to
continue as a stimulating debating hall and not solely a dull, if worthy, library.
You also asked: The aim of this posting is not to discuss the poetic quality
of the PF, but to ask, what other works containing important parts written in
verse and in prose we could compare with PF? And how the quality of verse
part (seen as poetry) influenced the quality of the whole?
This reminded me of an assertion by Robert Graves: "The poet .......... is
expected to present a plain unannotated text of his poems, and no supporting
documents or testimonials whatsoever." Dame Ocupacyon, The Crowning Privilege;
Cassell 1955; p.115. Graves was an impossibly committed purist when it came
to poetry, and he was probably having a dig at Eliot’s notes to The Waste
Land, as he disliked Eliot as much as VN appears to.
You also asked me, in connection with Erasmus Darwin’s mighty opus: What
word do you speak of ? In compliance with (presumed) editorial wishes, I can
no longer utter it, but it is obviously a very great favourite with Erasmus,
and starts with “a”. A man of the C18th, he applies it almost exclusively to
the finny world. His poem can be found here
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10671/10671
Every good wish,
Charles
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