Subject
Ford still and Frost again
From
Date
Body
--- Matt Roth wrote:
...
> Whatever Voice
>
> O my undone biography
> Lies restless in the bone:
> The dark incumbent colloquy
> Of spirit caught in stone.
>
> If I may not myself arrange
> The lines, precise and just,
> Then I must seek before I change
> Another I may trust;
>
> Lest I should stand up from the grave
> When I am made to die
> And with whatever voice I have,
> "Author! Author!" cry.
>
> Wow! I'm sure I and others will have plenty of things to say about
this.
Well, certainly it refers to life after death, and Shade, like
Ford, pictures his future biographer (l. 887 ff.).
When I first read it, I thought Ford meant his own Author, but
I may be obsessed with that familiar trope (as in Benjamin
Franklin's epitaph, or a poem or piece of verse by Walter de
la Mare that, to my astonishment, I can't find on the Web--
the one that rhymes "sequel" and "unequal") in /Pale Fire/.
Anyway, now I think he means the imagined inaccurate author
of his biography. Too bad.
> Off the top of my head, this seems to me like Shade's voice (or
Shade's
> ghost's voice) speaking, giving us a clue that he did indeed need
> Kinbote to complete his biography.
Indeed, it looks to me like it fits Brian Boyd's theory beautifully.
> (And isn't it just like Kinbote to quote from
> the WRONG POEM!)
I sure think so, and somehow like Nabokov to send us to the facing
page (though I can't name any other examples, and you raise some
important questions on what he could have known about Ford's book).
> Note that the biography is written in "lines" that must
> be "arranged." Note also that the speaker is "made to die," which
could
> imply death by another hand. There's so much here, but I'll leave it
to
> the rest of you for now.
Something I just noticed about "The Image of Desire"--like
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", it's about fulfilling
one's responsibilities when one might rather sleep. When I first
thought about why the Frost poem is in PF, I thought it meant
so much to Kinbote because he was aware on some level (pardon
the cliche) of the responsibilities he'd abandoned by going insane.
Now knowing that Nabokov said Kinbote was about to commit suicide,
I wonder whether Kinbote was thinking that he had to finish his
/apparatus/ before he could "sleep".
Frost's poem is in there for other reasons too, several of which
I've posted about, but one of which I just noticed yesterday. In
my ignorance I don't know who first pointed it out, but I haven't
seen it in my reading, so I hope the experts will forgive my
mentioning it to those who haven't encountered it. "Stopping by
Woods" is from Frost's collection /New Hampshire/, which is
presented as the long title poem with notes, which are the
dramatic poems, and grace notes, the lyric poems. So Nabokov may
have mentioned the poem as his own note crediting someone who had
used the conceit of a book consisting of a poem and a commentary
that may be more important. (Those false-modestly named grace
notes include other immortal poems such as "Fire and Ice",
"Nothing Gold Can Stay", and... well, others' lists will differ
from mine. They also include "Blue-Butterfly Day", which
must have just been gravy.)
Jerry Friedman
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
...
> Whatever Voice
>
> O my undone biography
> Lies restless in the bone:
> The dark incumbent colloquy
> Of spirit caught in stone.
>
> If I may not myself arrange
> The lines, precise and just,
> Then I must seek before I change
> Another I may trust;
>
> Lest I should stand up from the grave
> When I am made to die
> And with whatever voice I have,
> "Author! Author!" cry.
>
> Wow! I'm sure I and others will have plenty of things to say about
this.
Well, certainly it refers to life after death, and Shade, like
Ford, pictures his future biographer (l. 887 ff.).
When I first read it, I thought Ford meant his own Author, but
I may be obsessed with that familiar trope (as in Benjamin
Franklin's epitaph, or a poem or piece of verse by Walter de
la Mare that, to my astonishment, I can't find on the Web--
the one that rhymes "sequel" and "unequal") in /Pale Fire/.
Anyway, now I think he means the imagined inaccurate author
of his biography. Too bad.
> Off the top of my head, this seems to me like Shade's voice (or
Shade's
> ghost's voice) speaking, giving us a clue that he did indeed need
> Kinbote to complete his biography.
Indeed, it looks to me like it fits Brian Boyd's theory beautifully.
> (And isn't it just like Kinbote to quote from
> the WRONG POEM!)
I sure think so, and somehow like Nabokov to send us to the facing
page (though I can't name any other examples, and you raise some
important questions on what he could have known about Ford's book).
> Note that the biography is written in "lines" that must
> be "arranged." Note also that the speaker is "made to die," which
could
> imply death by another hand. There's so much here, but I'll leave it
to
> the rest of you for now.
Something I just noticed about "The Image of Desire"--like
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", it's about fulfilling
one's responsibilities when one might rather sleep. When I first
thought about why the Frost poem is in PF, I thought it meant
so much to Kinbote because he was aware on some level (pardon
the cliche) of the responsibilities he'd abandoned by going insane.
Now knowing that Nabokov said Kinbote was about to commit suicide,
I wonder whether Kinbote was thinking that he had to finish his
/apparatus/ before he could "sleep".
Frost's poem is in there for other reasons too, several of which
I've posted about, but one of which I just noticed yesterday. In
my ignorance I don't know who first pointed it out, but I haven't
seen it in my reading, so I hope the experts will forgive my
mentioning it to those who haven't encountered it. "Stopping by
Woods" is from Frost's collection /New Hampshire/, which is
presented as the long title poem with notes, which are the
dramatic poems, and grace notes, the lyric poems. So Nabokov may
have mentioned the poem as his own note crediting someone who had
used the conceit of a book consisting of a poem and a commentary
that may be more important. (Those false-modestly named grace
notes include other immortal poems such as "Fire and Ice",
"Nothing Gold Can Stay", and... well, others' lists will differ
from mine. They also include "Blue-Butterfly Day", which
must have just been gravy.)
Jerry Friedman
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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