Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0008411, Sat, 16 Aug 2003 10:39:59 -0700

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Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3492 Pale Fire Canto 4
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----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>


>
> pynchon-l-digest Saturday, August 16 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3492
>
>
> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:22:34 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: NPPF - Canto Four
>
> Part 1 of 3
> I suppose you're all waiting for me to find AF in hinge and screw affair.
> There's a ton of interesting terms, it would take a work-week to look up.
>
>
> L835 - beauty
>
> I'm a latecomer to philosophy, but isn't Beauty, or aesthetics,
> what one appeals to, if unable to justify valuation rationally?
>
> Emily Dickinson associates Beauty (AC I say) with Truth (AF):
>
>
http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/ReadingRoom/Poetry/Dickinson/i-died-f
> or-beauty
> Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson
> > I died for beauty but was scarce
> > Adjusted in the tomb,
> > When one who died for truth was lain
> > In an adjoining room.
> > He questioned softly why I failed?
> > "For beauty," I replied.
> > "And I for truth,--the two are one;
> > We brethren are," he said.
> > And so, as kinsmen met a night,
> > We talked between the rooms,
> > Until the moss had reached our lips,
> > And covered up our names.
>
>
> L874 - midsummer
>
> Surfing midsummer mostly brought up MND:
> This MND idea resembles the PF Smith and Schmidt idea:
>
> http://www.pathguy.com/mnd.htm
> Enjoying "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare
> > Hippolyta: More literal-minded than Theseus. She cannot
> > bring her imagination to consider a bad play good. But she
> > notes that the lovers' tale of paranormal experience in the
> > woods presents "great constancy" -- what paranormal
> > investigators look for today. Like most of us, Hippolyta
> > decides, "If they're all telling the same story, there may
> > be something to it."
> ...
> > What Does It All Mean?
> > I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it
> > was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this
> > dream. -- Bottom
>
>
> L894 - Marat
>
> Marat's killer Charlotte Corday interests the N list:
> They say VN alludes to Corday often, elsewhere.
>
> http://arthistory.about.com/library/blmarat.htm
> The Death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David Study Guide
>
> http://perso.club-internet.fr/seni/life_of_marat.html
> Jean Paul Marat: His Life
>
> http://felix2.2y.net/english/jpmie.html
> Jean Paul Marat
> > 20 years before the french revolution, Marat wrote the
> > chains of slavery in England where he attacks the tyranny of
> > the princes.
> (...summarized there)
>
> http://www.swil.ocdsb.edu.on.ca/modwest/French%20Rev./marat.html
> French Revolution/Jean-Paul Marat
> > The longest lasting legacy that Marat gave to the Revolution
> > and to the Western World is his contribution to nationalism.
>
> http://members.chello.nl/jsteenis/power2.htm
> Jean-Paul Marat
> > Only the masses, the people without power, can belong to the
> > autonomous club of Marat. When there are enough clubs they
> > will form a new controlling fourth power next to the
> > existing Trias Politica.
>
> http://www.startribune.com/stories/1389/646786.html
> Arguments for the Ages: Jean-Paul Marat
> > Editor's note: Among the most strident and violent of the
> > voices in the French Revolution was that of Jean-Paul Marat
> > (1743-1793), a Swiss-born doctor-turned-journalist. Before
> > his assassination by Charlotte Corday in 1793, who stabbed
> > him in his bath, he lay much of the foundation for the Reign
> > of Terror that followed.
>
> http://www.asis.com/sfhs/women/charlotte.html
> Charlotte Corday's Murder of Jean-Paul Marat
> > Proof of her romantic dreams is in her statement that she
> > had intended to stab Marat in the hall of the Convention.
> > She had imagined herself stabbing Marat in the heart right
> > in front of the entire Committee.
> ....
> > Despite her valiant efforts, Corday's attempts to save
> > France were in vain. Instead of ending the reign of Marat
> > she made him die a martyr. His funeral was an extravagant
> > ceremony and his remains were hysterically worshipped.
> ....
> > Vergniaud said, "She has killed us, but she has taught us
> > how to die." She died bravely on the guillotine four days
> > after the murder of Marat.
>
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:35:39 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: NPPF - Canto Four
>
> Part 2 of 3
>
> L897-8 - between wick and grimace ... invites the wicked nick
>
> As I shew in TSE's _wasteland_ the tongue is a candle's wick.
>
> So the space between then would be interior to the mouth,
> and pen is is commonly written sword (and semen is commonly
> written blood, if my AF hermeneutics are true). Wicked is a
> nod to the preterist, who cannot distinguish God from evil
> in all that is numinous (which BTW, is from nodding -> AF!).
>
>
> L916 - the sensation for which poets hope
>
> As my cataloging of AF fellows reveals, selected poets are
> the great repository of AF imagery, after ancient religions.
>
> I recall Baudelaires' "In studious awe the poets brood /
> before my monumental pose," Hey, Voila--in the poem _Beauty_:
>
> http://home.carolina.rr.com/alienfamily/17.htm
> BEAUTY
> I am beautiful, O mortals! Like a dream in stone,
> And my breast, upon which each is bruised in turn,
> Inspires in a poet love silent and eternal
> Like that of the material|clay flesh and bronze bone.
> On my azure throne I sit like a sphinx|misunderstood;
> I unite a heart of snow with the whiteness of swans;
> I hate the way lines are displaced from innate bonds,
> And never do I laugh or cry as I should.
> The poets, before my great attitudes
> I seem to steal from haughty monuments
> Waste their days of austere study getting just the right mood;
> For I fascinate these docile lovers of sense,
> With pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful:
> My eyes, my eyes large with a clarity eternal.
>
>
> L901 - Adam's apple
>
> Or, the forbidden fruit.
>
>
> L918 - the immediate phrase
>
> The only word not mediated by discourse, nor by the other
> subject, is the self-reflexive carnal speech act: AF, AC.
>
>
> L922 - Our Cream
>
> Capitalized, to be annotated by Kinbote as a bubbly foam
> (although referring to an advertisement - a red herring)
> sure catches my attention, like the difference in simply
> semen and a semen and saliva mixture. Aphrodite was born
> of the foam of the sea, from some poor god's severed pen
> is. Nietzsche specified foam in this clearly AF sequence:
>
> _The Portable Nietzsche_ pg. 99 _The Gay Science_ [310]: _Will and Wave_.
> > How greedily this wave approaches,
> > as if there were some objective to be reached!
> > How, with awe-inspiring haste,
> > it crawls into the inmost nooks of the rocky cliff!
> > It seems that it wants to anticipate somebody;
> > it seems that something is hidden there,
> > something of value, high value.
> > And now it comes back, a little more slowly,
> > still quite white with excitement...
> > Carry on as you please, you pranksters;
> > roar with delight and malice - or dive again,
> > pouring your emeralds into the deepest depths,
> > and cast your endless white manes of FOAM and spray over them
> > - everything suits me, for everything suits you so well,
> > and I am so well disposed toward you for everything:
> > how could I think of betraying you! For - heed it well!
> > - I know you and your secret, I know your kind!
> > You and I - are we not of one kind?
> > You and I - do we not have one secret?
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 09:44:54 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: NPPF - Canto Four
>
> Part 3 of 3
>
> L923-4 - Now I shall speak of evil as none has / Spoken before.
>
> See wicked, above. I have mentioned another possibility exists,
> a reversal of blessing, exceeding what two lists might stomach.
>
>
> L936-38 - I plough ... slaves make hay
>
> The AF discovery position is also yoga's plough posture.
> Religion terms us greek doulos, bondservants, of Jesus Christ.
> Make hay is slang for intercourse. I think my father used it.
>
>
> L939-40 - Man's life as commentary to abstruse /
> Unfinished poem. Note for further use.
>
> That is, God, or the Uni-verse; or this dispensation of it.
> Similarly, my eisegesis has reached a point of superfluity.
>
>
> L958 - Hebe's Cup
>
> > Hebe was the Greek gods' cup-bearer, from which they
> > quaffed the ambrosia that made them immortal.
>
>
> L957-8 - Dim Gulf, Night Rote, Hebe's Cup, Pale Fire
>
> This seems to recount Dante's down and up, making HC
> the restorative to DG = AF, initiating the katabasis;
> according to my exposition of such in Heroic Alterity.
>
>
> L965-6 - and the noun I meant / To use but did not.
>
> This recalls a reversal in Dickinson, and the usual
> yin - yang gender assignment of passive and active:
>
>
http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Topic/WomensStudies/ReadingRoom/Poetry/Dicki
> nson/going-to-him
> Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson
>
> "Going to him! Happy letter! Tell him--
> Tell him the page I didn't write;
> Tell him I only said the syntax,
> AND LEFT THE VERB AND THE PRONOUN OUT.
>
> Tell him just how the fingers hurried
> Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow-
> And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
> So you could see what moved them so.
>
> "Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,
> You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
> You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
> As if it held but the might of a child;
> You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
> Tell him--No, you may quibble there,
> For it would split his heart to know it,
> And then you and I were silenter.
>
> "Tell him night finished before we finished
> And the old clock kept neighing 'day!'
> And you got sleepy and begged to be ended--
> What could it hinder so, to say?
> Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious
> But if he ask where you are hid
> Until to-morrow,--happy letter!
> Gesture, coquette, and shake your head!"
>
>
> ....which causes me to re-think Dewlap:
>
> Like the feral child who cannot learn language,
> I feel that always-covered genitals have left
> my imagination unable to picture a pudendum in
> all it's varied and marvelous views. But as my
> wife bent over in the garden in a short dress,
> I realized: Now that's a dewlap, and a prickly
> pear! And I recall a now-defunct Baubo's world
> website using a phrase like, a buffalo stance.
>
>
> L967-8 - Maybe my sensual love for the consonne /
> D'appui, Echo's Fey child...
>
> Google translate says "supporting consonant"
>
> Echo recalls Narcissus, who loved his own image (or I say
> without linguistic support maybe, countenance, face: AF?)
>
> Fey: ... 1 [now chiefly Scot.] a) orig., fated, doomed to
> death b) in an unusually excited state, formarely believed to
> portend sudden death 2 strange or unusual in any of certain
> ways, as, variously, eccentric, whimsical, visionary, elfin,
> shy, otherworldly. (Websters NWCD)
>
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 16:47:15 -0700
> From: Mary Krimmel <mary@krimmel.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Four
>
> Keats's Grecian urn is - silently, pictorially and centuries earlier -
more
> succinct.
> "Beauty is truth, truth beauty".
>
> Mary Krimmel
>
> At 09:22 AM 8/15/03 -0700, Glenn Scheper wrote:
>
> >Emily Dickinson associates Beauty (AC I say) with Truth (AF):
> >
>
>http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/ReadingRoom/Poetry/Dickinson/i-died-
f
> >or-beauty
> >Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson
> > > I died for beauty but was scarce
> > > Adjusted in the tomb,
> > > When one who died for truth was lain
> > > In an adjoining room.
> > > He questioned softly why I failed?
> > > "For beauty," I replied.
> > > "And I for truth,--the two are one;
> > > We brethren are," he said.
> > > And so, as kinsmen met a night,
> > > We talked between the rooms,
> > > Until the moss had reached our lips,
> > > And covered up our names.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 19:30:36 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Fw: Pynchon off-topic finished
>
.