Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0024503, Mon, 19 Aug 2013 14:08:58 -0300

Subject
[SIGHTING] Enkrypted words and transparencies
Date
Body
PS to:
Carolyn Kunin [ to:"Perhaps someone will track down references to these various "spirits." Dubonnet, for one?"] :I think Jansy may have hit on a pun, a dig at spiritualism perhaps... Carolyn developped my point about "spirits," ...one of her first lines led me immediately to a poem by Percy B. Shelley that begins with "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!." ..."Trundling an empty barrow up the lane."

Jansy Mello: An unofficial version may be a rose, too...(VN's reference to Rupert Brooke's "The Old Vicarage,Grandchester", in "RLSK") or nothing at all ( I don't think that most listlers will find that Keats's ode to a nightingale is an inspiring source for John Shade)

However, the absurd image of a non-descript gardener trundling a barrow (already hinted at with butterfly and all in "King Queen Knave") bothered me again and I decided to check on "barrow"(present in young Shade's first passing out after meeting a mechanical toy close to his bed).

Here is what wiki brought up in relation to it and the theme of "death" (now I thought about Poussin's painting related to Arcadia*, also referred to in "Pale Fire")

wiki: A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, Hügelgräber or kurgans, and can be found throughout much of the world. A cairn (a mound of stones built for various purposes), might also be originally a tumulus. A long barrow is a long tumulus, usually for numbers of burials..
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* Et in Arcadia Ego:







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