Subject
Re: [NABOKV] {THOUGHTS] Coleridge's paradisical flower,
Shade's impress and a bitter lemon.
Shade's impress and a bitter lemon.
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Matt Roth [ to JM's quotation: "If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake - Aye! and what then?" ( "Anima Poetæ : From the Unpublished Note-books of Samuel Taylor Coleridge" (1895) edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, p. 282) ]: Very interesting find, Jansy! I immediately heard in the "If. And if" rhetorical pattern these lines, also by Shade:
If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt
Sees a new animal and captures it,
And if, a little later, Captain Smith
Brings back a new skin, that island is no myth. (759-762)
JM: Marvellous example. Its clarity helps one to conjecture that VN had really read Coleridge's essay, instead of finding his inspiration in H.G.Wells'a depressing future. Borges places Well's novel in a long literary tradition about prophesizing future events. He mentions the biblical Isaiah, Virgil's Aeneas and the seer from the Edda Saemundi, who predicted the return of the gods who, after a cyclical battle in which the Earth disappears, discover their abandoned chess-pieces lying on the lawn of a new prairie.
After the lines you recovered in connection to Coleridge's flower, Shade writes (763-766):
Our fountain was a signpost and a mark
Objectively enduring in the dark,
Strong as a bone, substantial as a tooth,
And almost vulgar in its robust truth!
I hadn't realized until now that the alteration of Captain Schmidth's name to Captain Smith already pre-announces the misprint "mountain-fountain" before Shade has discovered Jim Coates's mistake. He'll conjecture about the playfulness of chess-playing gods and plans to emulate them.
The irony of affirming that the fountain is "objectively enduring"..."strong as a bone"..." will gain another edge because, although Shade knew about the misprint at the time he penned his poem, in his chronological rendering of his experience he chooses to reiterate what seems to him as the relative importance of the way in which particular names and words are rendered or distorted, and how, in a poem, travelling in time, foreseeing the future or visiting paradise, is an ever present possibility.
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If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt
Sees a new animal and captures it,
And if, a little later, Captain Smith
Brings back a new skin, that island is no myth. (759-762)
JM: Marvellous example. Its clarity helps one to conjecture that VN had really read Coleridge's essay, instead of finding his inspiration in H.G.Wells'a depressing future. Borges places Well's novel in a long literary tradition about prophesizing future events. He mentions the biblical Isaiah, Virgil's Aeneas and the seer from the Edda Saemundi, who predicted the return of the gods who, after a cyclical battle in which the Earth disappears, discover their abandoned chess-pieces lying on the lawn of a new prairie.
After the lines you recovered in connection to Coleridge's flower, Shade writes (763-766):
Our fountain was a signpost and a mark
Objectively enduring in the dark,
Strong as a bone, substantial as a tooth,
And almost vulgar in its robust truth!
I hadn't realized until now that the alteration of Captain Schmidth's name to Captain Smith already pre-announces the misprint "mountain-fountain" before Shade has discovered Jim Coates's mistake. He'll conjecture about the playfulness of chess-playing gods and plans to emulate them.
The irony of affirming that the fountain is "objectively enduring"..."strong as a bone"..." will gain another edge because, although Shade knew about the misprint at the time he penned his poem, in his chronological rendering of his experience he chooses to reiterate what seems to him as the relative importance of the way in which particular names and words are rendered or distorted, and how, in a poem, travelling in time, foreseeing the future or visiting paradise, is an ever present possibility.
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/