S K-B
writes:Some listers seem to want the poem to ‘make sense’ as
if it were a real-estate brochure or architect’s plan.
Anthony Stadlen
responds: "But surely this is completely in the spirit of VN's own, repeatedly,
explicitly, stated approach to Anna Karenin, Ulysses, and so much else....Both
are consistent with his concern for making sense where making sense makes
sense.
JM: I agree with S K-B and with
A.Stadlen, while following VN, to the letter, when he praises the
"precision of poetry and the fantasy of science" ( too tired to go after the
quote in SO)
Also in the spirit of VN's very special contradictions and flights of
fancy.
In one of VN's comments just posted (SM,chapter 15) there is a scene in which Dmitri shows his
father a chip of ware that fitted to perfection another fragment
he remembered having found several years ago in that same spot.
Next he adds the chip his mother and his grand-mother might have found
to recreate a vase.
A truly poetic rendering that makes sense both in Wonderland
and...in the natural world ( when one thinks of the wealth of colored flying
chinks so-called butterflies!)