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JF said: I like Matt Roth's idea, and I agree that the connections may
be more direct than he presented. For instance, "stiff" could
just as well refer (unbeknownst to Shade, and with grim
slanginess) to Hazel as to the Vane sisters. And contrary to
what I said to Matt off the list, I'd take "come here" not just
as getting Shade's attention, but as inviting her to join him.
MR: I agree with all of this, and I am thankful to all the responses to
my original post on the mockingbird. This is, I think, an example of
the list at its best. I floated a hypothesis--some of it good, some of
it bunk--and together I think we managed to end up knowing some things
we didn't all know before.
JF: I associated "gauzy" with the floppy tail or with the white
wing and tail patches that Joseph mentions, which I think are
translucent when backlit.
MR: I recall checking Webster's 2nd, and it included a definition for
gauzy that refers to personality--as in an insubstantial person. This
makes the most sense to me when paired with naive. I have never found
mockingbirds to look particularly gauzy--like, say, an egret--but
perhaps VN had Brian Boyd's idea in mind, as well.
All these birds remind me of something I found in some research I was
doing on "Vseslav" and The Song of Igor. Here's a bit that I wrote
about for a (hopefully) forthcoming essay:
I was looking at this passage:
but at night he prowled
in the guise of a wolf.
From Kiev, prowling, he reached,
before the cocks [crew], Tmutorokan.
The path of Great Hors,
as a wolf, prowling, he crossed. (661-66: brackets Nabokov’s)
Line 664 (before the cocks) might recall to us both John Shade’s line
603 (“Listen to distant cocks crow”) and Kinbote’s commentary on that
line, in which he quotes from a poem by Edsel Ford (“And often when the
cock crew”). Likewise, the passage summarizing Vseslav’s fate may
recall the fate of both “the waxwing slain” and that of John Shade:
“neither bird [nor bard], / can escape God’s judgment” (676-77:
brackets Nabokov’s).
Matt Roth