Frances Assa: In todays commemoration of Bloomsday, an
author turns to Nabokov when explaining why Ulysses personally affected him:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/opinion/16mccann.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper"Vladimir
Nabokov once said that the purpose of storytelling is “to portray ordinary
objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find
in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will
discern and appreciate in far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday
life will become exquisite and festive in its own right..."
JM: Nabokov's optimism, inspite
of adversity, always strikes me by its generous vein. Would VN's cruel
and sick characters function, under this light, as a kind of exorcism of
evil?
Personally, I could never figure out why, after closing a VN novel, the
overall sensation was always of luminosity and enchantment, independently
of Demon and Van Veen's actions and dreams, HH's, Hermann's, aso
(even when the latter do not fall under the pressures of evasive denial and
uncritical analysis).
Stan K-B (off List): Still in connection to former
postings on Chamberlain's proposition ( the evaluation of Shade's
art as a priority, as signalled under "insufficient
scholarship"?), and other matters, SK-B wrote: " the first question is “How
good a poet is John Shade?” The second question is “Does the first question make
any sense?”
Using his habitually clear logic, he detailed his inquiry:
"You judge REAL poets (dead or alive) from their entire corpora; you
see the poems develop; you get to know the poet and his/her milieu; you read of
his/her impact, compare your views with the critics’ ... An FP (fictional poet)
appearing within a novel or play offers fewer clues for a mature, meaningful
evaluation. The “works” of the FP, by definition, cannot be greater than those
of the FP’s creator. In particular, John Shade’s poetry must be “less-than
or equal to” VN’s “best.” But Shade’s poem has a non-poetic, narrative
role to play in the PF plot. VN is constrained by this. PF, the poem, is not
like any of VN’s serious poetry, except in occasional inspired stanzas. Much of
it is exactly the brilliant, cruel parody of a small-time academic required by
plot."
Perhaps related to my puzzlement concerning the different levels of
parody in both Shade's poem and VN's entire novel, Stan explains:
"The final leap is entirely SUBJECTIVE. I can honestly see how difficult
it might be for non-Anglophones (and esp. those of us fed huge doses of Milton,
Dryden, Pope, Goldsmith, Hood! MacGonnigal! Ogden Nash!! from schoolhood) to see
Shade’s hilariously bad rhymes through our ears. The relentless couplet is a
huge giggle....[...] Re-read the Play-within-the-Play in Hamlet. This
is the Bard parodying inferior rivals. But taking the piss out of Elizabethan
drama’s foibles including his own. I see the same situation with VN mocking
JS."
PROLOGUE
For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to
your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
HAMLET
Is this a
prologue, or the posy of a ring?
OPHELIA
‘Tis brief my
lord.
HAMLET
As woman’s love.
PLAYER KING
Full thirty times
hath Phoebus’ cart gone round
Neptune’s salt wash and Tellus’ orbed
ground
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen [HEE HEE! 30 x 12 = 360
Pale Fires!]
About the world have times twelve thirties been, ... [THUMPS ON
DE-DUM DE-DUM, quite Shadean!]
Compare this doggerel with Barnado’s
speech in Act I sc i: A similar astronomic trope but in NOBLE BLANK
VERSE!
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole
Had made
his course t’illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns ...
JM: A treat for my non-anglophone ears. It confirms my
feeling about the alternation bt. serious intention, lyrical moments, gorgeous
verbal imagery and rythm, with the use of parody, in Shade's
poem. Stan's demonstration (he stressed its "entirely subjective" aspect)
led me to reconsider the interdependence bt. Shade's "Pale Fire" and
the novel as a whole.
..................................................................................
Date:
Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:28:36 -0400
From: gs33@CORNELL.EDU
Subject: Re:
[NABOKV-L] VN BIBLIOGRAPHY
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Gavriel
Shapiro, The Sublime Artist's Studio: Nabokov and Painting (Evanston, Ill.:
Northwestern University Press, 2009).
ISBN:
978-0-8101-2559-9.
...............................................................