On Jan 31, 2010, at 10:25 AM, Anthony Stadlen wrote:
how can lumping these things together constitute "speak[ing] of evil as none has/ Spoken before"? His dislike of bullfighting is fair enough, part of his admirable dislike of cruelty of all kinds. But, if Nabokov did not, as he claimed, understand music, of what interest is his philistine loathing of jazz? And, acutely conscious as he was of the Holocaust, Stalinism, and so on, how could he list "swimming pools" as part of his purportedly unprecedented discourse on "evil"?
I believe Carolyn proposed that this shows that something strange is happening to Shade at this point; specifically, a stroke. But it is Nabokov's own endorsement of the list that is "the real thing strange".
On Jan 31, 2010, at 3:34 PM, jansymello wrote:
JM: I don't think Nabokov considered Shade's urge "to speak of evil" as taking place on the same level as his, and Shade's, dislike of swimming pools and jazz. Different themes are ludicrously mingled to great effect: the "Newport Frill" rhetoric of evil, his trivial dislikes, shaving procedures, methods of composition...
...
I doubt ... that Nabokov had any intention of engaging in any serious denunciation of "evil" at that point. These are some of the lines in which I see an authorial intromission, and Shade voicing VN's self-parody and his moments of playfulness in S.O.
I agree with Carolyn, assuming the attribution is correct.
Shade is having some kind of stroke, but there's more to it than that.
The mixture of serious loathing with trivial dislikes is symptomatic of a growing irrationalism.
VN is not philosophizing through Shade here, but creating a device to move the plot forward.
Shade's embrace of the theory of plexed artistry leads him to believe he has special powers of insight,
and begins Canto 4 with the intention of demonstrating these new found powers.
But alas he becomes immediately distracted and begins discoursing on the mechanics of composition,
abruptly shifting wholly out of the tone of extraordinary resolution that begins the canto.
And this after only four lines!
He completes his exposition on composition with the tale of the Shade's shoe,
but then is lost as to what to write next.
He tells of the travails of when he shaves
To some this may amuse, but not to Shade,
for him it holds acute significance,
as seen by the inordinate expense
of time he spends upon discussing it.
Why is this so? Is it perhaps because
Shade does not come from very healthy stock.
His parents died while he was still quite young,
his aunt wound up in a sanitarium,
and his health never really was that great.
John Shade is thinking of his dear aunt's fate,
(and of the languor of Aunt Maud's pet fly.)
Shaving is the daily act whereby
he measures his own flawed neurology.
It isn't just that dewlap that impedes:
As a discreet ephebe in tights assists
A female in an acrobatic dance,
My left hand helps, and holds. And shifts its stance.
Shade's got the shakes, perceives the growing mists!