Dear List,
The reference in Pope's "Dunciad" to
"amphisbaena" (cf. E.Wilson's amphisbaenic technique) plus Shade's work on Pope
and Kinbote's variant line attributing to Shade his own reference to Pope
("...prevails/ the victim falters, the victor fails") stimulated me to search
about Pope's Dunciad in the Wiki.
It seems that reading these productions might
illustrate certain variations in mood we encounter in Shade's lines, and in
the entire PF as well. For now, my access to Pope's printed words is only a
vague hope.
I isolated three items from wiki, which seem to
indicate (only "seem"...) certain terms VN used in Ada (Log and
Nox), and a possible reason for a Nabokovian animus against Pope and Wilson
(both regarded puns as low humor!). :
Here are the excerpts:
1. "Alexander Pope had
a proximal and long term cause for choosing Lewis Theobald as the King of Dunces
for the first version of the Dunciad. The proximate cause was Theobald's
publication of Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors as well
Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his late edition of this poet; designed not
only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the true Reading of Shakespeare
in all the Editions ever published in 1726. Pope had published his
own version of Shakespeare in 1725, and he had made a number of errors in it. He
had "smoothed" some of Shakespeare's lines, had chosen readings that
eliminated puns (which Pope regarded as low humor), and
had, indeed, missed several good readings and preserved some bad ones.
2. The book ends with a hail of praise,
calling Theobald now the new King Log (from
Aesop's
fable).
3. The fourth book promises to show the obliteration of sense from England.
The Dog-star shines, the lunatic prophets speak, and the
daughter of Chaos and Nox
(Dulness) rises to "dull and venal a new World to mold" (B IV 15) and
begin a Saturnian age of lead.