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Re: a trillion crickets
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Gary Lipon: ...this is one of the more free-standing stanzas in Pale Fire...Which begets: What is it you that want to be told? a story? a style? a oddly tender rendering of a nightfall? (Also semantically of great importance is how Dr. Sutton's house links this graceful threnody to Shade's similarly tranquil and pensive envoy.) And since someone's just recently complained of a pronounced lack in variety of idols offered up for worship, I feel obliged to name a dusty one of mine:Béla Viktor János Bartók (1881-1945)...
A. Pope: I thought the list might find the following link interesting - it's a very critical description of a Sci-Fi novel named "Yellow Blue Tibia" set in Soviet Russia. The accuracy of time and place is debated, as is the title, which many list members will spot the significance of without following the link, I'm sure. Plus there is even some talk of whether or not "Sovetskaya Fantastika" is (at a stretch) a permissible reading of 'SF'...http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/569516.html?thread=14487212
Charles H-Wallace: Has there been any discussion on this list about Luc Besson's film "Leon" in relation either to Lolita, or the two films? In my view this film was far, far superior to Kubrick's Lolita... t also seemed to contrast constructively and revealingly with Nabokov's original. Nabokov would have been infinitely better served by Besson...
JM: Great to learn that Béla Bartók is one of Gary Lipon's "idols" and get the musical links and even some background twitterings. Perhaps this is why Gary is so finely atuned to the orchestrated, almost tactile Fricsay-rich "wall of sound.../Raised by a trillion crickets in the fall*" and Sutton's shiny windowpane, in Shade's lines.
His recreation led me to Pope's reference to Sci-Fi, and to CHWallace's vision of a violent twelve-year old in Besson's movie, onto a futuristic poem, written by Nabokov himself (The New Yorker, Jan. 27,1951) titled "Voluptates Tactionum" ( I couldn't search long for other places where this poem appears: I hope my transcription is OK).
" Some inevitable day
On the editorial page of your paper
It will say, "Tactio has come of age."
When you turn a knob
Your set will obligingly exhale forms,
Invisible yet tangible -
A world in Braille.
Think of all the things
That will really be within your reach!
Phantom bottle,
Dreamy pill,
Limpid limbs upon a beach.
Grouped before a Magnotack,
Clubs and families
Will clutch everywhere
The same compact paradise
(In terms of touch).
Palpitating fingertips
Will caress the flossy hair
And investigate the lips
Simulated in mid-air.
See the schoolboy, like a blind lover
Frantically grope for the shape of love,
And find nothing but the shape of soap "
The "feelies" fantasy is not very accomplished, as I see it (perhaps I should touch it to set into motion a pirouetting nymph of soap?), but its rythm and sounds are.delectable to my untrained ear (page/paper/age; exhale/Braille; Magnotack/compact, grope/ soap...) together with the imagetic "tangible and throbbing palpation that will become a "palpitation").
.................................................................
* - what Autumn is the one we hear, at this point, in Shade's story?
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A. Pope: I thought the list might find the following link interesting - it's a very critical description of a Sci-Fi novel named "Yellow Blue Tibia" set in Soviet Russia. The accuracy of time and place is debated, as is the title, which many list members will spot the significance of without following the link, I'm sure. Plus there is even some talk of whether or not "Sovetskaya Fantastika" is (at a stretch) a permissible reading of 'SF'...http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/569516.html?thread=14487212
Charles H-Wallace: Has there been any discussion on this list about Luc Besson's film "Leon" in relation either to Lolita, or the two films? In my view this film was far, far superior to Kubrick's Lolita... t also seemed to contrast constructively and revealingly with Nabokov's original. Nabokov would have been infinitely better served by Besson...
JM: Great to learn that Béla Bartók is one of Gary Lipon's "idols" and get the musical links and even some background twitterings. Perhaps this is why Gary is so finely atuned to the orchestrated, almost tactile Fricsay-rich "wall of sound.../Raised by a trillion crickets in the fall*" and Sutton's shiny windowpane, in Shade's lines.
His recreation led me to Pope's reference to Sci-Fi, and to CHWallace's vision of a violent twelve-year old in Besson's movie, onto a futuristic poem, written by Nabokov himself (The New Yorker, Jan. 27,1951) titled "Voluptates Tactionum" ( I couldn't search long for other places where this poem appears: I hope my transcription is OK).
" Some inevitable day
On the editorial page of your paper
It will say, "Tactio has come of age."
When you turn a knob
Your set will obligingly exhale forms,
Invisible yet tangible -
A world in Braille.
Think of all the things
That will really be within your reach!
Phantom bottle,
Dreamy pill,
Limpid limbs upon a beach.
Grouped before a Magnotack,
Clubs and families
Will clutch everywhere
The same compact paradise
(In terms of touch).
Palpitating fingertips
Will caress the flossy hair
And investigate the lips
Simulated in mid-air.
See the schoolboy, like a blind lover
Frantically grope for the shape of love,
And find nothing but the shape of soap "
The "feelies" fantasy is not very accomplished, as I see it (perhaps I should touch it to set into motion a pirouetting nymph of soap?), but its rythm and sounds are.delectable to my untrained ear (page/paper/age; exhale/Braille; Magnotack/compact, grope/ soap...) together with the imagetic "tangible and throbbing palpation that will become a "palpitation").
.................................................................
* - what Autumn is the one we hear, at this point, in Shade's story?
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/