Subject
Re: Cruelty
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Date
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J. Friedman: I think the overt meaning of "herl" in PF is "a barb or fibre of a feather" (NSOED s.v. "harl")... I won't dispute that there could be a secondary reference to "Erlkönig".
JM: CK's note 109, on the Iridule: "The term "iridule" is, I believe, Shade’s own invention. Above it, in the Fair Copy (card 9, July 4) he has written in pencil "peacock-herl." The peacock-herl is the body of a certain sort of artificial fly also called 'alder'..." Will you dispute that the reference to the Erlkönig, even if a bit loose, is more than a "secondary" one? ( was VN familiar with the "rainbow" symbolism, as it is used in our days?)
My comment about "why beautiful?" was a tease after I'd read that Harold Bloom had criticized the way they were depiction in the cartoons.
I understand that what is deemed beautiful in once century is not always seen as being beautiful in another, ie, it is a problem of representation, interpretation, imagination (the eye of the beholder).
My observation also prompted a correction by Anthony Stadlen, who mentioned Sarah,Rebecca, Rachel as having been described as, or called, beautiful women.
Jerry Friedman: ...of course no one is hurt when a fictional boy is turned over to fictional psychopaths...
JM: ...unless one knows that such psychopaths exist and that mistakes, as the one that befell David, can be happen outside the boundaries of fiction. Why do you consider that a hurt, related to fictional boys and psychopaths, will only affect a reader who is identified with the characters? It hurts because it indicates something real in the world we live in. In books, even after we've been forewarned about the tragic destiny of fictional people, we are still held captives by the narration, we're in suspense because we hold on to a hope of a redemption we know is unfounded (Ruth Rendell returns to her warnings about an impending catastrophe over and over in "A Judgement in Stone", but these previews are not "spoilers," as the word is used nowadays; there is Cervantes's Don Quixote and those other very sincere arthurian chevaliers whose catastrophic fate is described before the story is told). There is something in the telling of a story, and in the words themselves, that transforms events into memorable imprints of a shared "humanity..." But you know that!
And yet you state, simply, that "I take people who call this "cruel" to be saying that it appeals that side of (many of) us that likes to watch real or televised fights, or real comedians get pies in the face, or likes to read compendia of famous insults..."
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JM: CK's note 109, on the Iridule: "The term "iridule" is, I believe, Shade’s own invention. Above it, in the Fair Copy (card 9, July 4) he has written in pencil "peacock-herl." The peacock-herl is the body of a certain sort of artificial fly also called 'alder'..." Will you dispute that the reference to the Erlkönig, even if a bit loose, is more than a "secondary" one? ( was VN familiar with the "rainbow" symbolism, as it is used in our days?)
My comment about "why beautiful?" was a tease after I'd read that Harold Bloom had criticized the way they were depiction in the cartoons.
I understand that what is deemed beautiful in once century is not always seen as being beautiful in another, ie, it is a problem of representation, interpretation, imagination (the eye of the beholder).
My observation also prompted a correction by Anthony Stadlen, who mentioned Sarah,Rebecca, Rachel as having been described as, or called, beautiful women.
Jerry Friedman: ...of course no one is hurt when a fictional boy is turned over to fictional psychopaths...
JM: ...unless one knows that such psychopaths exist and that mistakes, as the one that befell David, can be happen outside the boundaries of fiction. Why do you consider that a hurt, related to fictional boys and psychopaths, will only affect a reader who is identified with the characters? It hurts because it indicates something real in the world we live in. In books, even after we've been forewarned about the tragic destiny of fictional people, we are still held captives by the narration, we're in suspense because we hold on to a hope of a redemption we know is unfounded (Ruth Rendell returns to her warnings about an impending catastrophe over and over in "A Judgement in Stone", but these previews are not "spoilers," as the word is used nowadays; there is Cervantes's Don Quixote and those other very sincere arthurian chevaliers whose catastrophic fate is described before the story is told). There is something in the telling of a story, and in the words themselves, that transforms events into memorable imprints of a shared "humanity..." But you know that!
And yet you state, simply, that "I take people who call this "cruel" to be saying that it appeals that side of (many of) us that likes to watch real or televised fights, or real comedians get pies in the face, or likes to read compendia of famous insults..."
Search archive with Google:
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/