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Re: Semblable: neighbour, fellow, but not double
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Matt Roth: Do you think that Zembla's etymology via "Semblerland" (land of reflections) reinforces or satirizes Eliot's translation?
JM: No, as I see it, it's not associated to Eliot. "Semberland" makes me think about Nature (mimicry and nature's deceits) .
Matt Roth: The holograph ms. of PF (now public domain) in the Library of Congress contains an interesting variant related to this Eliot-via-Baudelaire line. Kinbote's note to line 376 concludes, "I deplore my friend's vicious thrusts at the most distinguished poets of his day." Following this in the ms., VN tried out several sentences, but canceled them all with one wavy, looping line. They read:
My reader must help me
^ Here I sit in my bookless mountain cave; but thou, my mirror twin, toilest.
and idle I know
Here I sit bookless ^ in my mountain cave but ^ thou toilest, my reader, my mirror twin.
If nothing else, this further confirms VN's interest in Eliot's line and its original.
JM: Great find, once again!
I'll check how Nabokov employs Baudelaire's dedication in "Lolita" (if I correctly remember its occurrence also in it).
There's another word in French which Nabokov must have rejected to be able to write, as he did, the variants you just quoted from Kinbote's note: "le prochain" (Nebenmensch) for "semblable." He seems to be working over a pun (toilest, "toiling") but, to make it work, he needs to explicitate and invoke a reader-commentator (which I don't think would be part of his plans, not at this juncture)
M.Roth: On a related topic..."Wind under the door" (pastiched by Shade in Canto Three) in Webster's The Devil's Law Case. The line ("Is the wind in that door still") is uttered by one of the two surgeons examining the presumed-dead Contarino...My immediate reaction is that this scene, in which Contarino revives as if from the dead, deepens the pathos of Shade's lines, as he and Sybil long for some sign of Hazel's return from death... This connection is probably enough for us, but it may be even more entertaining if we consider the larger context of Webster's line. Contarino is thought to be dead because he has been stabbed not once but twice... So Contarino is twice slain, the second time by a bodkin-like stiletto, only to survive after all. John Shade also "dies" twice...Could this support the theory that Shade too is not dead after all? Also note that bodkin-as-hairpin should make us think of the "The Rape of the Lock," where bodkins are likewise used as weapons.
JM: Brian Boyd explores Pope's works and satires ( he connects The Rape of the Lock to the scene with pirouetting nymphs, soaps and perfumes, an altar, also associated to the wind under the door and the rapping against the windowpane) Lock: hair and keeping under key - is there no hint of "Lochanhead" in it?
Carolyn Kunin, if I'm not mistaken, would endorse your hypothesis about "Shade is not dead" and also, that his disjointed lines in the last canto show him growing mad (Jerry's, or Lipon's, recent observations).
btw: While studying biology with grandson, I learned about "monera" "protista" and "fungi," ( or the eucarya and procaryotes?), constituting categories which are as important as the familiar Plantae and Animalia (I was still stuck with ancient classificatory systems and Aristotelic "souls" found in plants, animals, humans). In Pale Fire, when Shade imagines the transmigration of souls, he only mentions flowerlets and frogs: are there no eligible virus nor bacteria? How would spiritualists include those microscopic "entities" in their system? Would the soul require pluricellular "beings" to "re-incarnate"? (idle chat, I know - but I do wonder about it).
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JM: No, as I see it, it's not associated to Eliot. "Semberland" makes me think about Nature (mimicry and nature's deceits) .
Matt Roth: The holograph ms. of PF (now public domain) in the Library of Congress contains an interesting variant related to this Eliot-via-Baudelaire line. Kinbote's note to line 376 concludes, "I deplore my friend's vicious thrusts at the most distinguished poets of his day." Following this in the ms., VN tried out several sentences, but canceled them all with one wavy, looping line. They read:
My reader must help me
^ Here I sit in my bookless mountain cave; but thou, my mirror twin, toilest.
and idle I know
Here I sit bookless ^ in my mountain cave but ^ thou toilest, my reader, my mirror twin.
If nothing else, this further confirms VN's interest in Eliot's line and its original.
JM: Great find, once again!
I'll check how Nabokov employs Baudelaire's dedication in "Lolita" (if I correctly remember its occurrence also in it).
There's another word in French which Nabokov must have rejected to be able to write, as he did, the variants you just quoted from Kinbote's note: "le prochain" (Nebenmensch) for "semblable." He seems to be working over a pun (toilest, "toiling") but, to make it work, he needs to explicitate and invoke a reader-commentator (which I don't think would be part of his plans, not at this juncture)
M.Roth: On a related topic..."Wind under the door" (pastiched by Shade in Canto Three) in Webster's The Devil's Law Case. The line ("Is the wind in that door still") is uttered by one of the two surgeons examining the presumed-dead Contarino...My immediate reaction is that this scene, in which Contarino revives as if from the dead, deepens the pathos of Shade's lines, as he and Sybil long for some sign of Hazel's return from death... This connection is probably enough for us, but it may be even more entertaining if we consider the larger context of Webster's line. Contarino is thought to be dead because he has been stabbed not once but twice... So Contarino is twice slain, the second time by a bodkin-like stiletto, only to survive after all. John Shade also "dies" twice...Could this support the theory that Shade too is not dead after all? Also note that bodkin-as-hairpin should make us think of the "The Rape of the Lock," where bodkins are likewise used as weapons.
JM: Brian Boyd explores Pope's works and satires ( he connects The Rape of the Lock to the scene with pirouetting nymphs, soaps and perfumes, an altar, also associated to the wind under the door and the rapping against the windowpane) Lock: hair and keeping under key - is there no hint of "Lochanhead" in it?
Carolyn Kunin, if I'm not mistaken, would endorse your hypothesis about "Shade is not dead" and also, that his disjointed lines in the last canto show him growing mad (Jerry's, or Lipon's, recent observations).
btw: While studying biology with grandson, I learned about "monera" "protista" and "fungi," ( or the eucarya and procaryotes?), constituting categories which are as important as the familiar Plantae and Animalia (I was still stuck with ancient classificatory systems and Aristotelic "souls" found in plants, animals, humans). In Pale Fire, when Shade imagines the transmigration of souls, he only mentions flowerlets and frogs: are there no eligible virus nor bacteria? How would spiritualists include those microscopic "entities" in their system? Would the soul require pluricellular "beings" to "re-incarnate"? (idle chat, I know - but I do wonder about it).
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/