Subject
[NABOKOV-L] [ Query] Pale Fire and rustling silks
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Whenever I re-read PF my different frames of mind produces revelatory kaleidoscopic shifts and different emotional responses. Here we find the contrast between Shade's grandiose promises and their trivial outcome - which is, most certainly, a deliberate tactic.
Deliberate, yes, it it serves what aesthetic purpose? What "abstruse,unfinished poem" are we expected to read?
(Perhaps this is why, unawares, I kept hearing ghosts whenever I let myself flow along its rythm and sounds. This is certainly a haunted dark Canto!)
Check from lines 835-841 [" Now I shall spy on beauty as none has[...]Now I shall cry out as [...] Now I shall try what none...]
that merge into "And speaking of this wonderful machine:/ I'm puzzled by the difference between/ Two methods of composing:" with a long technical exposition mingled with cotidian remarks. What wonderful machine does he mean: the iambic motor of versification?
Next, in the same initial "grandeur" we find, in lines, 902-904: "Now I shall speak of evil and despair/ As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight,/ Nine strokes are not enough....", with a ritornello twenty verses later, on line 922: " Now I shall speak of evil as none has..." And yet, the evils Shade ennumerates are merely his personal loathing of jazz, bull-fights, abstract art, progressive schools....The very classic "now I shall spy, speak.. like none has before" are intimately close to Shade's shaving procedures, mysterious metaphors, "two methods of composition", to conclude in lines 936-7: "and now I plough/ Old Zembla's fields where my gray stubble grows..." More than a discourse on method, Shade demonstrates it, together with an aesthetic theory ( constriction versus spontaneity?) and a philosophic query on what's life while unaware of his approaching futile death, inspite of Sybil's(?) protection "beneath the word, above/ The syllable, to underscore and stress/ The vital rhythm."
What are we supposed to hear besides the present stanzas when we imagine that today, as in the days of yore, "One heard a woman's dress/Rustle"?
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Deliberate, yes, it it serves what aesthetic purpose? What "abstruse,unfinished poem" are we expected to read?
(Perhaps this is why, unawares, I kept hearing ghosts whenever I let myself flow along its rythm and sounds. This is certainly a haunted dark Canto!)
Check from lines 835-841 [" Now I shall spy on beauty as none has[...]Now I shall cry out as [...] Now I shall try what none...]
that merge into "And speaking of this wonderful machine:/ I'm puzzled by the difference between/ Two methods of composing:" with a long technical exposition mingled with cotidian remarks. What wonderful machine does he mean: the iambic motor of versification?
Next, in the same initial "grandeur" we find, in lines, 902-904: "Now I shall speak of evil and despair/ As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight,/ Nine strokes are not enough....", with a ritornello twenty verses later, on line 922: " Now I shall speak of evil as none has..." And yet, the evils Shade ennumerates are merely his personal loathing of jazz, bull-fights, abstract art, progressive schools....The very classic "now I shall spy, speak.. like none has before" are intimately close to Shade's shaving procedures, mysterious metaphors, "two methods of composition", to conclude in lines 936-7: "and now I plough/ Old Zembla's fields where my gray stubble grows..." More than a discourse on method, Shade demonstrates it, together with an aesthetic theory ( constriction versus spontaneity?) and a philosophic query on what's life while unaware of his approaching futile death, inspite of Sybil's(?) protection "beneath the word, above/ The syllable, to underscore and stress/ The vital rhythm."
What are we supposed to hear besides the present stanzas when we imagine that today, as in the days of yore, "One heard a woman's dress/Rustle"?
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/