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Re: THOUGHTS: Shade's Mockingbird
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Matt brought up again the lines from Shade's poem and added some of his thoughts. I extracted various lines to comment on certain points:
... the stiff vane so often visited
By the naïve, the gauzy mockingbird
Retelling all the programs she had heard;
Switching from chippo-chippo to a clear
To-wee, to-wee; then rasping out: come here,
Come here, come herrr'; flirting her tail aloft,
Or gracefully indulging in a soft
Upward hop-flop, and instantly (to-wee!)
70 Returning to her perch - the new TV.
1. Why point out that the vane is "stiff"? Are some vanes droopy? It seems like an entirely superfluous adjective[...] if we relate "vane" to Cynthia and Sybil Vane...
2. Why is the mockingbird naive and gauzy? Is it because she simply repeats, without discretion, whatever she has heard? She has no inner life that would drive her to sing her own song? 3. Why is the mockingbird female?[...] perhaps he thinks of it as female because, in line 422, he calls Sybil his "tender mockingbird."
4. What to make of the transcription of the bird's song? Why to-wee? Why Come here, come herrr'? Mockingbirds can sing most any song, so Shade is not borrowing some standard transcription of the mockingbird's song.
This is speculative, of course, but my own feeling is that this mockingbird is none other than Hazel Shade. [...] The invocation of the Vane Sisters suddenly makes a lot more sense. Like them, Hazel is attempting to contact the living from the beyond.[...]. To-wee and Come here, come herrr (but not chippo, as far as I can tell) can be read as words from Hazel to her father. To-wee becomes "two, we" (we two) and Come here, come herrr becomes a plea for attention and a play on Shade's name, which is, in Spanish, "almost man," just as herr, in German, means "mister."[...]Jerry Friedman helpfully informed me (off-list), the northern mockingbird was often, especially in the 19th century, called the American nightingale[...] Shade is a waxwing, Sybil a swallow (hirondelle), and Hazel a nightingale/pheasant. As far as I know, this arrangement has only one precedent: the myth of Tereus, Procne, Philomel, and Itys[...]
As you may have guessed, I believe that this is no mere coincidence, and I likewise believe that it supports a reading of the novel wherein there is some kind of unnatural relationship (active or passive) between John Shade and Hazel[...] We can now also note another link to Eliot's "Game of Chess," which Shade (or Nabokov) parodies in Canto Three. Just before the "What is that noise?" bit, Eliot shows us the mantle with its "carved dolphin," where a picture displays, As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene/ The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king/ So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale/ Filled all the desert with inviolable voice/ And still she cried, and still the world pursues,/ 'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.Brian Boyd has argued that VN was also parodying the first section of "A Game of Chess," (a woman before toilet items), so this adds one more piece to that puzzle, as well.
JM: Matt thinks that the convergence of certain images and arrangements ( such as the three "Shade" birds he associated to the myth of Tereus) are not coincidental, but were deliberately included in PF. His reading doubtlessly follows Brian Boyd's theory about Hazel and adds more than one pieces to that puzzle. All these insertions are informative and well interwoven. I wonder if Matt related these "ghostly visitations" to VN's parody of spiritualistic theories (such as PF's lines about "IPH" - as I understand them to be), or if he thinks that they are seriously intended, as serious as VN's discreet indicators about his intuition of "the otherworld" ( a "hereafter"?).
A "stiff vane" might also indicate a Freudian symbol (if so, as a parody) and the mockingbird (a multilingual mime, a Mimus poliglottus...) a sassy, pert, "flirting" (double-sense) female, for me a most charming image of "Avian Can-Can" dancing and hopping flightingly from one stiff vane onto another. Unfortunately this graceful erotic image doesn't fit surly, clumsy Hazel...
In ornithological sites I found an article about violent mockingbirds attacking and killing waxwings in Winter, but these finds were published long after VN published Pale Fire and I see no possible hidden connection bt. these two competitive and rapacious flocks.
The change from the chippo-chippo and to-wee into "come herr", as Matt pointed out, is a very peculiar choice. The inclusion of a germanic tone ("herr/ here") could be a link to Goethe's Erlkönig (as interpreted by poliglottus Kinbote, who avoids quoting Goethe'se lines in German, I think). Or, more simply, another way of rendering this inviting "bird call".
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... the stiff vane so often visited
By the naïve, the gauzy mockingbird
Retelling all the programs she had heard;
Switching from chippo-chippo to a clear
To-wee, to-wee; then rasping out: come here,
Come here, come herrr'; flirting her tail aloft,
Or gracefully indulging in a soft
Upward hop-flop, and instantly (to-wee!)
70 Returning to her perch - the new TV.
1. Why point out that the vane is "stiff"? Are some vanes droopy? It seems like an entirely superfluous adjective[...] if we relate "vane" to Cynthia and Sybil Vane...
2. Why is the mockingbird naive and gauzy? Is it because she simply repeats, without discretion, whatever she has heard? She has no inner life that would drive her to sing her own song? 3. Why is the mockingbird female?[...] perhaps he thinks of it as female because, in line 422, he calls Sybil his "tender mockingbird."
4. What to make of the transcription of the bird's song? Why to-wee? Why Come here, come herrr'? Mockingbirds can sing most any song, so Shade is not borrowing some standard transcription of the mockingbird's song.
This is speculative, of course, but my own feeling is that this mockingbird is none other than Hazel Shade. [...] The invocation of the Vane Sisters suddenly makes a lot more sense. Like them, Hazel is attempting to contact the living from the beyond.[...]. To-wee and Come here, come herrr (but not chippo, as far as I can tell) can be read as words from Hazel to her father. To-wee becomes "two, we" (we two) and Come here, come herrr becomes a plea for attention and a play on Shade's name, which is, in Spanish, "almost man," just as herr, in German, means "mister."[...]Jerry Friedman helpfully informed me (off-list), the northern mockingbird was often, especially in the 19th century, called the American nightingale[...] Shade is a waxwing, Sybil a swallow (hirondelle), and Hazel a nightingale/pheasant. As far as I know, this arrangement has only one precedent: the myth of Tereus, Procne, Philomel, and Itys[...]
As you may have guessed, I believe that this is no mere coincidence, and I likewise believe that it supports a reading of the novel wherein there is some kind of unnatural relationship (active or passive) between John Shade and Hazel[...] We can now also note another link to Eliot's "Game of Chess," which Shade (or Nabokov) parodies in Canto Three. Just before the "What is that noise?" bit, Eliot shows us the mantle with its "carved dolphin," where a picture displays, As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene/ The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king/ So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale/ Filled all the desert with inviolable voice/ And still she cried, and still the world pursues,/ 'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.Brian Boyd has argued that VN was also parodying the first section of "A Game of Chess," (a woman before toilet items), so this adds one more piece to that puzzle, as well.
JM: Matt thinks that the convergence of certain images and arrangements ( such as the three "Shade" birds he associated to the myth of Tereus) are not coincidental, but were deliberately included in PF. His reading doubtlessly follows Brian Boyd's theory about Hazel and adds more than one pieces to that puzzle. All these insertions are informative and well interwoven. I wonder if Matt related these "ghostly visitations" to VN's parody of spiritualistic theories (such as PF's lines about "IPH" - as I understand them to be), or if he thinks that they are seriously intended, as serious as VN's discreet indicators about his intuition of "the otherworld" ( a "hereafter"?).
A "stiff vane" might also indicate a Freudian symbol (if so, as a parody) and the mockingbird (a multilingual mime, a Mimus poliglottus...) a sassy, pert, "flirting" (double-sense) female, for me a most charming image of "Avian Can-Can" dancing and hopping flightingly from one stiff vane onto another. Unfortunately this graceful erotic image doesn't fit surly, clumsy Hazel...
In ornithological sites I found an article about violent mockingbirds attacking and killing waxwings in Winter, but these finds were published long after VN published Pale Fire and I see no possible hidden connection bt. these two competitive and rapacious flocks.
The change from the chippo-chippo and to-wee into "come herr", as Matt pointed out, is a very peculiar choice. The inclusion of a germanic tone ("herr/ here") could be a link to Goethe's Erlkönig (as interpreted by poliglottus Kinbote, who avoids quoting Goethe'se lines in German, I think). Or, more simply, another way of rendering this inviting "bird call".
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/