Subject
[ Thoughts] A reference to Erlkönig in a parody abou t T.S.Eliot
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In Pale Fire we find Kinbote's comments on Line 662: Who rides so late in the night and the wind:
" This line, and indeed the whole passage (lines 653-664), allude to the well-known poem by Goethe about the erlking, ...one cannot sufficiently admire the ingenious way in which Shade manages to transfer something of the broken rhythm of the ballad (a trisyllabic meter at heart) into his iambic verse...Goethe's two lines opening the poem come out most exactly and beautifully, with the bonus of an unexpected rhyme (also in French: vent-enfant), in my own language ( Kinbote doesn't explicitly quote or mention the rhyme in German: Wind-Kind)
Shades lines were: Who rides so late in the night and the wind?
It is the writer's grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child.
I was taken back to these items after I found a parody of T.S. Eliot by Myra Buttle, " from The Sweeniad", where Goethe's poem is introduced as a part of this imitation T.S. Eliot [ and with similarly copious annotations when, for example, the last note informs the readers that one line about "The Vacant Mind" ( "a masterpiece that revolutionized the poet's point of view") "contains allusions and adaptations from thirty-three different writers in twenty languages..."].
A sample of M. Buttle' s parodic lines:
" I will show you fear in a pile of half bricks.
Wer reitede so spät
Durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind *2
" You called me 'Baby Doll' a year ago;
You said that I was very nice to know"
...............................
"Bank Station! All change! Heraus! Heraus!"
I thought that M. Buttle's rendering about T.S.Eliot, annotations and the Erlkönig in a parody could serve to emphasize aspects of T.S.Eliot's work which might have equally inspired VN.
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" This line, and indeed the whole passage (lines 653-664), allude to the well-known poem by Goethe about the erlking, ...one cannot sufficiently admire the ingenious way in which Shade manages to transfer something of the broken rhythm of the ballad (a trisyllabic meter at heart) into his iambic verse...Goethe's two lines opening the poem come out most exactly and beautifully, with the bonus of an unexpected rhyme (also in French: vent-enfant), in my own language ( Kinbote doesn't explicitly quote or mention the rhyme in German: Wind-Kind)
Shades lines were: Who rides so late in the night and the wind?
It is the writer's grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child.
I was taken back to these items after I found a parody of T.S. Eliot by Myra Buttle, " from The Sweeniad", where Goethe's poem is introduced as a part of this imitation T.S. Eliot [ and with similarly copious annotations when, for example, the last note informs the readers that one line about "The Vacant Mind" ( "a masterpiece that revolutionized the poet's point of view") "contains allusions and adaptations from thirty-three different writers in twenty languages..."].
A sample of M. Buttle' s parodic lines:
" I will show you fear in a pile of half bricks.
Wer reitede so spät
Durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind *2
" You called me 'Baby Doll' a year ago;
You said that I was very nice to know"
...............................
"Bank Station! All change! Heraus! Heraus!"
I thought that M. Buttle's rendering about T.S.Eliot, annotations and the Erlkönig in a parody could serve to emphasize aspects of T.S.Eliot's work which might have equally inspired VN.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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