Subject
Searchable Lolita, merits of Shade's poem
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Jim Twiggs wrote:
> In response to John A. Rea's query, here's a link to
> online versions of some of Nabokov's works in both
> English and Russian, Lolita included:
>
> http://www.mochola.org/nabokov/novels.htm
Impressive! I guess they must have permission. If not, and
DN puts them out of business, Amazon has a searchable
Vintage /Annotated Lolita/. You can't read it at length,
but you can use it to find what you're looking for in
your own copy.
> As a follow-up to Don Johnson's suggestion to consult
> Zembla, I recommend the discussion of Pale Fire by
> William Monroe, especially page 3. Here's the link:
>
> http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/monroe2.htm
That made me mad. Monroe criticizes Shade for calling
Hazel, about to die, "a blurry shape". But Shade is
imagining the scene--no one saw it--and I can
accept that the subject is painful enough for him to prefer
imagining it in a "long shot", just as he's not explicit in
"You know. I know."
Monroe also criticizes Shade's ending Canto 2 with a verb
rhymed with a previous noun, which Monroe thinks isn't
final enough. But "sank" is the exact word (contrary to
his opinion) and such matters have to be judged in the
specific poem, not according to general principles.
Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 ends with a verb, as does Keats's
"Ode to a Nightingale", and Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium"
ends with an (infinitive) verb rhymed with a previous noun;
all have managed to make the anthologies anyway. Even if the
couplet does sound "indecisively closed" (Monroe quoting
George Amis), there's half the poem yet to go.
Monroe says, "One does not joke about a daughter's suicide,"
and more than person here has also criticized Shade for
facetiousness in a poem on that subject. First, I think
it works esthetically as contrast. Second, it fits with
a theme of the poem: noticing that rare wall fern in front
of the firing squad is like noticing an opportunity for a
joke in one's grief. Monroe even quotes Nabokov's story of
Gumilev's smiles when confronted with his death and the
equally unjust deaths of so many others. Third, many great
20th-century poems combine playfulness with the worst pain.
One example is Anthony Hecht's "Feast of Stephen", in
all the anthologies. The second part pounds deadpan pun upon
pun; the third part mentions the Holocaust, Hecht's contact
with which as a soldier caused him to "wake shrieking" for
years. I can't convince anyone to like Shade's similar writing,
but I feel certain it doesn't signify deliberate bad poetry.
I'm more with J. Morris: Parts of the poem "Pale Fire" are
very good (although I think the Botkin story is a lot more
satisfactory than he does).
Jerry Friedman
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
> In response to John A. Rea's query, here's a link to
> online versions of some of Nabokov's works in both
> English and Russian, Lolita included:
>
> http://www.mochola.org/nabokov/novels.htm
Impressive! I guess they must have permission. If not, and
DN puts them out of business, Amazon has a searchable
Vintage /Annotated Lolita/. You can't read it at length,
but you can use it to find what you're looking for in
your own copy.
> As a follow-up to Don Johnson's suggestion to consult
> Zembla, I recommend the discussion of Pale Fire by
> William Monroe, especially page 3. Here's the link:
>
> http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/monroe2.htm
That made me mad. Monroe criticizes Shade for calling
Hazel, about to die, "a blurry shape". But Shade is
imagining the scene--no one saw it--and I can
accept that the subject is painful enough for him to prefer
imagining it in a "long shot", just as he's not explicit in
"You know. I know."
Monroe also criticizes Shade's ending Canto 2 with a verb
rhymed with a previous noun, which Monroe thinks isn't
final enough. But "sank" is the exact word (contrary to
his opinion) and such matters have to be judged in the
specific poem, not according to general principles.
Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 ends with a verb, as does Keats's
"Ode to a Nightingale", and Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium"
ends with an (infinitive) verb rhymed with a previous noun;
all have managed to make the anthologies anyway. Even if the
couplet does sound "indecisively closed" (Monroe quoting
George Amis), there's half the poem yet to go.
Monroe says, "One does not joke about a daughter's suicide,"
and more than person here has also criticized Shade for
facetiousness in a poem on that subject. First, I think
it works esthetically as contrast. Second, it fits with
a theme of the poem: noticing that rare wall fern in front
of the firing squad is like noticing an opportunity for a
joke in one's grief. Monroe even quotes Nabokov's story of
Gumilev's smiles when confronted with his death and the
equally unjust deaths of so many others. Third, many great
20th-century poems combine playfulness with the worst pain.
One example is Anthony Hecht's "Feast of Stephen", in
all the anthologies. The second part pounds deadpan pun upon
pun; the third part mentions the Holocaust, Hecht's contact
with which as a soldier caused him to "wake shrieking" for
years. I can't convince anyone to like Shade's similar writing,
but I feel certain it doesn't signify deliberate bad poetry.
I'm more with J. Morris: Parts of the poem "Pale Fire" are
very good (although I think the Botkin story is a lot more
satisfactory than he does).
Jerry Friedman
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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