Subject
Re: VP on 1 italics. 2 Zemblan Timon.]
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Dear Vic Perry,
I tried to investigate messages still kept in my Archives dealing with Timon, Conmal and italics.
It was not an exhaustive search but I think some of the data might interest you or serve as a reminder to other contributors.
See below:
...........................
1. Anthony Stadlen: "l do not know how to account for ... Kinbote's having a "Zemblan translation of Timon of Athens" and referring unseeingly to the exact passage from which Shade, in the English original, gets his title." (Nov.2006)
2.Jansy: Why, under "translations, poetical" in the "Index" there is an entry as follows: "Timon Afinsken, of Athens". What are we supposed to understand by "Afinsken"? Why was ",of Athens" added only in the Index?
3.JM: line 61 carries the already mentioned "shadow of the doorknob that at sundown is a baseball bat" . We learn from Kinbote that when the "reluctant gilt key" finally turned in its lock it "uncovered disparate objects: dregs of many sunsets ; a thirty-twomo edition ( twomo?) of Timon of Athens in Zemblan; a toy pail; a 65 carat diamond, shells, chalk, squares of a game. (Nov.5, 2006)
4. Pynchon-l-digest V2 #3543 Pale Fire
D. Barton Johnson - 10 de set de 2003
p. 126
"Academy Boulevard, Coriolanus Lane and Timon Alley"
One gets the sense that Kinbote has been pilfering names from Shakespeare, and Timon especially has importance. What are the odds that a work so obviously in the minds of Zemblans should have inspired John Shade's title?
...
p. 123
In a trompe l'oeil nutshell, Kinbote escapes into art. The key Charles finds in the "lumber room" opens three doors: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The first door is the door to the closet, which holds old things, things from Kinbote's past, his memory. The closet is a kind of random mirror. It also holds "the tiny volume of /Timon Afinsken/" which will remain with Kinbote for the rest of his life "as a talisman"(p.> 132), and the red clothes he'll require to affect his escape.
5. JM: Kinbote retranslated Shakespeare "into English prose from a Zemblan poetical version of Timon" as: " the sun is a thief, she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief; he steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon." Kinbote curiously maintained the genders for Moon and Sun as they appear in German ( and in Zemblan?) a masculine Der Mond ( he steals...), a feminine Die Sonne ( she lures). The sea became "it" (Das!) In this note he refers to future note on lines 962 ( Help me, Will. Pale Fire) where he observes that he only had with him a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens in Zemblan ( Shakspere, as translated by Conmal).
CK calls our attention to the fact that his volume contained nothing equivalent of "pale fire".He is also a severe critic about Shade's choice of the title "Pale Fire" ( note to line 671-672) mentioning "a phrase lifted from a more or less clebrated poetical work of the past...degrading in regard to the talent that substitutes..."We could find many more similtar criticisms about Shade, in his eyes an excedingly "Appalachian poet" who is too fond of "childish worldgames".
(31 de out de 2006)
6. JF TIMELINE: 1855 / Conmal, Duke of Aros and half-brother of Queen Blenda, is born (I.).
7. JF : "Duke of Aros" (Conmal) is also not in italics, whereas other titles are. Neither is Uran the Last's note number, 681 I can't even guess what that could mean.(dec.2006)
8. Brian Boyd :Nabokov's Pale Fire:The Magic of Artistic Discovery:
In the past Shade has followed the common academic habit (which Kinbote will roundly denounce) of stealing his titles from other authors' phrases, but he has reformed, reverting to the plain "Poems" before, as he pretends, succumbing today to the need for some name for the long poem now drawing to an end. With his usual modesty he reaches for a title that implies his poem can shed only a pallid glow compared to the heat and light Shakespeare radiates over the landscape of English literature. In fact the title Shade lifts from Shakespeare also puts a highly ironic twist on the whole practice of purloining another's phrase, since it wittily steals from Timon's denunciation against universal thievery. Even that self-deprecatory "some moondrop title" (a moondrop, Webster's Second notes, is "a liquid of magical potency, supposed to be shed by the moon") subtly echoes Timon's image, and like the whole passage from which the title comes, harks back to the images of reflection that open the poem. Now at the close of the day and the close of his poem, describing in his last verse paragraph the sun sinking even as he writes, its "flowing shade and ebbing light," Shade once again echoes the tide and light imagery from Timon, once again links back to his poem's beginning, and does exactly what he said in Canto Three he had wanted to do, to imitate those "Playing a game of worlds .../ ... Making ornaments / Of accidents and possibilities."
9.
Pynchon-l-digest V2 #3412 PALE FIRE
D. Barton Johnson - 15 de jul de 2003
(Shade and Kinbote are mirrored in so many other ways, these characters are practically begging to be read that way.) For instance you might argue (as I believe Boyd's Shadean approach does) that Shade's title "Pale Fire" is borrowed from Kinbote and his version of Timon of Athens in the Commentary -- that Shade fills in the title in the poem as an effect of Kinbote's both using that phrase and missing it in his edition of Shakespeare.
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
I tried to investigate messages still kept in my Archives dealing with Timon, Conmal and italics.
It was not an exhaustive search but I think some of the data might interest you or serve as a reminder to other contributors.
See below:
...........................
1. Anthony Stadlen: "l do not know how to account for ... Kinbote's having a "Zemblan translation of Timon of Athens" and referring unseeingly to the exact passage from which Shade, in the English original, gets his title." (Nov.2006)
2.Jansy: Why, under "translations, poetical" in the "Index" there is an entry as follows: "Timon Afinsken, of Athens". What are we supposed to understand by "Afinsken"? Why was ",of Athens" added only in the Index?
3.JM: line 61 carries the already mentioned "shadow of the doorknob that at sundown is a baseball bat" . We learn from Kinbote that when the "reluctant gilt key" finally turned in its lock it "uncovered disparate objects: dregs of many sunsets ; a thirty-twomo edition ( twomo?) of Timon of Athens in Zemblan; a toy pail; a 65 carat diamond, shells, chalk, squares of a game. (Nov.5, 2006)
4. Pynchon-l-digest V2 #3543 Pale Fire
D. Barton Johnson - 10 de set de 2003
p. 126
"Academy Boulevard, Coriolanus Lane and Timon Alley"
One gets the sense that Kinbote has been pilfering names from Shakespeare, and Timon especially has importance. What are the odds that a work so obviously in the minds of Zemblans should have inspired John Shade's title?
...
p. 123
In a trompe l'oeil nutshell, Kinbote escapes into art. The key Charles finds in the "lumber room" opens three doors: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The first door is the door to the closet, which holds old things, things from Kinbote's past, his memory. The closet is a kind of random mirror. It also holds "the tiny volume of /Timon Afinsken/" which will remain with Kinbote for the rest of his life "as a talisman"(p.> 132), and the red clothes he'll require to affect his escape.
5. JM: Kinbote retranslated Shakespeare "into English prose from a Zemblan poetical version of Timon" as: " the sun is a thief, she lures the sea and robs it. The moon is a thief; he steals his silvery light from the sun. The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon." Kinbote curiously maintained the genders for Moon and Sun as they appear in German ( and in Zemblan?) a masculine Der Mond ( he steals...), a feminine Die Sonne ( she lures). The sea became "it" (Das!) In this note he refers to future note on lines 962 ( Help me, Will. Pale Fire) where he observes that he only had with him a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens in Zemblan ( Shakspere, as translated by Conmal).
CK calls our attention to the fact that his volume contained nothing equivalent of "pale fire".He is also a severe critic about Shade's choice of the title "Pale Fire" ( note to line 671-672) mentioning "a phrase lifted from a more or less clebrated poetical work of the past...degrading in regard to the talent that substitutes..."We could find many more similtar criticisms about Shade, in his eyes an excedingly "Appalachian poet" who is too fond of "childish worldgames".
(31 de out de 2006)
6. JF TIMELINE: 1855 / Conmal, Duke of Aros and half-brother of Queen Blenda, is born (I.).
7. JF : "Duke of Aros" (Conmal) is also not in italics, whereas other titles are. Neither is Uran the Last's note number, 681 I can't even guess what that could mean.(dec.2006)
8. Brian Boyd :Nabokov's Pale Fire:The Magic of Artistic Discovery:
In the past Shade has followed the common academic habit (which Kinbote will roundly denounce) of stealing his titles from other authors' phrases, but he has reformed, reverting to the plain "Poems" before, as he pretends, succumbing today to the need for some name for the long poem now drawing to an end. With his usual modesty he reaches for a title that implies his poem can shed only a pallid glow compared to the heat and light Shakespeare radiates over the landscape of English literature. In fact the title Shade lifts from Shakespeare also puts a highly ironic twist on the whole practice of purloining another's phrase, since it wittily steals from Timon's denunciation against universal thievery. Even that self-deprecatory "some moondrop title" (a moondrop, Webster's Second notes, is "a liquid of magical potency, supposed to be shed by the moon") subtly echoes Timon's image, and like the whole passage from which the title comes, harks back to the images of reflection that open the poem. Now at the close of the day and the close of his poem, describing in his last verse paragraph the sun sinking even as he writes, its "flowing shade and ebbing light," Shade once again echoes the tide and light imagery from Timon, once again links back to his poem's beginning, and does exactly what he said in Canto Three he had wanted to do, to imitate those "Playing a game of worlds .../ ... Making ornaments / Of accidents and possibilities."
9.
Pynchon-l-digest V2 #3412 PALE FIRE
D. Barton Johnson - 15 de jul de 2003
(Shade and Kinbote are mirrored in so many other ways, these characters are practically begging to be read that way.) For instance you might argue (as I believe Boyd's Shadean approach does) that Shade's title "Pale Fire" is borrowed from Kinbote and his version of Timon of Athens in the Commentary -- that Shade fills in the title in the poem as an effect of Kinbote's both using that phrase and missing it in his edition of Shakespeare.
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
