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Re: False Azure, Frost: CHW reply
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CHW wrote: My warm thanks to Jansy for her generous support...
JM: I was not being merely "supportive", although this is what CHW has singled out: I do agree with his comments about denigration x fair criticism, both in his earlier posting and in the present one.
After reading the inclusion of the term "azure" in heraldry I would like to return to the quotes I extracted from Pale Fire, namely:
John Shade
1.By the false azure in the windowpane;
2.the three young people stood/ Before the azure entrance for awhile.
Charles Kinbote:
1.one of the three heraldic creatures (the other two being respectively a reindeer proper and a merman azure, crined or);4. I guess he was heading for the Côte d’Azur...(etc);
2... a son who eventually changed his name to Blue and married Stella Lazurchik;
3. The poor poet ...lay with open dead eyes directed up at the sunny evening azure.
I think that PF presents, deliberately so, most of the distinct meanings of "azure" ( sky, spectral atmospheric color, neon color, heraldry, name of city, word-play), while our List shifts from spectral color to material pigments, conventional meanings, attributions and metaphors almost too blithely.
Charles' point about "there is no false blue" seemed to be precise, but his conclusion was, perhaps, not applicable to the meaning of "false" that VN might have intended . In my opinion, as already stated, the "false" might not be a reference to a sky-color "azure", but to something else that is ...feigned ( Cf. another line:I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.)
Reading the offered extracts from the OED it seemed to me that "azure" in English still differs from its wider acception in Russian, pointing to "color" ( in clear sky and reflected on the ocean), not as a substitute to "sky".
Jansy
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JM: I was not being merely "supportive", although this is what CHW has singled out: I do agree with his comments about denigration x fair criticism, both in his earlier posting and in the present one.
After reading the inclusion of the term "azure" in heraldry I would like to return to the quotes I extracted from Pale Fire, namely:
John Shade
1.By the false azure in the windowpane;
2.the three young people stood/ Before the azure entrance for awhile.
Charles Kinbote:
1.one of the three heraldic creatures (the other two being respectively a reindeer proper and a merman azure, crined or);4. I guess he was heading for the Côte d’Azur...(etc);
2... a son who eventually changed his name to Blue and married Stella Lazurchik;
3. The poor poet ...lay with open dead eyes directed up at the sunny evening azure.
I think that PF presents, deliberately so, most of the distinct meanings of "azure" ( sky, spectral atmospheric color, neon color, heraldry, name of city, word-play), while our List shifts from spectral color to material pigments, conventional meanings, attributions and metaphors almost too blithely.
Charles' point about "there is no false blue" seemed to be precise, but his conclusion was, perhaps, not applicable to the meaning of "false" that VN might have intended . In my opinion, as already stated, the "false" might not be a reference to a sky-color "azure", but to something else that is ...feigned ( Cf. another line:I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.)
Reading the offered extracts from the OED it seemed to me that "azure" in English still differs from its wider acception in Russian, pointing to "color" ( in clear sky and reflected on the ocean), not as a substitute to "sky".
Jansy
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
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