Subject
Twining vines and figs ( just in case...)
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Dear List,
Someone off-list predicted I'd be getting lots of mails explaining to me about the "Old Faithful"...
Of course I know it is a geyser and yet, it is unlike any white fountain I've seen. It spurts at regular intervals and dies down to be reborn in twenty or so more minutes.
Its vertical rise is astonishing, but almost ghostly and very transient. Wasn't that the point for Shade (and VN before him) having chosen it as an image of potency and cyclical regularity, a majestic "faithfulness"?
Nijinski's outfit: are the leaves twining around him grapevines or fig? Well...Fig leaves were standard Catholic Church devices used to cover the nudity of Greek statues like a Hanes Fig Leaf Brief. Vines ( as in names, like Vinogradus or Vinelander) are also frequent in VN's novels. Fig-trees are not of the climbing bending kind. Methinks the allusion to figs and mysterious fountains related to death and aspiring souls is still there.
The sentence: Writers should see the world, pluck its figs and peaches reminded me of standard songs "pick up the rose before it withers" ( such as "Freut euch des Lebens" etc).
Lovely girls ( boys too?) were compared to peaches, at least in America. VN's sentence may be more amply unfurled still...
Jansy
Jansy
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Someone off-list predicted I'd be getting lots of mails explaining to me about the "Old Faithful"...
Of course I know it is a geyser and yet, it is unlike any white fountain I've seen. It spurts at regular intervals and dies down to be reborn in twenty or so more minutes.
Its vertical rise is astonishing, but almost ghostly and very transient. Wasn't that the point for Shade (and VN before him) having chosen it as an image of potency and cyclical regularity, a majestic "faithfulness"?
Nijinski's outfit: are the leaves twining around him grapevines or fig? Well...Fig leaves were standard Catholic Church devices used to cover the nudity of Greek statues like a Hanes Fig Leaf Brief. Vines ( as in names, like Vinogradus or Vinelander) are also frequent in VN's novels. Fig-trees are not of the climbing bending kind. Methinks the allusion to figs and mysterious fountains related to death and aspiring souls is still there.
The sentence: Writers should see the world, pluck its figs and peaches reminded me of standard songs "pick up the rose before it withers" ( such as "Freut euch des Lebens" etc).
Lovely girls ( boys too?) were compared to peaches, at least in America. VN's sentence may be more amply unfurled still...
Jansy
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
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