Subject
SPEAK, MEMORY question (fwd)
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 11:56:00 -0500 (CDT)
From: Brian D. Walter <bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu>
Can anyone offer a specific explanation of the verse at the end of
Nabokov's foreword to the revised SPEAK, MEMORY?
Through the window of that index
Climbs a rose
And sometimes a gentle wind _ex
Ponto_ blows.
Various echoes and motifs come to mind, but it's hard to see how they
might gloss the lines. Stained glass windows figure prominently in SPEAK,
MEMORY while windows in general are foregrounded repeatedly in Nabokov's
work, sometimes as an apparent conduit to the 'Otherworld' of the tricky
author (e. g. in BEND SINISTER and PALE FIRE). Rose imagery is especially
prevalent in LOLITA and PALE FIRE, the latter of which features a
memorable reference to the ascendant flower in the midst of Charles and
Disa's meeting in Nice: "Up in the trellis a telephone climbed with the
roses" (p. 212 in the Vintage edition). EX PONTO is a collection of poems
by Ovid, another famously exiled poet, and is mentioned in the commentary
to EUGENE ONEGIN. Also, the picture of Nabokov in the punt on the Cam
(subject of one of the most beautiful passages in SPEAK, MEMORY, pp.
270-1) is given extra prominence on the cover of the paperback Vintage
edition.
Any theories?
Brian Walter
6800 Vernon
St. Louis, MO 63130-2524
(314) 863-4041
bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 11:56:00 -0500 (CDT)
From: Brian D. Walter <bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu>
Can anyone offer a specific explanation of the verse at the end of
Nabokov's foreword to the revised SPEAK, MEMORY?
Through the window of that index
Climbs a rose
And sometimes a gentle wind _ex
Ponto_ blows.
Various echoes and motifs come to mind, but it's hard to see how they
might gloss the lines. Stained glass windows figure prominently in SPEAK,
MEMORY while windows in general are foregrounded repeatedly in Nabokov's
work, sometimes as an apparent conduit to the 'Otherworld' of the tricky
author (e. g. in BEND SINISTER and PALE FIRE). Rose imagery is especially
prevalent in LOLITA and PALE FIRE, the latter of which features a
memorable reference to the ascendant flower in the midst of Charles and
Disa's meeting in Nice: "Up in the trellis a telephone climbed with the
roses" (p. 212 in the Vintage edition). EX PONTO is a collection of poems
by Ovid, another famously exiled poet, and is mentioned in the commentary
to EUGENE ONEGIN. Also, the picture of Nabokov in the punt on the Cam
(subject of one of the most beautiful passages in SPEAK, MEMORY, pp.
270-1) is given extra prominence on the cover of the paperback Vintage
edition.
Any theories?
Brian Walter
6800 Vernon
St. Louis, MO 63130-2524
(314) 863-4041
bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu