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Re: Pale Fire Commentary on Line 130]
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Hello again
I'm somewhat bemused that my observations have generated so much interest and am immensely grateful for the replies, from which I am certainly learning.
May I point to something else which strikes me?
The commentary on line 920 'Making the little hairs all stand on end' seems to me to show Kinbote's incomplete grasp of English poetry in more than one respect. Referring to A E Housman as 'Alfred Housman' looks a little unusual, but referring to his major work as "The Shropshire Lad" is an obvious mistake. Wikipedia tells me that Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer" (1960 or 1961) contains a reference to "The Shropshire Lad" and I wonder if this is another example of VN hinting at the incompleteness of Kinbote's literary knowledge - how could he get such an iconic title wrong, especially as the dates given for Housman are correct?
Perhaps the reference to Tennyson in the same breath as Housman is meant to show Kinbote's literary judgment being coloured by the homoerotic undertones in Housman and in "In Memoriam". After all, to say that Housman vies with Tennyson in representing the highest achievement in English poetry in a hundred years is a gross overstatement - whatever you think of the two poets.
I will try to chase down the reference to the foreward attributed to Housman to see if it helps.
As for the 'razors' comment - can I mention that the safety razor was introduced early in the twentieth century, so Housman could have used one. And Mr Gillette was "King C Gillette" (the 'C' standing for 'Camp'). Make of that what you will!
Barrie Akin
Sent from my iPad
On 23 Jul 2012, at 20:57, "Roth, Matthew" <mroth@MESSIAH.EDU> wrote:
> Dear list,
> This is in response to the interesting insights of Barrie, Mike, and others surrounding cricket, soccer, etc. I am busy writing an article on the PF manuscript and just happened to arrive at the passage in question today. I don’t want to pre-empt my own scholarship, but the fates should be respected, so I am happy to shed a little light on the subject. In the holograph manuscript, Kinbote’s note to line 98 (“On Chapman’s Homer”) includes a line of conjecture as to what sport is being referenced. Nabokov tried out both lacrosse and hockey but canceled those and settled on baseball and basketball instead. This passage, however, was later removed and the current first sentence of n. 130 was added. This sentence, in its original form, does not mention cricket at all, but instead mentions “soccer or hockey, our two main games.” So it seems that Barrie was right in finding the insertion of cricket a bit odd. And the later change to “cricket” does seem to show that Nabokov thought about what he wanted and chose cricket over hockey in order to achieve some effect.
>
> Hope this helped a little. Furthermore, I hope this will serve as an example of why we need variorum editions of VN’s novels. We have the technology!
>
> Matt Roth
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
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I'm somewhat bemused that my observations have generated so much interest and am immensely grateful for the replies, from which I am certainly learning.
May I point to something else which strikes me?
The commentary on line 920 'Making the little hairs all stand on end' seems to me to show Kinbote's incomplete grasp of English poetry in more than one respect. Referring to A E Housman as 'Alfred Housman' looks a little unusual, but referring to his major work as "The Shropshire Lad" is an obvious mistake. Wikipedia tells me that Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer" (1960 or 1961) contains a reference to "The Shropshire Lad" and I wonder if this is another example of VN hinting at the incompleteness of Kinbote's literary knowledge - how could he get such an iconic title wrong, especially as the dates given for Housman are correct?
Perhaps the reference to Tennyson in the same breath as Housman is meant to show Kinbote's literary judgment being coloured by the homoerotic undertones in Housman and in "In Memoriam". After all, to say that Housman vies with Tennyson in representing the highest achievement in English poetry in a hundred years is a gross overstatement - whatever you think of the two poets.
I will try to chase down the reference to the foreward attributed to Housman to see if it helps.
As for the 'razors' comment - can I mention that the safety razor was introduced early in the twentieth century, so Housman could have used one. And Mr Gillette was "King C Gillette" (the 'C' standing for 'Camp'). Make of that what you will!
Barrie Akin
Sent from my iPad
On 23 Jul 2012, at 20:57, "Roth, Matthew" <mroth@MESSIAH.EDU> wrote:
> Dear list,
> This is in response to the interesting insights of Barrie, Mike, and others surrounding cricket, soccer, etc. I am busy writing an article on the PF manuscript and just happened to arrive at the passage in question today. I don’t want to pre-empt my own scholarship, but the fates should be respected, so I am happy to shed a little light on the subject. In the holograph manuscript, Kinbote’s note to line 98 (“On Chapman’s Homer”) includes a line of conjecture as to what sport is being referenced. Nabokov tried out both lacrosse and hockey but canceled those and settled on baseball and basketball instead. This passage, however, was later removed and the current first sentence of n. 130 was added. This sentence, in its original form, does not mention cricket at all, but instead mentions “soccer or hockey, our two main games.” So it seems that Barrie was right in finding the insertion of cricket a bit odd. And the later change to “cricket” does seem to show that Nabokov thought about what he wanted and chose cricket over hockey in order to achieve some effect.
>
> Hope this helped a little. Furthermore, I hope this will serve as an example of why we need variorum editions of VN’s novels. We have the technology!
>
> Matt Roth
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service.
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
> All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service.
______________________________________________________________________
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
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/