Doryphoric note:
“Finnegan’s Wake” is the ballad; Joyce’s “novel” is “Finnegans Wake.”
skb
On 1/4/06 3:35 am, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] [Fwd: Musings on Robert Southey's roast rat in PALE FIRE]
Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:55:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman@yahoo.com> <mailto:jerry_friedman@yahoo.com>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
As the story about the bishop is a mere legend, I don't know
whether we can ascribe anger at him to VN.
I imagine that Southey wrote about the German bishop
because it's a striking, grotesque story and maybe because
of his (Southey's) proletarian sympathies. It's a warning
to those who oppress the sans-culottes.
Has anyone mentioned that S. is also in the note to line 12,
on the subject of his Lingo-Grande as a forerunner of
/Finnegan's Wake/? I know nothing about Lingo-Grande.
I must admit I've always just been stumped by both Stumparumper
and the rats, and didn't particularly "think of the Bishop of
Bingen/ In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!" (Longfellow). To add
to what other people have suggested, I suspect one connection
between Southey and Prof. H. is that S.'s ballad is a definitive
example of poetic justice. Kinbote in his "just anger" may
be thinking that when Prof. H. reads the disparagement of
"English Lit", in a poem he was so concerned about, he'll suffer
poetic justice.
Jerry Friedman
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