Although aware that I'm sending too many letters to the
list, now that the bit is between the teeth, it's too tempting to
strike while the iron is hot. Here's hoping someone, at least, will find these
comments not entirely pointless.
The quality of PF the poem is absolutely central to
a satisfactory understanding of the book. Thinking about it further, I
grow more and more certain that VN was deliberately throwing dust into the
reader's eyes, in much more than the obviously
misleading ways.
In the first place, the idea that Shade is in any way
emulating Pope is a smokescreen, a red herring and a wicked misdirection. Pope
was a supremely sharp, elegant and polished satirist, who wielded a poetic
scalpel. Shade's verse is soggy, if tireless, and the only resemblance to Pope
in his lines is that the couplets rhyme, and, often, they do not rhyme
smoothly. The poem is immeasurably more reminiscent of the
compositions of Wordsworth.
I'm not sure whether VN refers to Keats in his various
remarks, but Keats's ideas about poetry seem to me more germane here than
others.
Here is a quote from a website:
'John Keats writes that "A Poet . . . has no Identity —
he is continually in for — and filling some other Body" (2.895). In his letters,
Keats attacks Wordsworth as a self-aggrandizing "Egotist" (2.890), and he coins
the memorable phrase "the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime" (2.894) to
describe a poetic sensibility too enamored of itself.'
Several list members have recently remarked on the
self-centred character of Shade's poem: he is not truly identifying with
his unhappy daughter, but considers her ugliness, unpopularity, etc, mainly
as his own misfortune, not hers. This transition, from apparently selfless
contemplation of beauty or suffering, into "sublime" self-absorption, as
the website points out, occurs again and again in Wordsworth's
verse.
I have to assume that VN was perfectly
familiar with this famous passage from Keats, but, to my knowledge, he doesn't
refer to it. Nevertheless, it seems to me very apt as commentary on both Shade
and Kinbote. The paradox is that Shade is actually a far
greater egotist than Kinbote, and in a much more reprehensible way.
Kinbote's apparently self-centred fantasies are the airy nothings of a
nobody. He has no real identity, and has negative capability. He is the
poet, not Shade.
Perhaps someone better versed in VN's works
can point out his comments, if any, on Keats.
All above assertions automatically imply
imho.
Charles Harrison-Wallace