Matt and Jerry mount
a concerted defence of the merits of Pale Fire the poem. As much of what has
been said, both for and against its quality, boils down to matters of
subjective taste and personal reaction, the discussion threatens to descend to
the nursery level of: Yes, it is! No, it isn’t! --- which one hopes to avoid.
Still, having entered the lists, there is some obligation to pursue the joust. I
hope I don't seem too blunt and direct.
Matthew Roth
says:
It seems to me that if
VN wanted us to see Shade's poem as "miserable," much of the power of the novel
is lost. If CK is violating a bad poem by a bad man, why should we even care?
Isn't some of the tension in the novel derived from the sense that this is an
important poem?
I think Andrew Brown
actually said: It
is a miserable poem. It is an almost okay verse narrative. Although “miserable” may be a bit
excessive, I do think it is necessary and intellectually more scrupulous to respect his distinction between
poetry and verse, although I realize MR rejected this distinction at the very
beginning of our discussion. The tension in the novel
is maintained if we accept that it is, in one of its aspects, an inquiry into
the essence of literary excellence, and into the relationship between life and
art, illusion and reality.
Matthew Roth also
said:
I agree with you (ie
CHW) that Shade would have done better had he written in blank verse. The
heroic couplets are, of course, a bouquet thrown with admiration to Pope, but
the form simply doesn't converse with the content in "PF," except as it relates
to elegy. But the majority of the poem isn't elegaic; neither is it particularly
witty, a trait Pope accentuates through the pithy play of the heroic rhyme. For me, the choice
of heroic couplets is the poem's biggest fault--though I admire the feat all the
same.
Quite honestly, as I’ve already
said, I can see hardly any link at all between Pope and PF; and heroic
couplets are used by many other versifiers, for various purposes. Jerry made the
point, though, which I thought a good one, that 999 rhyming lines require a
rhyming line for closure, and line 1 offers a possibility. It’s an
ingeniously dangling end to the
unfinished composition. Doesn’t this echo Finnegans Wake? I’m speaking from
memory.
……. these adjectives (zesty, special),
combined with the x-to-y pun, have
method in them.
1. 489-490 provide a necessary, and brief, moment of
weightlessness between the
preceding anxiety and succeeding heavy resolution. The lines show
how that place was once associated
with lightness, as we see the bright skaters gliding across the ice. Shade gives us that image, but it
is palimpsest, thin ice, and we soon see the dark water seeping through.
Palimpsest threw me here, and I had
to look it up, but the dictionary definition still didn’t help me grasp your
drift. I understand that there is an intended contrast between fleeting
lightness and impending darkness.
2.
Zesty gives us the Z to go with X and Y.
Both zesty and special still seem to
me out of register adjectives in the context. What is the purpose of playing
games with the alphabet when your daughter is about to drown herself? Zesty strikes me as a Lolita-type word
--- on a par with blooper. Special is merely weak.
3. The sounds in Neck, Zesty, Exe, and Special are
musically allied. It's the same sound,
as well as a similar emotional effect, as we get in "festive blaze" a few
lines earlier. The playfulness is rueful, almost hysterical. After these lines,
the vowel sounds grow much darker
and longer, the only like exception being "excitement" in
495.
All right. Perhaps a kind of
mounting hysteria is being suggested. Laughter might be the emotionally jarring
reaction to an anticipated tragedy, although the effect seems to be
preceding the cause.
I'm not sure why you have
an issue with "and some say," which seems to me a perfectly reasonable follow-up
to "Others supposed" and "People have thought" in the previous lines.
"Night of blow" is a bit fanciful, but it chimes with the "great excitement" in
the next line--a very authentic
way, I think, of describing the belated change from winter to spring in northern
The rhyme of “crossed” with “frost”
seems to me natural, smooth and unforced, particularly if “special” is removed. The next three
rhymes seem sought after (like “Retake, retake” in line 487) and the lines they
terminate appear to have been manipulated to fit them in. The cart is pulling
the horse. “Night of blow” may be good American, but to me it just seems like
bad English, almost grotesque and slightly comic. A matter of taste, as I can’t
help repeating.
Jerry
wrote:
I agree with much of
what Matt says in defense of the end of Canto 2. I like "zesty" as a
description of skaters and I see the desire for the z that Andrew mentioned, but
I too think the line would be better without any adjective. Some sort of
adjective for "frost" is needed, since mere frost doesn't made skating possible,
but I don't think "special" is the right word. (I'm amazed that JS and VN
resisted the temptation of "extra".) Finally, "from Exe to Wye" in that
context is not so offensive since Shade will argue that coincidences are as
important as life and death. Maybe more important.
My comments on Matt’s views apply. I
don’t really agree that an adjective for “frost” is needed, since if there are
skaters the mind already accepts the idea that the frost is serious enough for
the ice to bear them. I’m not sure about the coincidence (?) of Exe and
Wye.
For some time I was racking my mind to think what the
following lines reminded me of:
A blurry shape stepped
off the reedy bank
Into a crackling,
gulping swamp, and sank.
Finally I hit on it. It conjured up
the image of a hippopotamus I’d seen entering the water when on a river safari
in
Charles
PS. There was another double negative in my letter to Jansy. Just testing.