Sending again this message. I fear the one below
remained unposted since I received no UCLA confirmation and a warning sign from
McCaffee...
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 5:31 PM
Subject: SUBLIME grouses...
Stan K-B noted that Don seemed "to rule out the real
possibility that VN chose ‘sublimated’ precisely because it has several
meanings/resonances. Isn’t deliberate ambiguity one of the ‘tricks’ that
distinguishes poetry and poetic-prose..." "Others more versed [sic] in Freud and
Chemistry [!] may point out that the FORMAL meaning is NOT ‘repressed’: ‘[of a
desire/impulse] RAISED, diverted or transferred from the primitive or
instinctual level to one socially or culturally preferable.’...", "words SELDOM
have ONE CORRECT MEANING — and that MUST be the meaning intended by the
author."
Dear S K-B, indeed, repression is one of the
"Triebschicksalle", sublimation another.
I share your opinion that VN played with "sublimated" various meanings
and resonances.
Among the animals, only humans are allowed the privilege to grouse
and sublimate - except in comic strips and cartoons, where we
might find Snoopy leading a rich cultural life with his typewriter,
while emulating Clifford's lines "It was a dark and stormy
night" ( both Umberto Eco and George Steiner have quoted this
touching doggy effort, but only Steiner mentioned Clifford, and
only Eco carried "Snoopy" among the entries in the Index).
I initially
held that "sublimation" might accomodate
Don's interpretation of Shade's idea of " the rather plain-looking grouse "
turning into an "elegant, showy pheasant", because I was straining to avoid the
image of anything "sublime" residing in this process.
Although these lines suggest the
metamorphosis Jerry Friedman considered while referring to
Don's connection bt. a sublimated grouse and Hazel's (possible)
transformation, in my opinion this cannot be deduced from Shade's lines.
I suggest to those
who entertain the "integrationist" view that Shade found here a
very neat way to describe how a backyard pheasant was turned
into an imaginary (he didn't actually see the bird, only its
footprints in the snow!) "sublime and glorious" foreign king!
Jerry Friedman
observed that, although tempting, there is no connection bt. the line
"Life as a message scribbled in the dark" and what was
"espied on
a pine's bark" ( but he conceded that it might indicate Shade's train of
thought).
I thought that line 236 (
following Kinbote's marginal markings and the rhyme "dark" and "bark") had
joined both "Anonymous." and "Espied on a pine's bark," in more than one sense.
Also the intervals suggested to me a link between lines 231-234, lines 235-236
and the rest.
There is also an interesting contrast
bt. lines 234-235 ( "Instead of poetry divinely terse,disjointed
notes...") and Shade's incorrect presumptions that follow lines 974-976
("And if my private universe scans right, so does the verse of galaxies
divine"), a very indirect authorial self-appraisal though.
JF wrote: Thanks, though, for pointing
out the connection between that "anonymous" aphorism and the strange lines
939-940. There is another link confirming these in the Foreword, but
I forgot to underline this and will investigate it sometime in the
future...
Barbara Wyllie,
thank you for directing me and the List-members to the rich bibliography
collected in Zembla. Unfortunately most works are impossible for me to access (
in the past, Jacob Wilkenfeld used to send me a selection
of articles on VN and his help has been invaluable).
Thank you both,
Peter Dale and CHW for the answers. I hope to return
to them in the future.