Dear List,
Someone off-list predicted I'd be getting lots
of mails explaining to me about the "Old Faithful"...
Of course I know it is a geyser and yet, it is
unlike any white fountain I've seen. It spurts at regular intervals and
dies down to be reborn in twenty or so more minutes.
Its vertical rise is astonishing, but almost
ghostly and very transient. Wasn't that the point for Shade (and VN before
him) having chosen it as an image of potency and cyclical
regularity, a majestic "faithfulness"?
Nijinski's outfit: are the leaves twining around
him grapevines or fig? Well...Fig leaves were standard Catholic Church devices
used to cover the nudity of Greek statues like a Hanes Fig Leaf Brief.
Vines ( as in names, like Vinogradus
or Vinelander) are also frequent in VN's novels. Fig-trees are not of
the climbing bending kind. Methinks the allusion
to figs and mysterious fountains related to death and aspiring souls is still
there.
The sentence: Writers should see the world, pluck its figs and peaches
reminded me of standard songs "pick up the rose before it
withers" ( such as "Freut euch des Lebens"
etc).
Lovely girls
( boys too?) were compared to peaches, at least in America. VN's
sentence may be more amply unfurled still...
Jansy
Jansy