Dear List,
A follow up of my former message about cup-bearers,
catamites and Ganymede [ plus Ida (Mlle La Riviere)] in
"Ada", takes us more explicitly to "Pale Fire".
Hebe was Ganymede's predecessor and there is a line in
Shade's poem where he describes the works he'd already published and mentions
"Hebe's Cup".
The mythological links go from Ganymede to Hebe
and next, to Hercules. Also in "Transparent
Things" we return Hercules and one of his wives, Dejanira
( the Dejanira theme has alreaby been
brought up in the list).
There are references to the old dog Argus, who
recognized Ulysses, also in Pale Fire, by the anagram
D'Argus-Gradus.
This connection was made by Kinbote in the note
that precedes the one (on line 957) quoted below, where Kinbote's reminiscences
lead him to "Odysseys" ( ie, Homer's Ulysses...or any other poetic adventure
about a hero's return).
Mammoth hunts, of course, takes us back to
Lolita's "aurochs"...
PALE FIRE: Shade's HEBE's
CUP
Dim
Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote
Came next; then Hebe’s
Cup, my final float
In
that damp carnival, for now I term
960
Everything "Poems," and no longer
squirm.
(But this transparent thingum
does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale
Fire.)
CK note to line 49 (not in 958): Many
years ago Disa, our King’s Queen, whose favorite trees were the jacaranda and
the maidenhair, copied out in her album a quatrain from John Shade’s collection
of short poems Hebe’s
Cup, which I cannot refrain from quoting here (from a letter I
received on April 6, 1959, from southern
France):
CK Line
957: Night
Rote
I remember one little poem from Night Rote (meaning "the nocturnal sound
of the sea") that happened to be my first contact with the American poet Shade.
A young lecturer on American Literature, a brilliant and charming boy from
Boston, showed me that slim and lovely volume in Onhava, in my student days. The
following lines opening this poem, which is entitled "Art," pleased me by their
catchy lilt and jarred upon the religious sentiments instilled in me by our very
"high" Zemblan church.:From
mammoth hunts and Odysseys/And
Oriental charms/ To
the Italian goddesses/With
Flemish babes in arms.
TRANSPARENT
THINGS: Dejanira and Hercules
....have never been able to get
rid of my mother's Canadian accent, though I hear it clearly when I whisper
French words. Ouvre ta robe, Déjanire that I may mount sur mon
bucher...
Data from the Internet:
Tennyson:
"There, too, flushed Ganymede his rosy
thigh
Half buried in the eagle's down,
Sole as a flying star shot through
the sky
Above the pillared town."
Shelley:
In his "Prometheus", Jupiter calls to his cup-bearer
thus:
"Pour forth heaven's wine, Idaean Ganymede,
And let it
fill the Daedal cups like fire."
Goethe also wrote poems about
Ganymede and Prometheus.