The evidence suggests VN did read TSE closely, because he WAS lauded to the skies from the 1940s to the 1960s. VN pastiches "Gerontion" and "Ash Wednesday" in Lolita, and targets Four Quartets and echoes The Waste Land in at least two places in "Pale Fire," and (admittedly, in his most positive judgment) declares Eliot "not quite first-rate"--a lot more than he allows any of the other "plaster busts." He read carefully and he retained exactly. He may have gleaned "rote" from TSE, although it's more likely he picked up "night rote" from Edmund Wilson or others at Wellfleet on Cape Cod. But as the chronology and phrasing both suggest it's most unlikely Shade took "rote" from TSE, and quite possible within PF that TSE stole it from Shade's Night Rote. There could even be a wink at TSE's "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal," which of course would link with the play on theft in Shade's purloining "pale fire" from a diatribe against theft.

Brian Boyd



-----Original Message-----
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of R S Gwynn
Sent: Sat 15/03/2008 11:22 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Fw: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS re: Rote, Eliot - Palermo and Haedel i...

In a message dated 3/14/2008 3:49:58 PM Central Daylight Time,
jansy@AETERN.US writes:
>
> A.Stadlen: where is Shade supposed to be getting the word from? [...]
>  
>  JM: A good find ( Eliot-Rote-Sea) and a good question ( where is Shade
> supposed to be getting the word from?).
> Eliot in "The Dry Salvages" was referring to "a small group of rocks, with a
> beacon, off the N.E. coast of Cape Ann,Massachusetts", therefore the link
> bt. old England and New England was brought back by the term "rote".

>
One point is that "The Dry Salvages" first appeared in 1941, and that Night
Rote was supposed to have been Shade's second book of verse.  It seems likely
that this book would have appeared before 1941, unless Shade was some kind of
unrecorded late-bloomer (like, say, Frost).  Of course, VN may have known the
line, but I can't imagine him reading TSE that closely.  Since both JS and VN
didn't care for Eliot, why would either have lifted a title from him?  

Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en

Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm








Search the Nabokv-L archive with Google

Contact the Editors

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

Visit Zembla

View Nabokv-L Policies