Jerry Friedman [ What might "Pale Fire" parody? In my opinion, some
of the punning, witty poets who were on the ascendant at the time: Richard
Wilbur, James Merrill, Anthony Hecht. But Brian Boyd has mentioned that
Nabokov praised Wilbur, though not the others. He has also mentioned that
Helen Vendler thinks highly of "Pale Fire", and she greatly admired
Merrill. So it could also simply be a similarity of some
methods.]
JM: For Nabokov's own
assessment of Richard Wilbur we find, in Strong Opinions (p.131/34,
Vintage),in April 1969: "I seldom experience nowdadays the
spinal twinge which is the only valid reaction to a new piece of great poetry -
such as, for example, Richard Wilbur's "Complaint," a poem abut his marvelous
duchess," (Phoenix Bookshop edition, 1968).
As it happens when I peruse an old underlined
volume, there are finds:
Q: "Why, in Pale Fire, do you call parody the
"last resort of wit"?
VN:"It is Kinbote speaking. There
are people whom parody upsets." (p.77)
and:
Q ":..To what extent do you feel that prose and
poetry intermingle as art forms?"
VN: "...I would be inclined
to define a good poem of any length as a concentrate of good prose, with or
without the addition of recurrent rhythm and rhyme...The bamboo bridge between
them is the metaphor." (p.44)
Since I had by me an edition of the "Oxford
companion to twentieth century poetry in English" I checked its entries
and there was no mention of Nabokov, but there were representative
bits of A.Hecht, R.Wilbur and others. I tried to recover the information at home using the google
but there must be a new edition with additional poets included in
it*.
Concerning otherwordly matters, I extracted a
comment offered in this new edition of the Oxford Companion, that struck me in
particular concerning "how fashions rise
and dive... the general shape would surely have reflected the epoch's taste
for the florid and religiose, its lack of any real interest in technique...[ten
years later we]would note a new respect for the output of the American academies
and for those writers of the 1940s who had kept their wits about them and not
turned to God, or Jung. Overall, there would have been more braininess than
ecstasy, more common sense than communal
subconscious..."
.........................................................
* Poetry The Oxford companion to twentieth-century
poetry in English. .... Covers Warren, Fitzgerald, Bishop, Brooks,
Duncan, Swenson, Wilbur, Hecht, Dickey, Levertov, Koch, ... Sound and
form in modern poetry. Gross, Harvey Seymour. (PE1505 . ...
library.wnc.edu/subject_guides/poetry.pdf -