Gary Lipon (on Stevens, Frost
and Shade) quoting John Shade: "Now I shall speak of evil as
none has/ Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;/ The white-hosed moron
torturing a black/ Bull, rayed with red; abstractist
bric-a-brac" from Canto 4, lines 223-6 [...] The verbs glued and
smeared both denote stickiness.N's paste carries sexual connotations while
Stevens' opulent sun stands, in the usual way, as the fundamental life-giving
force imbuing our little corner of the universe (much like Shade claims, rather
implausibly, for his little scissors).
JM: Nabokov and Shade are
similar in their disgusts. Cf. Strong Opinions, Vintage p.18,1962: "It is also true that some of my more responsible characters
are given some of my own ideas. There is John Shade in "Pale Fire", the poet. He
does borrow some of my own opinions. There is one passage in his poem, which is
part of the book, where he says something I think I can endorse. He says - let
me quote it, if I can remember; yes, I think I can do it: 'I loathe such things
as jazz. the white-hosed moron torturing a black bull..abstractist bric-a-brac,
primitivist folk masks, progressive schools, music in supermarkets, swimming
pools, brutes, bores, class-conscious philistines, Freud, Marx, fake thinkers,
puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.' That's how it
goes."
btw: very interesting exchanges bt. Frost and
Stevens, and quotes. Great! And colored sunsets.