On May 4, 2010, at 9:50 AM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
[quoting Lipon:]
Immediately after making his grand pronouncement, Shade loses his train of thought ... And speaking of this wonderful machine ... [a] sudden shift of affect, from grandiose resolve to a desultory questioning. This shift of tone tends to confirms that Shade is mentally not well. These abrupt affective shifts recur throughout the canto, especially during the shaving sequence.
There are sudden shifts elsewhere in the poem, such as the shifts in subject in lines 119-130, ...
There are sudden shifts ... in subject in lines 119-130 ...
And there's the wall of sound: the nightly wall
Raised by a trillion crickets in the fall.
Impenetrable! Halfway up the hill
I'd pause in thrall of their delirious trill.
That's Dr.Sutton's light. That's the Great Bear.
A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.
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Well, we both agree that there's a sudden shift of content and affect, a general discontinuity, between the last two lines of:
Now I shall spy on beauty as none has
Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as
None has cried out. Now I shall try what none
Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done.
And speaking of this wonderful machine:
As to the other passage:
I simply don't see the same kind of discontinuity between the two passages at all.
In fact I see, feel, no real discontinuity within the trillion crickets passage whatsoever.
The trillion crickets passage is a thinly disguised list of sights, sounds and thoughts on a rural early fall evening, in which the mood is meditative and the semantics circumspect and desultory, an awareness of the greater universe that the crepuscule affords, but no desire to go beyond that. Moreover the stanza fits between, is necessary for, going from Shade's picture book stanza to the regular vulgarian which leads to an ambiguous summation of his childhood, and finally a description of his childhood fits or seizure.
Semantically, everything seems pretty smooth to me.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––But be that as it may,
I must say I enjoy having my attention directed to the trillion crickets stanza. It's an instinctual favorite.
A throwaway. A description of an autumnal twilight: That time of year thou mayest in me behold...; almost that trivial.
Anyhow this is one of the more free-standing stanzas in Pale Fire, and as such, when considering such questions as whether Pale Fire, the poem is a good poem, one might return to this passage, and ask: how satisfying is it?
Which begets: What is it you that want to be told? a story? a style? a oddly tender rendering of a nightfall?
(Also semantically of great importance is how Dr. Sutton's house links this graceful threnody to Shade's similarly tranquil and pensive envoy.)
And since someone's just recently complained of a pronounced lack in variety of idols offered up for worship, I feel obliged to name a dusty one of mine:
Béla Viktor János Bartók (1881-1945):
I'm not going to bore you with biography, but offer a couple links to a piece, a melody, of his that evokes for me the same qualities and effects as does Nabokov's The Trillion Crickets. The first version even features crickets:
— August 12, 2007 — 11th August 2007 Europe Hungary Budapest Endre Hegedus concert pianist performs in his home
I think the master plays better, lighter, and not so fast as to be too disconnected.
He used to collect, record Hungarian and other ethnic folk songs on a Edison tube recorder, which I think is shown in one of the village photographs.
An Evening at the Village or Evening in Transylvania (Este a székelyeknél)...
Bartok Este a székelyeknél,
That kind of autumn feeling.