Jansy's quote recalls General MacArthur's famous remark "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away." Part of his resignation speech I believe. Was Shade perhaps suggesting that Kinbote abdicate? Of course he would have done this tongue-in-cheek
as he knew there was no Zembla, or any king thereof. I wonder too, perhaps someone knows, if MacArthur was making reference to an earlier quote?
Carolyn
p.s. To those interested in such things, I went last night to see a dreadful production of
Cosi fan tutte, and was telling my neighbor how I discovered that Mozart had taken the second theme, on which most of the overture is based, from four bars of entr'acte music from
the Barber of Seville commissioned by Catherine II of Paisiello (not the more famous Rossini, to which Jansy refers above). Mozart heard it
in Prague when he was there for the performance of one of his own operas, and how he did it I'll never know, managed to pick out those four inconsequential bars and spin them into musical gold.
[NABOKV -L] A certain kind of immortality...
Variations on: “Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die — they
only disappear, eh, Charles?"
” (Pale Fire)
Still wondering about Erwin’s song (from VN’s “A Nursery Tale” adapted
short-story in a London play) and the musician G.
Rossini, I finally came to his overture of “The
Barber of Seville” - where I read a comment on the
youtube link stating that “old artists never die, they just become
enchanted”.
It reminded me of Kinbote’s reported dialogue
with John Shade and this time I found a new site
with innumerous variations of the same idea.
Kinbote’s quip isn’t very original at all…
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.