One of the nicest experiences of being a “foreigner” to the American world results from occasional discoveries that are only a stimulating novelty for those who are in a situation that’s similar to mine. While I was visiting a bookstore yesterday I came across a pocket book with the title “Um parque de diversões na cabeça” (“An amusement park in the mind”, literally). I’d never before heard of the author, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and, thinking about Kinbote’s mental carousels, I decided to check into the book to find some kind of reference to Pale Fire in it. I came to realize that the collection of poems I had in my hands is simply wonderful! A great find - but I’d never have opened it had the translators chosen another way to render the original title: “A Coney Island of the Mind”.
When I got home I discovered various links between V.Nabokov and L.Ferlinghetti, initially because of an editor they shared: James Laughlin [ who founded New Directions in 1936 while still a sophomore at Harvard University http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/macniven_glassgold14.html ]. As you may all know, Lawrence Ferlinghetti still runs his own publishing house, launched in 1955: “The City Lights.”
Their names are sometimes mentioned in proximity * and Ferlinghetti, at least once, included something Nabokovian in his verses, as in “Deep Chess” (Cf. “These are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems, 1955-1993”) where, or so it seems to me, Nabokov’s moves might open a way to vanquish “Him” (Time, mortality, God?).
DEEP CHESS
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Life itself like championship chess
dark players jousting
on a checkered field
where you have only
so much time
to complete your moves
And your clock running
all the time
and if you take
too much time
for one move
you have that much less
for the rest
of your life
And your opponent
dark or fair
(which may or may not be
life itself)
bugging you with his deep eyes
or obscenely wiggling his crazy eyebrows
or blowing smoke in your face
or crossing and recrossing his legs
or her legs
or otherwise screwing around
and acting like some insolent invulnerable
unbeatable god
who can read your mind & heart
And one hasty move
may ruin you
for you must play
deep chess
(like the one deep game Spassky won from Fischer)
And if your unstudied opening
was not too brilliant
you must play to win not draw
and suddenly come up with
a new Nabokov variation
And then lay Him out at last
with some super end-game
no one has ever even dreamed of
And there's still time-
Your move
http://chess.kearman.com/html/deepchess.htm
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* - “The 1950s …In different contexts, Kerouac and Nabokov describe long-distance, continental driving around America, Kerouac "on the road" in the western states, Nabokov's Humbert Humbert from motel to motel in an elaborate pattern to avoid his pursuers. Selby, by contrast, presents the complex culture of socially isolated young men in Brooklyn where sex, violence, and the local economy depend on cars. Hawkes shows various symbolic and material roles that the car plays in one family's life, while O'Connor's preacher in Wise Blood turns an old Essex into his pulpit. Roethke presents a drive on washed out roads as a symbol for the speaker's unconscious mind. Stafford's "Traveling Through the Dark" juxtaposes a dead deer on the road with his car's animation. Warren shows the decline of the Appalachian region partly in terms of its collapsing infrastructure. Bellow charts an elderly woman's struggle to keep her aging car in working condition so she can get to her remote home in rural California. A scheme to steal an antique Ford from a woman through fraudulent marriage to her daughter is the subject of O'Connor's "The Life You Save…." In another of her stories, a grandmother's misremembered and confusing road directions lead a family to its death. Chase highlights car models as a way to identify gangsters and their police pursuers on Kansas highways. McMurtry shows the importance of the car culture in Texas with special emphasis on the car's role in teenagers' sexual encounters. Stafford in "The Trip" gives images of the drive-in restaurant, while Booth characterizes the rural Maine economy partly by the way people repair and recycle old cars. In Albee's play, segregated Southern hospitals are shown to cause blues singer Bessie Smith's death following an auto accident, while Wilson dramatizes the effects of segregation in the Pittsburgh local trucking industry. Cushman creates a plot around a man's gradually selling off parts of his prized Buick as an allegory about the general decline of Native Americans in the face of whites' technology. Nabokov's Professor Pnin, after struggling with unreliable railway and bus schedules finally joins the automobile age in his eccentric and bumbling way.Cheever's "Country Husband" depicts the survivor of an airplane crash whose near-tragedy cannot be communicated to his family or neighbors, as he deals with routine problems commuting by train to the suburbs. Nemerov's poem gives images of the airplane as a symbol of the Eisenhower administration. Lensky shows the Mississippi River valley, with its tugboats and lock system, while Bissell deals with technical problems of towing barges during a flood on the River, as well as competition from the railroads. Baldwin describes an African-American expatriate's voyage from France to the United States on an ocean liner, and then his wonder at the new highway system. Ferlinghetti links the multi-lane highway to images from Goya's drawings of war, while Lowell associates the building of a parking garage and cars with tail fins with a general indifference to the pain of wars in this century. O'Connor uses a train trip to Atlanta to describe a young white Georgia boy's first contact with blacks, where the train station becomes the symbol of his ability to escape back to his home. Stafford's "West of Your City" has word plays which echo the sound of a moving train, while Wrightbuilds on the sexual symbolism of the train's masculine imagery. The commuter train in Cheever's story is the site for a sexually exploited secretary to stalk her former boss for revenge, while Carver's companion piece focuses on how other passengers react to the woman. Bellow describes how subway travellers try to guess each others' thoughts and character.) . http://english.cla.umn.edu/faculty/ross/Transport/1950.htm