Subject
Re: THOUGHT on Shade as poet
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Date
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[Fresh emails from John Morris and James Twigg arrived as I had almost
finished this reply to Gary Lipon. At the risk of some confusion, I¹m
posting this as-is. But I am now clearer on the opposing & supporting camps.
VN¹s accent and his reading all the verses, is duly noted, John.
Jim: I¹m less disturbed than you by the Author-Industry phenomenon! I¹ld DIE
to have an SKB-Industry when I¹m dead, if not sooner! Every artist would, I
guess. I envisage a Twigg-Industry one day, reacting angrily to any
anti-Twigg criticisms, however mild and honest. [Detectable hint of irony?]
The proposed publication of the Cantos (it¹s on my must-buy list!), is not
quite the what-if¹ I had in mind, of course. Some few might be reading the
poem for the first time (their assessment would be interesting) but It¹s now
impossible for most folks to read it without PF-the-novel in mind! I even
suspect that the preface to the planned poem-only-book, if aimed at the
general public, would have to explain its origin and motivation, or least
give some CLUES as to WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON! That Hazel is the daughter
of a fictitious poet John Shade, and so on! Might as well er er add
footnotes and index SKB]
Strangely irrelevant question(s), Gary, but easily answered (with some new
questions). There¹s nothing ridiculous or extraordinarily mnemonic¹ about
committing long poems (good, bad, indifferent or even prosaic) to memory. It
was mandatory in my early EngLit schooldays (coveted elocution prizes at
stake I won one declaiming tons of indifferent Tennyson) and many of us
retained the habit through adulthood and well unto senility as a source of
immense, voluntary pleasure. From verse to worse, as they say,
memorableness¹ is not directly related to content and quality.¹ I can
still reel off moiles and teems of Finnegans Wake with only the vaguest
glimmer of what, if anything, it all might mean. In my Irish Folksong heyday
(as Stan Kelly, un-hyphenated), I would indeed perform¹ with Dominic Behan
et al, sizeable chunks of ALP and HCE alongside the Croppy Boy and the
original ballad of Finnegan¹s (apostrophe required) death and revival.
Whether the audience (often academic) needed transcripts or footnotes to
understand¹ our recitals is blazingly rhetorical (not requiring a reply).
There¹s no doubt, though, that our concerts were enjoyed, applauded and
encored.
I see some analogies with VN¹s success when reciting Pale-Fire-the-Poem in
public. Whether the audience were all tenured Nabokovian scholars,
lay-PF-readers, or unversed plebs in from the cold (a mix is most likely),
the performance would be pure magic. Prior knowledge of VN¹s reputation and
the on-going, irresistible mysteries of PF-the-novel would clearly enhance
one¹s experience, but surely a GOOD TIME would be had by all bar the
thickest of pixies? Before I had read Pnin or knew much of VN beyond Lolita,
I encountered a recording of his hilarious reading from Pnin, one of the
many reasons for my total conversion. I think I have since seen most of his
extant recorded interviews (plus the re-enacted Kafka lecture) and my desire
to see his PF recital is unbounded. Two points I¹m anxious to clarify. Is VN
reading (or, rather, guided) from a printed prompt (as was his wont)?
Secondly: his enduring, endearing Petrograd [?] accent! This, of course, was
ideal for Pnin, and possibly appropriate for readings from the
Kinbote/Botkin sections (how much Zemblan accent survived their exile, and
how would we recognize it? Discuss). But does PF-the-poem, for maximum
performance/interpretive credibility, call for a SHADEAN (John or Hazel!?)
New Wye intonation?
My what-if scenario remains ripe for debate in spite of your questions, my
answers and my added questions. Donning VN¹s scientific-taxonomic hat,*
consider the two extreme characterizations s of PF-the-cantos (To remind
you, I share BB¹s rating of the novel as perfect.¹
1. Truly moving pathos, from a bereaved, academic-literary major
philosopher-poet pondering his approaching death with fresh insights into
the eternal mysteries of the great thereafter (BB and others with minor
variations)
2. Deliberate comic-genius, uniquely-Nabokovian parody of a minot poet,
dominated by open and thinly-disguised doggerel; to be read mainly as the
brilliant core around which the Kinbote annotation-narrative is mysteriouly
woven
(Jim Twigg and I are somewhere between these extremes, hedging our bets for
different reasons and emphases?)
With EITHER opinion, we can IMAGINE (Gedankenexperiment) PF-the-Cantos
appearing in print instead of, or ahead of PF-the-novel (cf Joyce¹s
Work-in-Progress.)
A trick question on the side: if published anonymously (no hindsight or
rumours) would PF-the-poem attract the tag Nabokovian? VN himself disliked
literary pigeonholes: this-School and that-School. And we¹ve all seen the
N-word [sic] applied rashly. (Recall that Marx is not longer a true Marxist
according to some true, that is, genuine NEO-Marxists.)
You ask how the poem-in-isolation might be received in print and recital.
Under VN¹s name, both would attract considerable interest in 1962, given
VN¹s emerging celebrity-notoriety. We have not only a What-If but also a
What-Next! A lot would depend on whether the novel appeared or not, and if
so, how soon after the poem. Far too many imponderables.
Poetry still evades a satisfying, widely-accepted, objective definition.
Rhyming is neither necessary nor sufficient! Memorable prose¹ is useful but
misleading, as is the need for presenting the text as a typographical
quiltwork of blocked patterns. We usually think of poetry in terms of
imaginative, metaphorical (non-literal, whatever that means), puzzling,
unobvious use of words, with the ensuing paradox that if the poem¹s meaning
is too readily fathomed, we are entitled to ask why the poet bothered
chopping her thoughts into regular lines and employing other tricks of the
trade.¹ From this perspective, much of Kinbote¹s prose,¹ suitably
line-broken and caesura-littered (see VN-as-Shade¹s obvious layout parodies
of Eliot and other modern¹ excesses) is obscure enough to make it to a
Faber anthology. My drift here is to reject a clear dichotomy between
PF-prose and PF-poetry, and focus on the unity of PF, from VN the
novelist-poet uniquely able to create a miraculously UNSTABLE narrative
featuring characters as diverse as a minor poet (sub-Frost, and, like Frost,
so agonizingly near greatness with his final Abschied), a dumpy, suicidal
daughter, a cunning-linguist-demanding aunt, and (VN¹s crowning creation
after HH and Lo) a crazy annotator, but sane enough in a meta-sense, to
ensure we get to buy PF-the-novel. (In a remote part of the Multiverse, a VN
leaves instructions that if PF-the-novel is unfinished, BURN THE POEM!)
We grew up unashamedly giggling at such major poets as Shakespeare:
For never was there tale of so much WOE
As that of Juliet and her ROM-E-O.
There are ways of reciting this that dilute its shock-horror-fun!
Try reading St Agnes¹ Eve straight through with a straight face. It¹s the
relentless iambics and silly rhymes that tickle the Brit funny bone. Yet
unalloyed admiration, of course, for Keats. I¹ve never gone for the cliche:
a Poem is as weak as its weakest line; the converse, replacing weak/weakest
with strong/strongest, carries a bit more credibility, but not a lot.
As I may have posted previously, consider Hamlet¹s play-within-the-play. If
this had appeared as a stand-alone fragment before the play itself, the
verdict might well have been: sad and moving, to be sure, but clearly not
the work of our Bard. Read in the context of Hamlet¹s plot to unmask
Claudius, the embedded playlet is a brilliant SHAKESPEAREAN parody of
inferior Elizabethan drama.
An indirectly related study (already made, no doubt) is HH, the Poet. We
sortof grant him genius ¹novelist¹ status as first-person narrator, yet
scattered throughout Lolita are amusing snippets.of his verse/doggerel.
These are brilliant in context, but we are not led to evaluate HH¹s skill as
a poet, as opposed to VN¹s own poetic prowess. Have the Lolilta poetic
lollipops¹ (to borrow the musical idiom) ever been published and analzed as
part of VN¹s corpus?
Final example, lest I outstay my welcome:
Reading from left to right in winter's code:
A dot, an arrow pointing back; repeat:
Dot, arrow pointing back ...
So far, so evocative, so sublime. Nabokov, the super-observant naturalist,
fully deserving BB¹s euphoria, but is it a VN-Homer-nod or a Shade-Homer-nod
when we meet the overwhelmingly bank-sank-type*** anti-climax:
... A pheasant's feet!** (Note carefully, the exclamation mark is
VN-as-Shade¹s not mine!)
BB writes: As Robert Alter comments, we do a double take as we read Shade's
words ...
Indeed, we do -- but to my Brit ears, for different reasons. Pheasant¹s
Feet? Plain wrong for VN-as-poet, but perfect as VN-having-fun, mocking the
minor-versifier Shade. We not only have the forced rhyme (with repeat) but
the risible alliteration. Perhaps escaping American ears, but British
lug-holes would be drawn towards the London Cockney (th = f) resonances:
Firty Fousand Fevvers on a Firsty Feasant¹s Froat! (aliter, Frush¹s Froat).
We also have the rhyming slang: plates (of meat) = feet.
* See, esp., Professor Blackwell¹s The Quill And The Scalpel: Nabokov's Art
And The Worlds Of Science
Available for 2907 rupees from
http://www.flipkart.com/quill-scalpel-stephen-blackwell-nabokov/0814210996-k
7w3fcijsc
** It¹s interesting to note that Pheasant tracks are among the most
difficult to identify:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2067944_identify-pheasant-tracks.html
*** Re-Jim Twigg¹s aversion to this couplet, and redeeming attempts to find
echoes with Ophelia¹s suicide, my reaction is that
Ships SINK but tragic damsels DROWN.
(no shortage of Shadean rhymes for Drown: down, brown, crown, frown ...
Which reminds me of his lawn/gone [more Cockney humour: lorst¹n¹gorn? )
True, one can read beneath the mundane words and detect Shade¹s genuine,
stumbling sorrow. That¹s ambiguous poetry for you! Who has not wept over a
Hallmark condolence card?
One could find FLOWERY INSINCERITY in Gertrude¹s over-poetic report of her
son¹s girl-friend¹s demise. MELODIOUS LAY TO MUDDY DEATH is almost as trite
as Shade¹s bank/sank.
Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
Author, inter alia: The Computer Contradictionary, MIT Press (2nd ed.
googlebooks)
Co-author, Lern Yerself Scouse, Scouse Press (16th ed.)
On 19/01/2010 19:24, "Gary Lipon" <glipon@INNERLEA.COM> wrote:
>
> On Jan 19, 2010, at 12:03 AM, Stan Kelly-Bootle wrote:
>
>> what if the Cantos had appeared ... as a New Poem..
>
> Let me pose you this question:
> What if you were ridiculously
> committed to Pale Fire, the poem,
> and actually memorized it,
> (perhaps you possessed
> some extraordinary mnemonic process).
> Do you think you could recite it for an hour
> to an audience of the academe,
> or of a lesser curiosity?
> Would they need a transcript, a set of notes?
> if so how many pages might that be?
> And, of course: "How would it be received?"
>
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finished this reply to Gary Lipon. At the risk of some confusion, I¹m
posting this as-is. But I am now clearer on the opposing & supporting camps.
VN¹s accent and his reading all the verses, is duly noted, John.
Jim: I¹m less disturbed than you by the Author-Industry phenomenon! I¹ld DIE
to have an SKB-Industry when I¹m dead, if not sooner! Every artist would, I
guess. I envisage a Twigg-Industry one day, reacting angrily to any
anti-Twigg criticisms, however mild and honest. [Detectable hint of irony?]
The proposed publication of the Cantos (it¹s on my must-buy list!), is not
quite the what-if¹ I had in mind, of course. Some few might be reading the
poem for the first time (their assessment would be interesting) but It¹s now
impossible for most folks to read it without PF-the-novel in mind! I even
suspect that the preface to the planned poem-only-book, if aimed at the
general public, would have to explain its origin and motivation, or least
give some CLUES as to WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON! That Hazel is the daughter
of a fictitious poet John Shade, and so on! Might as well er er add
footnotes and index SKB]
Strangely irrelevant question(s), Gary, but easily answered (with some new
questions). There¹s nothing ridiculous or extraordinarily mnemonic¹ about
committing long poems (good, bad, indifferent or even prosaic) to memory. It
was mandatory in my early EngLit schooldays (coveted elocution prizes at
stake I won one declaiming tons of indifferent Tennyson) and many of us
retained the habit through adulthood and well unto senility as a source of
immense, voluntary pleasure. From verse to worse, as they say,
memorableness¹ is not directly related to content and quality.¹ I can
still reel off moiles and teems of Finnegans Wake with only the vaguest
glimmer of what, if anything, it all might mean. In my Irish Folksong heyday
(as Stan Kelly, un-hyphenated), I would indeed perform¹ with Dominic Behan
et al, sizeable chunks of ALP and HCE alongside the Croppy Boy and the
original ballad of Finnegan¹s (apostrophe required) death and revival.
Whether the audience (often academic) needed transcripts or footnotes to
understand¹ our recitals is blazingly rhetorical (not requiring a reply).
There¹s no doubt, though, that our concerts were enjoyed, applauded and
encored.
I see some analogies with VN¹s success when reciting Pale-Fire-the-Poem in
public. Whether the audience were all tenured Nabokovian scholars,
lay-PF-readers, or unversed plebs in from the cold (a mix is most likely),
the performance would be pure magic. Prior knowledge of VN¹s reputation and
the on-going, irresistible mysteries of PF-the-novel would clearly enhance
one¹s experience, but surely a GOOD TIME would be had by all bar the
thickest of pixies? Before I had read Pnin or knew much of VN beyond Lolita,
I encountered a recording of his hilarious reading from Pnin, one of the
many reasons for my total conversion. I think I have since seen most of his
extant recorded interviews (plus the re-enacted Kafka lecture) and my desire
to see his PF recital is unbounded. Two points I¹m anxious to clarify. Is VN
reading (or, rather, guided) from a printed prompt (as was his wont)?
Secondly: his enduring, endearing Petrograd [?] accent! This, of course, was
ideal for Pnin, and possibly appropriate for readings from the
Kinbote/Botkin sections (how much Zemblan accent survived their exile, and
how would we recognize it? Discuss). But does PF-the-poem, for maximum
performance/interpretive credibility, call for a SHADEAN (John or Hazel!?)
New Wye intonation?
My what-if scenario remains ripe for debate in spite of your questions, my
answers and my added questions. Donning VN¹s scientific-taxonomic hat,*
consider the two extreme characterizations s of PF-the-cantos (To remind
you, I share BB¹s rating of the novel as perfect.¹
1. Truly moving pathos, from a bereaved, academic-literary major
philosopher-poet pondering his approaching death with fresh insights into
the eternal mysteries of the great thereafter (BB and others with minor
variations)
2. Deliberate comic-genius, uniquely-Nabokovian parody of a minot poet,
dominated by open and thinly-disguised doggerel; to be read mainly as the
brilliant core around which the Kinbote annotation-narrative is mysteriouly
woven
(Jim Twigg and I are somewhere between these extremes, hedging our bets for
different reasons and emphases?)
With EITHER opinion, we can IMAGINE (Gedankenexperiment) PF-the-Cantos
appearing in print instead of, or ahead of PF-the-novel (cf Joyce¹s
Work-in-Progress.)
A trick question on the side: if published anonymously (no hindsight or
rumours) would PF-the-poem attract the tag Nabokovian? VN himself disliked
literary pigeonholes: this-School and that-School. And we¹ve all seen the
N-word [sic] applied rashly. (Recall that Marx is not longer a true Marxist
according to some true, that is, genuine NEO-Marxists.)
You ask how the poem-in-isolation might be received in print and recital.
Under VN¹s name, both would attract considerable interest in 1962, given
VN¹s emerging celebrity-notoriety. We have not only a What-If but also a
What-Next! A lot would depend on whether the novel appeared or not, and if
so, how soon after the poem. Far too many imponderables.
Poetry still evades a satisfying, widely-accepted, objective definition.
Rhyming is neither necessary nor sufficient! Memorable prose¹ is useful but
misleading, as is the need for presenting the text as a typographical
quiltwork of blocked patterns. We usually think of poetry in terms of
imaginative, metaphorical (non-literal, whatever that means), puzzling,
unobvious use of words, with the ensuing paradox that if the poem¹s meaning
is too readily fathomed, we are entitled to ask why the poet bothered
chopping her thoughts into regular lines and employing other tricks of the
trade.¹ From this perspective, much of Kinbote¹s prose,¹ suitably
line-broken and caesura-littered (see VN-as-Shade¹s obvious layout parodies
of Eliot and other modern¹ excesses) is obscure enough to make it to a
Faber anthology. My drift here is to reject a clear dichotomy between
PF-prose and PF-poetry, and focus on the unity of PF, from VN the
novelist-poet uniquely able to create a miraculously UNSTABLE narrative
featuring characters as diverse as a minor poet (sub-Frost, and, like Frost,
so agonizingly near greatness with his final Abschied), a dumpy, suicidal
daughter, a cunning-linguist-demanding aunt, and (VN¹s crowning creation
after HH and Lo) a crazy annotator, but sane enough in a meta-sense, to
ensure we get to buy PF-the-novel. (In a remote part of the Multiverse, a VN
leaves instructions that if PF-the-novel is unfinished, BURN THE POEM!)
We grew up unashamedly giggling at such major poets as Shakespeare:
For never was there tale of so much WOE
As that of Juliet and her ROM-E-O.
There are ways of reciting this that dilute its shock-horror-fun!
Try reading St Agnes¹ Eve straight through with a straight face. It¹s the
relentless iambics and silly rhymes that tickle the Brit funny bone. Yet
unalloyed admiration, of course, for Keats. I¹ve never gone for the cliche:
a Poem is as weak as its weakest line; the converse, replacing weak/weakest
with strong/strongest, carries a bit more credibility, but not a lot.
As I may have posted previously, consider Hamlet¹s play-within-the-play. If
this had appeared as a stand-alone fragment before the play itself, the
verdict might well have been: sad and moving, to be sure, but clearly not
the work of our Bard. Read in the context of Hamlet¹s plot to unmask
Claudius, the embedded playlet is a brilliant SHAKESPEAREAN parody of
inferior Elizabethan drama.
An indirectly related study (already made, no doubt) is HH, the Poet. We
sortof grant him genius ¹novelist¹ status as first-person narrator, yet
scattered throughout Lolita are amusing snippets.of his verse/doggerel.
These are brilliant in context, but we are not led to evaluate HH¹s skill as
a poet, as opposed to VN¹s own poetic prowess. Have the Lolilta poetic
lollipops¹ (to borrow the musical idiom) ever been published and analzed as
part of VN¹s corpus?
Final example, lest I outstay my welcome:
Reading from left to right in winter's code:
A dot, an arrow pointing back; repeat:
Dot, arrow pointing back ...
So far, so evocative, so sublime. Nabokov, the super-observant naturalist,
fully deserving BB¹s euphoria, but is it a VN-Homer-nod or a Shade-Homer-nod
when we meet the overwhelmingly bank-sank-type*** anti-climax:
... A pheasant's feet!** (Note carefully, the exclamation mark is
VN-as-Shade¹s not mine!)
BB writes: As Robert Alter comments, we do a double take as we read Shade's
words ...
Indeed, we do -- but to my Brit ears, for different reasons. Pheasant¹s
Feet? Plain wrong for VN-as-poet, but perfect as VN-having-fun, mocking the
minor-versifier Shade. We not only have the forced rhyme (with repeat) but
the risible alliteration. Perhaps escaping American ears, but British
lug-holes would be drawn towards the London Cockney (th = f) resonances:
Firty Fousand Fevvers on a Firsty Feasant¹s Froat! (aliter, Frush¹s Froat).
We also have the rhyming slang: plates (of meat) = feet.
* See, esp., Professor Blackwell¹s The Quill And The Scalpel: Nabokov's Art
And The Worlds Of Science
Available for 2907 rupees from
http://www.flipkart.com/quill-scalpel-stephen-blackwell-nabokov/0814210996-k
7w3fcijsc
** It¹s interesting to note that Pheasant tracks are among the most
difficult to identify:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2067944_identify-pheasant-tracks.html
*** Re-Jim Twigg¹s aversion to this couplet, and redeeming attempts to find
echoes with Ophelia¹s suicide, my reaction is that
Ships SINK but tragic damsels DROWN.
(no shortage of Shadean rhymes for Drown: down, brown, crown, frown ...
Which reminds me of his lawn/gone [more Cockney humour: lorst¹n¹gorn? )
True, one can read beneath the mundane words and detect Shade¹s genuine,
stumbling sorrow. That¹s ambiguous poetry for you! Who has not wept over a
Hallmark condolence card?
One could find FLOWERY INSINCERITY in Gertrude¹s over-poetic report of her
son¹s girl-friend¹s demise. MELODIOUS LAY TO MUDDY DEATH is almost as trite
as Shade¹s bank/sank.
Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
Author, inter alia: The Computer Contradictionary, MIT Press (2nd ed.
googlebooks)
Co-author, Lern Yerself Scouse, Scouse Press (16th ed.)
On 19/01/2010 19:24, "Gary Lipon" <glipon@INNERLEA.COM> wrote:
>
> On Jan 19, 2010, at 12:03 AM, Stan Kelly-Bootle wrote:
>
>> what if the Cantos had appeared ... as a New Poem..
>
> Let me pose you this question:
> What if you were ridiculously
> committed to Pale Fire, the poem,
> and actually memorized it,
> (perhaps you possessed
> some extraordinary mnemonic process).
> Do you think you could recite it for an hour
> to an audience of the academe,
> or of a lesser curiosity?
> Would they need a transcript, a set of notes?
> if so how many pages might that be?
> And, of course: "How would it be received?"
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/