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Re: QUERY: Pappa pisses and Pippa passes - a pale fountain girl:
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In a message dated 11/20/2007 3:24:56 PM Central Standard Time,
NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU writes:
>
>
> There's never an end to surprises when I return to Nabokov.
> I was re-reading certain lines of Shade's poem: " And from the inside,
> too, I´d duplicate/ Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:/Uncurtaining
> the night, I´d let dark glass/ Hang all the furniture above the
> grass..." and suddenly Shade's apple on a plate glared at me.
> Why would Shade mention an apple right at the start of "Pale Fire", as a
> part of his familiar surroundings when, later, we find Kinbote writing
> that: "Shade said that with him it was the other way around: he must
> make a definite effort to partake of a vegetable. Beginning a salad, was
> to him like stepping into sea water on a chilly day, and he had always
> to brace himself in order to attack the fortress of an apple." ?
Shade may have liked apples better in childhood (which he's describing here)
than he did as an adult. I did. And it would seem to be an uneaten apple
anyway.
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NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU writes:
>
>
> There's never an end to surprises when I return to Nabokov.
> I was re-reading certain lines of Shade's poem: " And from the inside,
> too, I´d duplicate/ Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:/Uncurtaining
> the night, I´d let dark glass/ Hang all the furniture above the
> grass..." and suddenly Shade's apple on a plate glared at me.
> Why would Shade mention an apple right at the start of "Pale Fire", as a
> part of his familiar surroundings when, later, we find Kinbote writing
> that: "Shade said that with him it was the other way around: he must
> make a definite effort to partake of a vegetable. Beginning a salad, was
> to him like stepping into sea water on a chilly day, and he had always
> to brace himself in order to attack the fortress of an apple." ?
Shade may have liked apples better in childhood (which he's describing here)
than he did as an adult. I did. And it would seem to be an uneaten apple
anyway.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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