Subject
pf'S SUBLIMATED GROUSE
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FROM: Don Johnson
Jansy's comment on ill-understood reminded me that a few days ago I, albeit belatedly, got to wondering about that "sublimated grouse" in the lines below:
Whose spurred feet have crossed
From left to right the blank page of the road?
Reading from left to right in winter’s code:
A dot, an arrow pointing back; repeat:
Dot, arrow pointing back... A pheasant’s feet!
Torquated beauty, sublimated grouse,
Finding your China right behind my house.
"Torquated," I knew because the common English name for the pheasant is "ring-necked ---"torquated" meaning "collared." I was puzzled, however, by that "SUBLIMATED grouse." In my, Freud-saturated society, "sublimated" =repressed, pushed down into the subconscious". WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
"Sublimated" means "made 'sublime,'' i.e. the rather plain-looking grouse (almost certainly the "Ruffed grouse" --the usual grouse of Appalachia) is viewed here as a grouse made SUBLIME, i.e., the elegant, showy pheasant.
If one adopts Brian Boyd's theory of the mousey Hazel being postmortally transformed into a glamorous Wood duck (Aix sponsa-"a bride", perhaps the mousey grouse's transformation into a splendid pheasant is a foreshadowing thereof.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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
Jansy's comment on ill-understood reminded me that a few days ago I, albeit belatedly, got to wondering about that "sublimated grouse" in the lines below:
Whose spurred feet have crossed
From left to right the blank page of the road?
Reading from left to right in winter’s code:
A dot, an arrow pointing back; repeat:
Dot, arrow pointing back... A pheasant’s feet!
Torquated beauty, sublimated grouse,
Finding your China right behind my house.
"Torquated," I knew because the common English name for the pheasant is "ring-necked ---"torquated" meaning "collared." I was puzzled, however, by that "SUBLIMATED grouse." In my, Freud-saturated society, "sublimated" =repressed, pushed down into the subconscious". WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
"Sublimated" means "made 'sublime,'' i.e. the rather plain-looking grouse (almost certainly the "Ruffed grouse" --the usual grouse of Appalachia) is viewed here as a grouse made SUBLIME, i.e., the elegant, showy pheasant.
If one adopts Brian Boyd's theory of the mousey Hazel being postmortally transformed into a glamorous Wood duck (Aix sponsa-"a bride", perhaps the mousey grouse's transformation into a splendid pheasant is a foreshadowing thereof.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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