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Re: Hazel's unattractiveness; deaths in VN
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Jansy,
³The Shades were not a very passionate couple, at least so it seems to me.
They kept separate rooms and Hazel was engendered after a long period of
sterility, after a trip to Nice... The poem Pale Fire, itself, has no trace
of eroticism, or sensuality.
The expression " a writer's grief" is a peculiar expression for a "father's
grief": he was grieving for himself...
Hazel's experiences in the barn are quite childish: are these the ideal
examples of her true "spirituality"? A beautiful ghost that arose from a
metamorphosis similar to a butterfly's... would such an image really appeal
to Nabokov if not in a parody?²
Excuse my responding to such a small portion of your comment. I am not
qualified to deal with the rest since I haven¹t done the required reading. I
thought Levi-Strauss was the fellow who invented denim jeans but this seems
not to be the case.
Isn¹t the Shades¹ passion referred to a number of times in the poem and even
in CK¹s commentary? Doesn¹t the poem have a stanza mentioning how their
mattress indicates how many times they have been conjoined there? Doesn¹t
Shade, in a semi-hysterical and self-infatuated way describe his earliest
love for Sybil, his disbelief at this beauty loving him? Does Shade not
refer to her lovingly as they grow older, as she calls his attention to
fresh beauties in their yard, such as a bird or a jet stream across the sky?
And how he lovingly observes her even as they prepare for a trip and she
zips the farcical travel bag¹s round-trip zipper?
I believe, in addition, that even Kinbote notates their going-to-bed
practices, and spies on the way Shade, more often than not, treads his way
to Sybil¹s bed before going to his own (Nabokov, many times during his life
with Vera, slept, or tried to, in a separate room, and I have heard that
they were a pretty passionate couple, even though they had only one child.
Many children, today at least, are born after a long period of ³sterility.²
These so called periods of sterility (something about that term strikes me
as inaccurate) often include an abundant and frequent amount of sexual
activity.
So I guess I would have to say that the Pale Fire poem does have traces of
eroticism, or sensuality. But nothing that would prevent its sale to the
Saturday Evening Post of 1959. Aside from Henry Miller, not many sixty-one
year old men seem able to throw down the old eroticism onto the page the way
they could in their twenties. John Updike might have what it takes. ( IMO:
The true sign when a male writer has finally thrown in the towel is when he
starts rambling about eating or cooking.)
I agree that ³a writer¹s grief² in the context in which it occurs is a dead
giveaway to Shade¹s true self-centered nature. Wasn¹t Frost kind of like
this?
Hazel¹s activities in the barn may have been childish, but no more childish,
and perhaps less so, than the activities of a large number of adult
spiritualists, many of them serious and sober individuals who had strong
thoughts on the subject. To return to the point, although Hazel¹s actions
or activities may have been naïve, I don¹t think they were childish. Great
scientists have undertaken experiments that seemed ludicrous to their peers,
and yet rendered valuable results. Hazels ³true spirituality² had not time
to mature and take form. She acted young because she was young, but to
search for one¹s spirituality by whatever clumsy means is not a mistake any
more than falling down on the ice a dozen times when you¹re learning to
skate is a mistake. I heard an interesting (but too easy and too
slogan-like) statement about spirituality versus religion the other day:
Religion is for those who fear Hell; spirituality is for those who have been
there.
I, too, reject the beautiful ghost that metamorphosis's into a butterfly.
Too simple. I see the novel Pale Fire as an endless ring of life that, like
an Escher design, may be drawn thin and nearly transparent at some points,
and very thick at others. But it is irresolvable and too flexible to be
breakable. It is not a ³problem² to be solved, and it is perhaps the closest
a work of fiction has ever come to describing how the patterns of human
physical and spiritual life are justified, and will lcontinue endlessly
while this world lasts.
Andrew Brown
On 11/8/06 2:18 PM, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> The Shades were not a very passionate couple, at least so it seems to me. They
> kept separate rooms and Hazel was engendered after a long period of sterility,
> after a trip to Nice... The poem Pale Fire, itself, has no trace of eroticism,
> or sensuality.
> The expression " a writer's grief" is a peculiar expression for a "father's
> grief": he was grieving for himself...
> Hazel's experiences in the barn are quite childish: are these the ideal
> examples of her true "spirituality"? A beautiful ghost that arose from a
> metamorphosis similar to a butterfly's... would such an image really appeal
> to Nabokov if not in a parody?
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
³The Shades were not a very passionate couple, at least so it seems to me.
They kept separate rooms and Hazel was engendered after a long period of
sterility, after a trip to Nice... The poem Pale Fire, itself, has no trace
of eroticism, or sensuality.
The expression " a writer's grief" is a peculiar expression for a "father's
grief": he was grieving for himself...
Hazel's experiences in the barn are quite childish: are these the ideal
examples of her true "spirituality"? A beautiful ghost that arose from a
metamorphosis similar to a butterfly's... would such an image really appeal
to Nabokov if not in a parody?²
Excuse my responding to such a small portion of your comment. I am not
qualified to deal with the rest since I haven¹t done the required reading. I
thought Levi-Strauss was the fellow who invented denim jeans but this seems
not to be the case.
Isn¹t the Shades¹ passion referred to a number of times in the poem and even
in CK¹s commentary? Doesn¹t the poem have a stanza mentioning how their
mattress indicates how many times they have been conjoined there? Doesn¹t
Shade, in a semi-hysterical and self-infatuated way describe his earliest
love for Sybil, his disbelief at this beauty loving him? Does Shade not
refer to her lovingly as they grow older, as she calls his attention to
fresh beauties in their yard, such as a bird or a jet stream across the sky?
And how he lovingly observes her even as they prepare for a trip and she
zips the farcical travel bag¹s round-trip zipper?
I believe, in addition, that even Kinbote notates their going-to-bed
practices, and spies on the way Shade, more often than not, treads his way
to Sybil¹s bed before going to his own (Nabokov, many times during his life
with Vera, slept, or tried to, in a separate room, and I have heard that
they were a pretty passionate couple, even though they had only one child.
Many children, today at least, are born after a long period of ³sterility.²
These so called periods of sterility (something about that term strikes me
as inaccurate) often include an abundant and frequent amount of sexual
activity.
So I guess I would have to say that the Pale Fire poem does have traces of
eroticism, or sensuality. But nothing that would prevent its sale to the
Saturday Evening Post of 1959. Aside from Henry Miller, not many sixty-one
year old men seem able to throw down the old eroticism onto the page the way
they could in their twenties. John Updike might have what it takes. ( IMO:
The true sign when a male writer has finally thrown in the towel is when he
starts rambling about eating or cooking.)
I agree that ³a writer¹s grief² in the context in which it occurs is a dead
giveaway to Shade¹s true self-centered nature. Wasn¹t Frost kind of like
this?
Hazel¹s activities in the barn may have been childish, but no more childish,
and perhaps less so, than the activities of a large number of adult
spiritualists, many of them serious and sober individuals who had strong
thoughts on the subject. To return to the point, although Hazel¹s actions
or activities may have been naïve, I don¹t think they were childish. Great
scientists have undertaken experiments that seemed ludicrous to their peers,
and yet rendered valuable results. Hazels ³true spirituality² had not time
to mature and take form. She acted young because she was young, but to
search for one¹s spirituality by whatever clumsy means is not a mistake any
more than falling down on the ice a dozen times when you¹re learning to
skate is a mistake. I heard an interesting (but too easy and too
slogan-like) statement about spirituality versus religion the other day:
Religion is for those who fear Hell; spirituality is for those who have been
there.
I, too, reject the beautiful ghost that metamorphosis's into a butterfly.
Too simple. I see the novel Pale Fire as an endless ring of life that, like
an Escher design, may be drawn thin and nearly transparent at some points,
and very thick at others. But it is irresolvable and too flexible to be
breakable. It is not a ³problem² to be solved, and it is perhaps the closest
a work of fiction has ever come to describing how the patterns of human
physical and spiritual life are justified, and will lcontinue endlessly
while this world lasts.
Andrew Brown
On 11/8/06 2:18 PM, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> The Shades were not a very passionate couple, at least so it seems to me. They
> kept separate rooms and Hazel was engendered after a long period of sterility,
> after a trip to Nice... The poem Pale Fire, itself, has no trace of eroticism,
> or sensuality.
> The expression " a writer's grief" is a peculiar expression for a "father's
> grief": he was grieving for himself...
> Hazel's experiences in the barn are quite childish: are these the ideal
> examples of her true "spirituality"? A beautiful ghost that arose from a
> metamorphosis similar to a butterfly's... would such an image really appeal
> to Nabokov if not in a parody?
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