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Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3531 PALE FIRE
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----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 5:14 PM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3531
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 13:39:32 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Terrance
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 11:38 AM
> > Cc: pynchon-l@waste.org
> > Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
> >
> >
>
> >
> > Taught us?
> >
> > Yes, Pale Fire is about teaching.
> > Yes, it really is. Nabokov was a teacher.
> > Lots of his characters are too.
> >
> > Teach Karlik!
> >
> > Ridiculous? A man of such wealth, teach boys to write and read?
> >
> > Ah, I'm quite sure Nab had a soft spot in his heart fro Jimmy Joyce.
> >
> >
> > Reading the commentary I'm reminded of the ridiculous arguments that
> > men like T.S. Eliot got into over Hamlet. Eliot sounds rather ridiculous
> > insisting that everything is About the "Objective Correlative."
> >
> > Line 962
> > Help me, Will. Pale Fire.
> >
> > My reader must make their own research.
> >
> > Read Shakespeare!
> >
> > Poor man, he's only got a Zemblan copy of Timon in his "cave."
> >
> > The translator spent half a century on Will's works.
> >
> > He was a pioneer, a veterano de la jungla, but he lived too much in the
> > world of books and not enough in the world of boys. Writers, Nabokov
> > teaches in his lectures, need a library, a cave, but they need, less
> > they start doing battle with windmills, to see the world, pluck its figs
> > and peaches, and not keep constantly mediating in the tower of yellow
> > ivory--which was also John Shade's mistake in a way.
>
>
> Oh so Vineland is about work and Pale Fire is about teaching, is that it?
> Just kidding, I happen to like this reading a lot -- Pale Fire as an
opaque
> lesson plan. The thing that most attracts me to Pale Fire (and other
books
> of similar density) is the almost archeological process the reader must
(or
> at least may) go through in order to fully engage with it. Look at the
> tangents that PF opens: Shakespeare, Romanticism, old English literature
and
> history, mythology (Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic), folklore, language, etc
> etc. One learns far more than what's contained in the text itself, some
of
> which might never have been encountered otherwise. Not text, but texture.
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 10:59:17 -0700 (PDT)
> From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid@yahoo.com>
> Subject: re: Pot & Pain
>
> Glad to hear it, T. I guess something else can
> explain your paranoia and projection.
>
> T:
> > As a serious athlete, triathlete, I'm planning to do
> > my first tinman or
> > half-ironman in October,
>
> I'm guesssing you'll be getting there by surfboard,
> managing that portfolio as you go, wives and
> girlfriends in tow, googling all the way...
>
> I agree with you on the medical uses of pot, it's
> useful stuff in that context.
>
> Nice to know you're reading my posts again.
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 15:03:58 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: Dr. Notebook
>
> - --- s~Z <keithsz@concentric.net> wrote:
> > http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/kaplan1.htm
>
> Having only skimmed this article, understanding Botkin to be the
uber-author of
> Pale Fire, a fictional third, hidden (mostly) character who wrote both
poem and
> commentary, and who invented both Shade and Kinbote (and Charles), I have
to
> admit I'm left unsatasfied (like Keith, but not necessarily for the same
> reasons), but not necesarily unconvinced. This uber-author is essentially
> Nabokov himself, once removed into a novel. But does this fancy footwork
> relieve the author of responsibility to make "his" fictional world
complete in
> its own right? If this reading is correct, it should only be a lesser
game
> inside the bigger nut we're trying to crack, IMHO.
>
> David Morris
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 15:15:49 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Four
>
> Mary Krimmel advised me well:
> > Keats's Grecian urn is -
> > silently, pictorially and centuries earlier -
> > more succinct.
> > "Beauty is truth, truth beauty".
>
> I sought Keats & Urn, found this poem, and others,
> and will now posit that when these words are mapped
> onto everyday referents outside our small domain of
> reflexive bodily speech acts, they cease to mean.
>
> Years after, but thinking back to a psychosis that
> soon or immediately followed after discovering AF,
> I recalled one strong mental image of a vase that
> was actively transitioning from whole to crazed,
> while my soul or self was being blown to powder,
> as I recall Emily Dickinson phrased it.
>
> Now I recognize that the destruction both initiates
> and completes the vessel, and is part of the vessel,
> alive, changing, reflexive verb acting on nounself.
>
> This is an immediate, non-intuitive gnostic recovery
> of shared mystery, hidden truth, that Kant requires
> to posit morals exist under transcendental idealism.
>
> This is also the implementation of the Klein bottle,
> not with just one intersection as a typical artist's
> model, but continuous junction of inside and outside
> boundaries distributed over the whole vessel surface.
>
> > ON A GRECIAN URN
> > Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
> > Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
> > Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
> > A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
> > What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
> > Of deities or mortals, or of both,
> > In temple, or the dales of Arcady?
> > What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
> > What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
> > What pipes or timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
> > Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
> > Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes, play on;
> > Not to the sensual ear, but more endear'd,
> > Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
> > Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
> > Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
> > Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
> > Though winning near the goal -yet, do not grieve;
> > She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss,
> > For ever will thou love, and she be fair.
> > Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
> > Your leaves, not ever bid the spring adieu;
> > And, happy melodist, unwearied,
> > For ever piping songs for ever new;
> > More happy love, more happy, happy love!
> > For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
> > For ever panting, and for ever young;
> > All breathing human passion far above,
> > That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
> > A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
> > Who are there coming to the sacrifice?
> > To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
> > Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
> > And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
> > What little town by river or sea shore,
> > Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
> > Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
> > And, little town, thy streets forever more
> > Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
> > Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
> > O Attic shape! Fair attitude with brede
> > Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
> > With forest branches and the trodden weed;
> > Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
> > As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
> > When old age shall this generation waste,
> > Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
> > Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
> > Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -that is all
> > Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
> http://www.saltana.com.ar/1/docar/0242.html
>
> Keat's interest in cows and sea place him in
> Revelation's second category of seven, Smyrna:
> male not defiled by father (as sons at Pergamos)
> (unravished bride) and based on other intuitions,
> also not defiled by mother (as sons at Ephesus).
> ---
> I found Keat's next text more titilating than images
> of contorted women at yahoos' group autocun...ingus,
> although the surrounding everyday redaction claims
> "Isabellas's actions at her lover's burial place".
>
> > She gaz'd into the fresh-thrown mould, as though
> > One glance did fully all its secrets tell;
> > Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know
> > Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;
> > Upon the murderous spot she seem'd to grow,
> > Like to a native lily of the dell:
> > Then with her knife, all sudden, she began
> > To dig more fervently than misers can.
> http://www.john-keats.com/biografie/chapter_vii.htm
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 18:50:37 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2 (tendril)
>
> > > > "...as a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary
> homosexual
> > complications.
> > >
> > >
> > > What does that mean, "secondary homosexual complications"? Anybody?
> >
> > I believe it means that since she was his sister - not his brother -
that
> there
> > was neither incestual - nor homosexual - temptation for Charles.
> >
> > David Morris
>
>
> I think it's a little more subtle than that. The structure of the sentence
> indicates that the two possible complications that occur after the "but"
are
> conditions that *could* exist between Charles and someone he is "fond
of...
> as of a sister," but they don't. Now, he couldn't really indulge in incest
> with Fleur because she's not really his sister, but since he thinks of her
> as one, he might think of sex with her as incestuous (especially since
he's
> happy to have any excuse not to go to bed with her). But what the devil
are
> "secondary homosexual complications," and how can homosexual complications
> of any kind exist between a male and female, whether they think of each
> other as siblings or not? Does "secondary" have some special meaning here?
> Please spell it out for me. I'm a country boy.
>
> Don
>
> >
> > Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 16:07:23 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glen_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: NPPF: Commentary to lines 47-48
>
> Part 1 of ?
> Someone saying this was a Kinbote sexual encounter,
> raised me from my lapse of reflexive awareness: The
> minister in black below *IS* Kinbote, autofe11ator,
> which I say is the theogony, theophagy and theurgy.
>
> > ... Once,
> > three decades ago, in my tender and
> > terrible boyhood, I had the occasion of
> > seeing a man in the act of making
> > contact with God.
>
> That form recalls scripture in 2 Corinthians 12:2,
> in which I long recognized Paul to be his "a man",
> expositing his own ineffable reflexive Word of God:
>
> 12:2 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in
> the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot
> tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
>
> 12:3 And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the
> body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
>
> 12:4 How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable
> words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.
>
> 12:5 Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory,
> but in mine infirmities.
>
> > I had wandered into
> > the so-called Rose Court at the back of
> > the Ducal Chapel in my native Onhava,
> > during an interval in hymnal practice.
>
> In this rolled-up reflexive act, the back is before the front.
>
> Now since the church, ekklessia, is called out, a speech act,
> it can include AF or FF, which made his father a king of him,
> himself the court or chapel, wherein is praised (viz. sucked)
> the king. AF breaks the spell of FF. Cf. Hamlet and Claudius.
>
> > As I mooned there, lifting and cooling
> > my bare calves by turns against a
> > smooth column,
>
> Since to moon is to present the bare buttocks, this fits AF.
>
> From the text of _The Mystic Tower_ I recognized a colonade
> surrounding a tower as a trope of the teeth around a pen is.
> Or also, the twin towers of _Ozymandias_ are his own thighs.
>
> So either, commonly, his knees are upon his shoulders (thus
> forelegs form raven's wings as in lyric by Door's Harrison),
> so calves are beside the head, as base of a column, or else,
> the calves might be locked behind arms, making them columns.
>
> > I could hear the distant
> > sweet voices interblending in subdued
> > boyish merriment which some chance
> > grudge, some jealous annoyance with one
> > particular lad, prevented me from
> > joining.
>
> I will boldly claim the FF'ed father is that particular lad.
>
> If the infant Kinbote also suffered MC, that puts him in the
> fourth Revelation category, Thyatira, wherein his king/father
> "will rule them with a rod of iron", inflict disproportionate
> strictures upon the child, creating a lonely insular soldier.
>
> > The sound of rapid steps made
> > me raise my morose gaze from the
> > sectile mosaic of the court --
>
> Beyond an accepted ancient euphemism of hand, I claim
> to stand, to walk, and a foot relate to the genitals.
> Rapid steps recall Emily Dickinson's AC frenzied bell.
>
> Morose gaze marks the repressed position of FF'ed boy.
> Sectile = "capable of being cut smoothly with knife"
> marks an abject, avoidant boy made everyman's victim.
>
> Sorry, I didn't get much done on this today,
> but I am stealing time from everybody else.
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 19:41:22 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> Actually we do know the name of Sam Shade's wife (and John's mother). It's
> Caroline (p 100, the starting point for Kinbote's riff on surnames). Sam
> died of a "bad heart," Caroline of cancer of the pancreas (l. 77, 78).
> You're right, as far as I can tell, that we're never told when Shade's
> mother died.
>
> Relative to that: a few days ago we were discussing l. 71 "I was an infant
> when my parents died." Second def of "infant" in MW10 is "a person who is
> not of full age : minor," which means (def 1) "a person who has not
attained
> majority," which means (def 2a) "the age at which full civil rights are
> accorded." This gives Caroline a lot more time, until her son turned 18 or
> 21, to shuffle off this mortal coil. Why Shade would use this kind of
> lawyerly construction of the meaning of "infant" might bear some looking
at,
> and the absence of any information about his mother's death is kind of the
> dog that didn't bark, isn't it? It is possible that Aunt Maud took over
his
> upbringing while Caroline Shade was still alive, but somehow indisposed.
It
> is possible, even--I'm just sayin'--that the wench who forced Shade "with
> his pure tongue her thirst to quench" was his widowed mother. Keith, you
> want a piece of this?
>
> I'm with Jasper on the evanescence of the Shakespeare refs. It's just that
> there's such a rich vein of them around the palace it seemed possible they
> might connect somewhere else.
>
> Don
>
>
>
> - ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Morris" <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> To: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>; <pynchon-l@waste.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 9:58 AM
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
>
> >
> > --- Don Corathers <gumbo@fuse.net> wrote:
> > > Where are all of the Hamlet references headed? They point to Botkin,
and
> > > they prepare us for Kinbote's contemplation of suicide. Is there a
> larger
> > > significance than we've seen on the ground in Zembla? If Fleur =
> Ophelia,
> > > does her mother = Polonius? Where's Claudius? Or is it just Hamlet as
> > > comedy, the joke being that Zembla, unlike Elsinore, can't even mount
a
> > > proper palace intrigue? The two hapless Danish tourists as R&G, now
> that's
> > > funny.
> >
> > I think the Hamlet references point to the suspicious early death of Sam
> Shade
> > and that lack of any specifics about the death of John Shades' mother
(did
> she
> > really die?). If you follow the chronology you'll see that:
> >
> > 1. Both John and Charles lost their fathers at the age of four.
> > 2. Sam was 46 of 47 when John was born. We don't know how he died
(except
> the
> > poem's info).
> > 3. Alfin was 42 when Charles was born. He died in a sports-plane crash.
> > 4. We have no specifics about when Sam's wife died (except the scant bit
> in the
> > poem), nor even her name.
> > 5. Queen Blenda died of a "bood disease" when Charles was 21.
> > 6. Aunt Maude and the "oldest Shadow" (the probable murderer of Iris
Acht)
> were
> > both born in 1869. Maude dies in 1950 at age 81.
> > 7. Hazel dies in 1957, age 23.
> >
> > I don't know where this leads...
> >
> > David Morris
> >
..
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 5:14 PM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3531
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 13:39:32 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Terrance
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 11:38 AM
> > Cc: pynchon-l@waste.org
> > Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
> >
> >
>
> >
> > Taught us?
> >
> > Yes, Pale Fire is about teaching.
> > Yes, it really is. Nabokov was a teacher.
> > Lots of his characters are too.
> >
> > Teach Karlik!
> >
> > Ridiculous? A man of such wealth, teach boys to write and read?
> >
> > Ah, I'm quite sure Nab had a soft spot in his heart fro Jimmy Joyce.
> >
> >
> > Reading the commentary I'm reminded of the ridiculous arguments that
> > men like T.S. Eliot got into over Hamlet. Eliot sounds rather ridiculous
> > insisting that everything is About the "Objective Correlative."
> >
> > Line 962
> > Help me, Will. Pale Fire.
> >
> > My reader must make their own research.
> >
> > Read Shakespeare!
> >
> > Poor man, he's only got a Zemblan copy of Timon in his "cave."
> >
> > The translator spent half a century on Will's works.
> >
> > He was a pioneer, a veterano de la jungla, but he lived too much in the
> > world of books and not enough in the world of boys. Writers, Nabokov
> > teaches in his lectures, need a library, a cave, but they need, less
> > they start doing battle with windmills, to see the world, pluck its figs
> > and peaches, and not keep constantly mediating in the tower of yellow
> > ivory--which was also John Shade's mistake in a way.
>
>
> Oh so Vineland is about work and Pale Fire is about teaching, is that it?
> Just kidding, I happen to like this reading a lot -- Pale Fire as an
opaque
> lesson plan. The thing that most attracts me to Pale Fire (and other
books
> of similar density) is the almost archeological process the reader must
(or
> at least may) go through in order to fully engage with it. Look at the
> tangents that PF opens: Shakespeare, Romanticism, old English literature
and
> history, mythology (Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic), folklore, language, etc
> etc. One learns far more than what's contained in the text itself, some
of
> which might never have been encountered otherwise. Not text, but texture.
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 10:59:17 -0700 (PDT)
> From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid@yahoo.com>
> Subject: re: Pot & Pain
>
> Glad to hear it, T. I guess something else can
> explain your paranoia and projection.
>
> T:
> > As a serious athlete, triathlete, I'm planning to do
> > my first tinman or
> > half-ironman in October,
>
> I'm guesssing you'll be getting there by surfboard,
> managing that portfolio as you go, wives and
> girlfriends in tow, googling all the way...
>
> I agree with you on the medical uses of pot, it's
> useful stuff in that context.
>
> Nice to know you're reading my posts again.
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 15:03:58 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: Dr. Notebook
>
> - --- s~Z <keithsz@concentric.net> wrote:
> > http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/kaplan1.htm
>
> Having only skimmed this article, understanding Botkin to be the
uber-author of
> Pale Fire, a fictional third, hidden (mostly) character who wrote both
poem and
> commentary, and who invented both Shade and Kinbote (and Charles), I have
to
> admit I'm left unsatasfied (like Keith, but not necessarily for the same
> reasons), but not necesarily unconvinced. This uber-author is essentially
> Nabokov himself, once removed into a novel. But does this fancy footwork
> relieve the author of responsibility to make "his" fictional world
complete in
> its own right? If this reading is correct, it should only be a lesser
game
> inside the bigger nut we're trying to crack, IMHO.
>
> David Morris
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 15:15:49 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Four
>
> Mary Krimmel advised me well:
> > Keats's Grecian urn is -
> > silently, pictorially and centuries earlier -
> > more succinct.
> > "Beauty is truth, truth beauty".
>
> I sought Keats & Urn, found this poem, and others,
> and will now posit that when these words are mapped
> onto everyday referents outside our small domain of
> reflexive bodily speech acts, they cease to mean.
>
> Years after, but thinking back to a psychosis that
> soon or immediately followed after discovering AF,
> I recalled one strong mental image of a vase that
> was actively transitioning from whole to crazed,
> while my soul or self was being blown to powder,
> as I recall Emily Dickinson phrased it.
>
> Now I recognize that the destruction both initiates
> and completes the vessel, and is part of the vessel,
> alive, changing, reflexive verb acting on nounself.
>
> This is an immediate, non-intuitive gnostic recovery
> of shared mystery, hidden truth, that Kant requires
> to posit morals exist under transcendental idealism.
>
> This is also the implementation of the Klein bottle,
> not with just one intersection as a typical artist's
> model, but continuous junction of inside and outside
> boundaries distributed over the whole vessel surface.
>
> > ON A GRECIAN URN
> > Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
> > Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
> > Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
> > A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
> > What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
> > Of deities or mortals, or of both,
> > In temple, or the dales of Arcady?
> > What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
> > What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
> > What pipes or timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
> > Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
> > Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes, play on;
> > Not to the sensual ear, but more endear'd,
> > Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
> > Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
> > Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
> > Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
> > Though winning near the goal -yet, do not grieve;
> > She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss,
> > For ever will thou love, and she be fair.
> > Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
> > Your leaves, not ever bid the spring adieu;
> > And, happy melodist, unwearied,
> > For ever piping songs for ever new;
> > More happy love, more happy, happy love!
> > For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
> > For ever panting, and for ever young;
> > All breathing human passion far above,
> > That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
> > A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
> > Who are there coming to the sacrifice?
> > To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
> > Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
> > And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
> > What little town by river or sea shore,
> > Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
> > Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
> > And, little town, thy streets forever more
> > Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
> > Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
> > O Attic shape! Fair attitude with brede
> > Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
> > With forest branches and the trodden weed;
> > Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
> > As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
> > When old age shall this generation waste,
> > Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
> > Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
> > Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -that is all
> > Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
> http://www.saltana.com.ar/1/docar/0242.html
>
> Keat's interest in cows and sea place him in
> Revelation's second category of seven, Smyrna:
> male not defiled by father (as sons at Pergamos)
> (unravished bride) and based on other intuitions,
> also not defiled by mother (as sons at Ephesus).
> ---
> I found Keat's next text more titilating than images
> of contorted women at yahoos' group autocun...ingus,
> although the surrounding everyday redaction claims
> "Isabellas's actions at her lover's burial place".
>
> > She gaz'd into the fresh-thrown mould, as though
> > One glance did fully all its secrets tell;
> > Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know
> > Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;
> > Upon the murderous spot she seem'd to grow,
> > Like to a native lily of the dell:
> > Then with her knife, all sudden, she began
> > To dig more fervently than misers can.
> http://www.john-keats.com/biografie/chapter_vii.htm
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 18:50:37 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2 (tendril)
>
> > > > "...as a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary
> homosexual
> > complications.
> > >
> > >
> > > What does that mean, "secondary homosexual complications"? Anybody?
> >
> > I believe it means that since she was his sister - not his brother -
that
> there
> > was neither incestual - nor homosexual - temptation for Charles.
> >
> > David Morris
>
>
> I think it's a little more subtle than that. The structure of the sentence
> indicates that the two possible complications that occur after the "but"
are
> conditions that *could* exist between Charles and someone he is "fond
of...
> as of a sister," but they don't. Now, he couldn't really indulge in incest
> with Fleur because she's not really his sister, but since he thinks of her
> as one, he might think of sex with her as incestuous (especially since
he's
> happy to have any excuse not to go to bed with her). But what the devil
are
> "secondary homosexual complications," and how can homosexual complications
> of any kind exist between a male and female, whether they think of each
> other as siblings or not? Does "secondary" have some special meaning here?
> Please spell it out for me. I'm a country boy.
>
> Don
>
> >
> > Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 16:07:23 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glen_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: NPPF: Commentary to lines 47-48
>
> Part 1 of ?
> Someone saying this was a Kinbote sexual encounter,
> raised me from my lapse of reflexive awareness: The
> minister in black below *IS* Kinbote, autofe11ator,
> which I say is the theogony, theophagy and theurgy.
>
> > ... Once,
> > three decades ago, in my tender and
> > terrible boyhood, I had the occasion of
> > seeing a man in the act of making
> > contact with God.
>
> That form recalls scripture in 2 Corinthians 12:2,
> in which I long recognized Paul to be his "a man",
> expositing his own ineffable reflexive Word of God:
>
> 12:2 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in
> the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot
> tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
>
> 12:3 And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the
> body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
>
> 12:4 How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable
> words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.
>
> 12:5 Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory,
> but in mine infirmities.
>
> > I had wandered into
> > the so-called Rose Court at the back of
> > the Ducal Chapel in my native Onhava,
> > during an interval in hymnal practice.
>
> In this rolled-up reflexive act, the back is before the front.
>
> Now since the church, ekklessia, is called out, a speech act,
> it can include AF or FF, which made his father a king of him,
> himself the court or chapel, wherein is praised (viz. sucked)
> the king. AF breaks the spell of FF. Cf. Hamlet and Claudius.
>
> > As I mooned there, lifting and cooling
> > my bare calves by turns against a
> > smooth column,
>
> Since to moon is to present the bare buttocks, this fits AF.
>
> From the text of _The Mystic Tower_ I recognized a colonade
> surrounding a tower as a trope of the teeth around a pen is.
> Or also, the twin towers of _Ozymandias_ are his own thighs.
>
> So either, commonly, his knees are upon his shoulders (thus
> forelegs form raven's wings as in lyric by Door's Harrison),
> so calves are beside the head, as base of a column, or else,
> the calves might be locked behind arms, making them columns.
>
> > I could hear the distant
> > sweet voices interblending in subdued
> > boyish merriment which some chance
> > grudge, some jealous annoyance with one
> > particular lad, prevented me from
> > joining.
>
> I will boldly claim the FF'ed father is that particular lad.
>
> If the infant Kinbote also suffered MC, that puts him in the
> fourth Revelation category, Thyatira, wherein his king/father
> "will rule them with a rod of iron", inflict disproportionate
> strictures upon the child, creating a lonely insular soldier.
>
> > The sound of rapid steps made
> > me raise my morose gaze from the
> > sectile mosaic of the court --
>
> Beyond an accepted ancient euphemism of hand, I claim
> to stand, to walk, and a foot relate to the genitals.
> Rapid steps recall Emily Dickinson's AC frenzied bell.
>
> Morose gaze marks the repressed position of FF'ed boy.
> Sectile = "capable of being cut smoothly with knife"
> marks an abject, avoidant boy made everyman's victim.
>
> Sorry, I didn't get much done on this today,
> but I am stealing time from everybody else.
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 19:41:22 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> Actually we do know the name of Sam Shade's wife (and John's mother). It's
> Caroline (p 100, the starting point for Kinbote's riff on surnames). Sam
> died of a "bad heart," Caroline of cancer of the pancreas (l. 77, 78).
> You're right, as far as I can tell, that we're never told when Shade's
> mother died.
>
> Relative to that: a few days ago we were discussing l. 71 "I was an infant
> when my parents died." Second def of "infant" in MW10 is "a person who is
> not of full age : minor," which means (def 1) "a person who has not
attained
> majority," which means (def 2a) "the age at which full civil rights are
> accorded." This gives Caroline a lot more time, until her son turned 18 or
> 21, to shuffle off this mortal coil. Why Shade would use this kind of
> lawyerly construction of the meaning of "infant" might bear some looking
at,
> and the absence of any information about his mother's death is kind of the
> dog that didn't bark, isn't it? It is possible that Aunt Maud took over
his
> upbringing while Caroline Shade was still alive, but somehow indisposed.
It
> is possible, even--I'm just sayin'--that the wench who forced Shade "with
> his pure tongue her thirst to quench" was his widowed mother. Keith, you
> want a piece of this?
>
> I'm with Jasper on the evanescence of the Shakespeare refs. It's just that
> there's such a rich vein of them around the palace it seemed possible they
> might connect somewhere else.
>
> Don
>
>
>
> - ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Morris" <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> To: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>; <pynchon-l@waste.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 9:58 AM
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
>
> >
> > --- Don Corathers <gumbo@fuse.net> wrote:
> > > Where are all of the Hamlet references headed? They point to Botkin,
and
> > > they prepare us for Kinbote's contemplation of suicide. Is there a
> larger
> > > significance than we've seen on the ground in Zembla? If Fleur =
> Ophelia,
> > > does her mother = Polonius? Where's Claudius? Or is it just Hamlet as
> > > comedy, the joke being that Zembla, unlike Elsinore, can't even mount
a
> > > proper palace intrigue? The two hapless Danish tourists as R&G, now
> that's
> > > funny.
> >
> > I think the Hamlet references point to the suspicious early death of Sam
> Shade
> > and that lack of any specifics about the death of John Shades' mother
(did
> she
> > really die?). If you follow the chronology you'll see that:
> >
> > 1. Both John and Charles lost their fathers at the age of four.
> > 2. Sam was 46 of 47 when John was born. We don't know how he died
(except
> the
> > poem's info).
> > 3. Alfin was 42 when Charles was born. He died in a sports-plane crash.
> > 4. We have no specifics about when Sam's wife died (except the scant bit
> in the
> > poem), nor even her name.
> > 5. Queen Blenda died of a "bood disease" when Charles was 21.
> > 6. Aunt Maude and the "oldest Shadow" (the probable murderer of Iris
Acht)
> were
> > both born in 1869. Maude dies in 1950 at age 81.
> > 7. Hazel dies in 1957, age 23.
> >
> > I don't know where this leads...
> >
> > David Morris
> >
..