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Re: Pencils, in honor of Transparent Things
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I believe one of our great American Transparentalists started life as a pencil
maker. Thorough - oh god , I can't spell anymore. Theroux. You know -- Walden
Pond, that one.
Carolyn
oh dear god, Thoreau, Henry David. Believed to have suffered from Alzheimer's
disease for the last twenty years of his life - unable to speak anymore, in
public at any rate. Or maybe that was Emmerson - probably.
________________________________
From: frances assa <franassa@HOTMAIL.COM>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tue, April 23, 2013 3:04:40 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Pencils, in honor of Transparent Things
I found Transparent Things to be a haunting book--- literally. I lost
my copy just as I had just finished the epiphinal chapter about a humble wooden
pencil (Of course VN wrote all his books with just such an instrument.)
The pencil and Hugh haunted me for years until I latched on to another copy.
Coincidentaly, this morning I opened my email to discover that someone had sent
me these photos of one of the humbler things through which "the past shines" in
Transparent Thing, thereby continuing the haunting. At the end of the
photographs I quote what Nabokov wrote about the pencil. When I reread this
section, I found it every bit as thrilling as when I first read it.
BTW VN died on my birthday which gives me mixed feelings. Enjoy the photos and
the quote at the end.
________________________________
>
>>
>>
>>Chapter 3. In his search for a commode to store his belongings Hugh Person, a
>>tidy man, noticed that the middle drawer of an old desk relegated to a dark
>>corner of the room, and supporting there a bulbless and shadeless lamp
>>resembling the carcass of a broken umbrella, had not been reinserted properly by
>>the lodger or servant (actually neither) who had been the last to check if it
>>was empty (nobody had). My good Hugh tried to woggle it in; at first it refused
>>to budge; then, in response to the antagony of a chance rug (which could not
>>help profiting from the cumulative energy of serveral jogs) it shot out and
>>spilled a pencil. This he briefly considered before putting it back.
>> It was not a hexagonal beauty of Virginia juniper or African cedar, with the
>>maker’s name imprinted in silver foil, but a very plain, round, technically
>>faceless old pencil of cheap pine, dyed a dingy lilac. It had been mislaid ten
>>years ago by a carpetnter who had not finished examining, let alone fixing, the
>>old desk, having gone away for a tool that he never found. Now comes the act of
>>attention.
>> In his shop, and long before that at the village school, the pencil has been
>>worn down to two-thirds of its original length. The bare wood of its tapered
>>end has darkened to plumbeous plum thus merging in tint with the blunt tip of
>>graphite whose blind gloss alone distinguishes it from the wood. A knife and a
>>brass sharpener have thoroughly worked upon it and if it were necessary we could
>>trace the complicated fate of the shavings, each mauve on one side and tan on
>>the other when fresh, but now reduced to atoms of dust whose wide, wide
>>dispersal is panic catching its breath but one should be above it, one gets used
>>to it fairly soon (there are worse terrors). On the whole it whittled sweetly,
>>being of an old-fashioned make. Going back a number of seasons (not as far,
>>though, as Shakespeare’s birth year when pencil lead was discovered) and then
>>picking up the thing’s story again in the “now”direction, we see graphite,
>>ground very fine, being mixed with moist clay by young girls and old men. This
>>mass, this pressed caviar, is placed in a metal cylinder which has a blue eye, a
>>sapphire with a hole drilled in it, and through this the caviar is forced. It
>>issues in one continuous appetizing rodlet (watch for our little friend!), which
>>looks as if it retained the shape of an earthworm’s digestive tract (but watch,
>>watch, do not be deflected!). It is now being cut into the lengths required for
>>these particular pencils (we glimpse the cutter, old Elias Borrowdale, and are
>>about to mouse up his forearm on a side trip of inspection but we stop, stop and
>>recoil, in our haste to identify the individual segment). See it baked, see it
>>boiled in fat (here a shot of the fleecy fat-giver being butchered, a shot of
>>the butcher, a shot of the shepherd, a shot of the sheptherd’s father, a
>>Mexican) and fitted into the wood.
>> Now let us not lose our precious bit of lead while we prepare the wood.
>>Here’s the tree! This particular pine! It is cut down. Only the trunk is used,
>>stripped of its bark. We hear the whine of a newly invented power saw, we see
>>logs being dried and planed. Here’s the board that will yield the integument of
>>the pencil in the shallow drawer (still not closed). We recognize its presence
>>in the log as we recognize the log in the tree and the tree in the forest and
>>the forest in the world that Jack built. We recognize that presence by
>>something that is perfectly clear to us but nameless, and as impossible to
>>describe as a smile to somebody who has never seen smiling eyes.
>> Thus the entire little drama, from crystallized carbon and felled pine to
>>this humble implement, to this transparent thing, unfolds in a twinkle. Alas,
>>the solid pencil itself as fingered briefly by Hugh Person still somehow eludes
>>us! But he won’t, on no.
>>
>>
Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
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maker. Thorough - oh god , I can't spell anymore. Theroux. You know -- Walden
Pond, that one.
Carolyn
oh dear god, Thoreau, Henry David. Believed to have suffered from Alzheimer's
disease for the last twenty years of his life - unable to speak anymore, in
public at any rate. Or maybe that was Emmerson - probably.
________________________________
From: frances assa <franassa@HOTMAIL.COM>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tue, April 23, 2013 3:04:40 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Pencils, in honor of Transparent Things
I found Transparent Things to be a haunting book--- literally. I lost
my copy just as I had just finished the epiphinal chapter about a humble wooden
pencil (Of course VN wrote all his books with just such an instrument.)
The pencil and Hugh haunted me for years until I latched on to another copy.
Coincidentaly, this morning I opened my email to discover that someone had sent
me these photos of one of the humbler things through which "the past shines" in
Transparent Thing, thereby continuing the haunting. At the end of the
photographs I quote what Nabokov wrote about the pencil. When I reread this
section, I found it every bit as thrilling as when I first read it.
BTW VN died on my birthday which gives me mixed feelings. Enjoy the photos and
the quote at the end.
________________________________
>
>>
>>
>>Chapter 3. In his search for a commode to store his belongings Hugh Person, a
>>tidy man, noticed that the middle drawer of an old desk relegated to a dark
>>corner of the room, and supporting there a bulbless and shadeless lamp
>>resembling the carcass of a broken umbrella, had not been reinserted properly by
>>the lodger or servant (actually neither) who had been the last to check if it
>>was empty (nobody had). My good Hugh tried to woggle it in; at first it refused
>>to budge; then, in response to the antagony of a chance rug (which could not
>>help profiting from the cumulative energy of serveral jogs) it shot out and
>>spilled a pencil. This he briefly considered before putting it back.
>> It was not a hexagonal beauty of Virginia juniper or African cedar, with the
>>maker’s name imprinted in silver foil, but a very plain, round, technically
>>faceless old pencil of cheap pine, dyed a dingy lilac. It had been mislaid ten
>>years ago by a carpetnter who had not finished examining, let alone fixing, the
>>old desk, having gone away for a tool that he never found. Now comes the act of
>>attention.
>> In his shop, and long before that at the village school, the pencil has been
>>worn down to two-thirds of its original length. The bare wood of its tapered
>>end has darkened to plumbeous plum thus merging in tint with the blunt tip of
>>graphite whose blind gloss alone distinguishes it from the wood. A knife and a
>>brass sharpener have thoroughly worked upon it and if it were necessary we could
>>trace the complicated fate of the shavings, each mauve on one side and tan on
>>the other when fresh, but now reduced to atoms of dust whose wide, wide
>>dispersal is panic catching its breath but one should be above it, one gets used
>>to it fairly soon (there are worse terrors). On the whole it whittled sweetly,
>>being of an old-fashioned make. Going back a number of seasons (not as far,
>>though, as Shakespeare’s birth year when pencil lead was discovered) and then
>>picking up the thing’s story again in the “now”direction, we see graphite,
>>ground very fine, being mixed with moist clay by young girls and old men. This
>>mass, this pressed caviar, is placed in a metal cylinder which has a blue eye, a
>>sapphire with a hole drilled in it, and through this the caviar is forced. It
>>issues in one continuous appetizing rodlet (watch for our little friend!), which
>>looks as if it retained the shape of an earthworm’s digestive tract (but watch,
>>watch, do not be deflected!). It is now being cut into the lengths required for
>>these particular pencils (we glimpse the cutter, old Elias Borrowdale, and are
>>about to mouse up his forearm on a side trip of inspection but we stop, stop and
>>recoil, in our haste to identify the individual segment). See it baked, see it
>>boiled in fat (here a shot of the fleecy fat-giver being butchered, a shot of
>>the butcher, a shot of the shepherd, a shot of the sheptherd’s father, a
>>Mexican) and fitted into the wood.
>> Now let us not lose our precious bit of lead while we prepare the wood.
>>Here’s the tree! This particular pine! It is cut down. Only the trunk is used,
>>stripped of its bark. We hear the whine of a newly invented power saw, we see
>>logs being dried and planed. Here’s the board that will yield the integument of
>>the pencil in the shallow drawer (still not closed). We recognize its presence
>>in the log as we recognize the log in the tree and the tree in the forest and
>>the forest in the world that Jack built. We recognize that presence by
>>something that is perfectly clear to us but nameless, and as impossible to
>>describe as a smile to somebody who has never seen smiling eyes.
>> Thus the entire little drama, from crystallized carbon and felled pine to
>>this humble implement, to this transparent thing, unfolds in a twinkle. Alas,
>>the solid pencil itself as fingered briefly by Hugh Person still somehow eludes
>>us! But he won’t, on no.
>>
>>
Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline
View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
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/
