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Pale Fire and Lolita: nympholepts and poetic epiphanies
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I once thought that Nabokov had coined not only the word "nymphet" (cf. Maurice Couturier's article about its French antecedents) but also nympholept. I just recovered an old underlined paragraph by Roberto Calasso [La Letteratura e gli dei, 2001; A Literatura e os Deuses,2004] in which he mentions that Socrates, in Phaedrus. describes himself as a person that has been captured by the nymphs, a nympholeptos.
Calasso mentions Nabokov and Humbert Humbert and the "mental waters" in which nymphs and writers meet. He quotes Ezra Pound, when he affirms that the gods exist but no adequate metaphor has been found to describe the "emotional hues" that writers can visualize. Calasso then returns to Nabokov's statement about "nympholepsy...an exact science," with which he is in full agreement, since he links it with a writer's esoteric apprehension of a "divinity." Many chapters later he'll return to Nabokov, through his reference to the "erection of the dorsal hairs" and in connection to Housman.
In Pale Fire, in a note by Charles Kinbote [ to line 920:"little hairs stand on end"] remarks: "Alfred Housman (1859-1936), whose collection The Shropshire Lad vies with the In Memoriam of Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) in representing, perhaps (no, delete this craven "perhaps"), the highest achievement of English poetry in a hundred years, says somewhere (in a foreword?) exactly the opposite: The bristling of thrilled little hairs obstructed his barbering; but since both Alfreds certainly used an Ordinary Razor, and John Shade an ancient Gillette, the discrepancy may have been due to the use of different instruments."
Calasso writes that Housman recommended that a person should check if a sequence of words, pronounced in a soft voice while the razor glides, in the early morning, over the skin of the face, can cause an erection of the hairs of the beard while, at the same time, "a shiver runs down the dorsal spine." A person who recollects a poem while he is shaving, has to undergo a special trembling, a sort of "horripilation", that is, the ramaharsa that takes possession of Arjuna when he watches Krishna's epiphany, in the Bhagavad Gita. The word might even be applicable to the meaning of the "happiness of the hairs" when one learns that "harsa" means both "happiness" and "sexual erection". This is what a language, such as sanscript, decides to avoid explicitly naming the sexual nature of everything.
From this point onwards, I decided to find out what Housman himself has written about his "shaving epiphany." I reached two interesting entries in the internet. I'll start with the fascinating observation by Gerald Finzi in the Crees Lectures, at the Royal College of Music, in 1954 (with an introduction by Diana McVeagh in November 2007*), because it seems to add to what John Shade had been describing about the two methods of composition, and to CK's commentary.
Excerpts: "There have been magnificent poets like Campion or Robert Bridges or Gerard Manley Hopkins who were sensitive to music, and there have been others equally fine, like A. E. Housman and Swinburne, who were dead to it. What composer could take A. E. Housman's views with any seriousness? He cared nothing for music and "these musical people are more plague than profit" he said. He classed composers with illustrators as being entirely wrapped up in their precious selves, regarding the author as merely a peg on which to hang things, and having less than the ordinary human allowance of sense and feeling. ...Yet Housman, for all his acid words, wrote an account of the poetic creative process so applicable to the musical that one wonders at his lack of sympathy. To that fine craftsman the genesis of poetry appeared to be more physical than intellectual. He wrote of shivers down the spine, a constriction of the throat and precipitation of water to the eyes, of a sensation in the pit of the stomach and the skin bristling so that the razor ceased to act: and all this if a line of poetry strayed into his memory when he was shaving of a morning. He though that the first stage of creation was a passive and involuntary process, quoting Burns' confession that he had two or three times composed from the wish rather than the impulse, but never to any purpose. Housman described how a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza, would flow into his mind. After having drunk a pint of beer at luncheon - beer being a sedative and afternoons the least intellectual time of day - he would go for a walk of two or three hours. When he got home he would write his involuntary ideas down, leaving gaps, and hoping that further inspiration might come another day. Sometimes, if he took his walks in a receptive frame of mind, all would be well; but at others the poem had to be completed by the brain, and often there was difficulty or failure.
Housman's words in "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (9 May 1933) are: "one of these symptoms was described in connexion with another object by Eliphaz the Temanite: 'A spirit passed before my face: the hair of my flesh stood up'. Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. This particular symptom is accompanied by a shiver down the spine; there is another which consists in a constriction of the throat and a precipitation of water to the eyes; and there is a third which I can only describe by borrowing a phrase from one of Keats' s last letters, where he says, speaking of Fanny Brawne, 'everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear'. The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach."**
................................................................
*In 1954 the Royal College of Music invited [Gerald]Finzi to give the Crees lectures the following May. The Crees lectures had been founded in 1950, and the speaker could choose his subject. Finzi had long been gathering his thoughts on words and music, and for these three lectures he settled on The Composer's Use of Words: a discussion of words and music, fusion and conflict, problems of composers and poets, vocal forms and many theories, all of which leave the birds still singing and Pilate's question unanswered. The press reported the lectures widely, and Tempo wanted to publish them. Finzi however had used many live illustrations to demonstrate his points, and also understood that writing for the printed page needs a tauter style than writing something to be spoken. They would need considerable editing, he replied, and at that moment he had no time to spare from composition. His reasons for refusal seemed to give me licence to edit the talks, reducing the three to one, and, for the moment, simply to refer to the illustrations.Crees Lectures - geraldfinzi.org
www.geraldfinzi.org/indexbf94.html?page=/
**- Untitled www.bu.edu/.../The-Name-and-Nature-of-Poetry...
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Calasso mentions Nabokov and Humbert Humbert and the "mental waters" in which nymphs and writers meet. He quotes Ezra Pound, when he affirms that the gods exist but no adequate metaphor has been found to describe the "emotional hues" that writers can visualize. Calasso then returns to Nabokov's statement about "nympholepsy...an exact science," with which he is in full agreement, since he links it with a writer's esoteric apprehension of a "divinity." Many chapters later he'll return to Nabokov, through his reference to the "erection of the dorsal hairs" and in connection to Housman.
In Pale Fire, in a note by Charles Kinbote [ to line 920:"little hairs stand on end"] remarks: "Alfred Housman (1859-1936), whose collection The Shropshire Lad vies with the In Memoriam of Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) in representing, perhaps (no, delete this craven "perhaps"), the highest achievement of English poetry in a hundred years, says somewhere (in a foreword?) exactly the opposite: The bristling of thrilled little hairs obstructed his barbering; but since both Alfreds certainly used an Ordinary Razor, and John Shade an ancient Gillette, the discrepancy may have been due to the use of different instruments."
Calasso writes that Housman recommended that a person should check if a sequence of words, pronounced in a soft voice while the razor glides, in the early morning, over the skin of the face, can cause an erection of the hairs of the beard while, at the same time, "a shiver runs down the dorsal spine." A person who recollects a poem while he is shaving, has to undergo a special trembling, a sort of "horripilation", that is, the ramaharsa that takes possession of Arjuna when he watches Krishna's epiphany, in the Bhagavad Gita. The word might even be applicable to the meaning of the "happiness of the hairs" when one learns that "harsa" means both "happiness" and "sexual erection". This is what a language, such as sanscript, decides to avoid explicitly naming the sexual nature of everything.
From this point onwards, I decided to find out what Housman himself has written about his "shaving epiphany." I reached two interesting entries in the internet. I'll start with the fascinating observation by Gerald Finzi in the Crees Lectures, at the Royal College of Music, in 1954 (with an introduction by Diana McVeagh in November 2007*), because it seems to add to what John Shade had been describing about the two methods of composition, and to CK's commentary.
Excerpts: "There have been magnificent poets like Campion or Robert Bridges or Gerard Manley Hopkins who were sensitive to music, and there have been others equally fine, like A. E. Housman and Swinburne, who were dead to it. What composer could take A. E. Housman's views with any seriousness? He cared nothing for music and "these musical people are more plague than profit" he said. He classed composers with illustrators as being entirely wrapped up in their precious selves, regarding the author as merely a peg on which to hang things, and having less than the ordinary human allowance of sense and feeling. ...Yet Housman, for all his acid words, wrote an account of the poetic creative process so applicable to the musical that one wonders at his lack of sympathy. To that fine craftsman the genesis of poetry appeared to be more physical than intellectual. He wrote of shivers down the spine, a constriction of the throat and precipitation of water to the eyes, of a sensation in the pit of the stomach and the skin bristling so that the razor ceased to act: and all this if a line of poetry strayed into his memory when he was shaving of a morning. He though that the first stage of creation was a passive and involuntary process, quoting Burns' confession that he had two or three times composed from the wish rather than the impulse, but never to any purpose. Housman described how a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza, would flow into his mind. After having drunk a pint of beer at luncheon - beer being a sedative and afternoons the least intellectual time of day - he would go for a walk of two or three hours. When he got home he would write his involuntary ideas down, leaving gaps, and hoping that further inspiration might come another day. Sometimes, if he took his walks in a receptive frame of mind, all would be well; but at others the poem had to be completed by the brain, and often there was difficulty or failure.
Housman's words in "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (9 May 1933) are: "one of these symptoms was described in connexion with another object by Eliphaz the Temanite: 'A spirit passed before my face: the hair of my flesh stood up'. Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. This particular symptom is accompanied by a shiver down the spine; there is another which consists in a constriction of the throat and a precipitation of water to the eyes; and there is a third which I can only describe by borrowing a phrase from one of Keats' s last letters, where he says, speaking of Fanny Brawne, 'everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear'. The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach."**
................................................................
*In 1954 the Royal College of Music invited [Gerald]Finzi to give the Crees lectures the following May. The Crees lectures had been founded in 1950, and the speaker could choose his subject. Finzi had long been gathering his thoughts on words and music, and for these three lectures he settled on The Composer's Use of Words: a discussion of words and music, fusion and conflict, problems of composers and poets, vocal forms and many theories, all of which leave the birds still singing and Pilate's question unanswered. The press reported the lectures widely, and Tempo wanted to publish them. Finzi however had used many live illustrations to demonstrate his points, and also understood that writing for the printed page needs a tauter style than writing something to be spoken. They would need considerable editing, he replied, and at that moment he had no time to spare from composition. His reasons for refusal seemed to give me licence to edit the talks, reducing the three to one, and, for the moment, simply to refer to the illustrations.Crees Lectures - geraldfinzi.org
www.geraldfinzi.org/indexbf94.html?page=/
**- Untitled www.bu.edu/.../The-Name-and-Nature-of-Poetry...
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/