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Re: VN's poetic genius and PF poem
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Gary Lippon [to Vladimir Mylnikov's "the fun part of the book is that the poem, the commentary, and the index are inseparable."] "My opinion is that Pale Fire is an extraordinary work and VN's reputation as poet derives mainly from it...My belief is that VN wanted to continue the poetic narrative tradition established by his beloved Eugene Onegin ...I believe VN saw, correctly, the limited market for a long, or longish, traditional narrative poem...the combination poem-and-novel was a clever solution to this conflict of purposes. Thus Pale Fire, the poem is to be read as the better half of the duplex... Kinbote mainly uses Shade's poem, freely, as a jumping off point for his own series of humorous vignettes..."
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Jansy Mello: In Strong Opinions Nabokov quotes and explains one of his favorite poems and demonstrates its structural echoes as it appears in the original Russian. Although I can share the effect of a "poetic emotion," after VN's explanations, I'd only effetively appreciate it by hearing it's being read in Russian.*
How could Nabokov compare Pushkin's exclamation "what a silly country" to Tyutchev's and Goethe's a "hundred-eyed beast," if there wasn't something sombrely Russian in his soul to lend perspective, or a "four-dimensional" coutour, to what he'd been experiencing and, desparingly, translating?
Stan observed, in a past posting, "Einstein did indeed make many famous errors. When corrected by his peers, he acknowledged his mistakes, but added the claim: I've earned the right to be wrong! VN, the great novelist/memoirist, has earned similar rights. " He left it open to one's interpretative powers to discover if the conclusion of what "similar rights" mean, embraces both options: Nabokov earned the right to be wrong and Nabokov earned the right to be judged by his peers. btw: Stan's comment fits well in spirit, with the epigraph Housman chose for his lecture on "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (Coleridge's Anima Poetae, pp.127 f). "The question should be fairly stated, how far a man can be an adequate, or even a good (so far as he goes) though inadequate critic of poetry, who is not a poet, at least in posse. Can he be an adequate, can he be a good critic, though not commensurate? But there is yet another distinction. Supposing he is not only not a poet, but is a bad poet! What then?"
From VN's Selected Letters, on p.272/273 there's an answer to the hen/egg matter you raised concerning the writing of PF, poem or novel, from a letter VN addressed to Jason Epstein:
"My main creature, an ex-king, is engaged throught Pale Fire in a certain quest. This quest, or research (which at one point, alas, involves some very sophisticated spiritualism), is completely divorced from any so-called faith or religion, gods, God, Heaven, Folklore, etc...My creature's quest is centered in the problem of heretofore and hereafter, and it is I may say beautifully solved. The story starts at Ultima Thule, an insular kingdom, where a palace intrigue and some assistance from Nova Zembla clear the way for a dull and savage revolution. My main creature the King of Thule, is dethroned. After some wonderful adventures he escapes to America. Certain political complications lead President Kennedy to answer evasively when questioned about the displaced personage. He lives more or less incognito with the lady he loves, somewhere on the border of Upstate New YOrk and Montario...from the picture window of my creature's house one can see the bright mud if a private road and a leafless tree al at once abloom with a dozen waxwings. The book is regularly interrupted, without any logical or stylistical transition, right in the middle of a sentence...by glimpses of an agent, Mr.Copinsay, from Thule, whose job is to find and destroy the ex-king...He does reach Goldenrod in the final chapter - where a surprise awaits the reader and him." (a footnote by Dmitri Nabokov explains that at this stage, March 1957, Ultima Thule had been inherited from Solus Rex, a novel Nabokov was writing in France at the outbreak of World War II, and never completed....All the real or imagined events of the Kingdom of Zembla and the story of the ex-monarch are contained in a presumably mad commentator's notes to a 999-line poem composed for the occasion by an invented poet."
Were it not for Dmitri Nabokov's foot-note I would have endorsed Carolyn Kunin's PF theory. VN's description of "his main creature,", happy heterosexual king in exile surrounded by waxwings and a "l'if-less" tree indicates that Nabokov's "main creature" was both Kinbote and John Shade. The Kingdom of Zembla makes JFK become evasive and there are real and/or imagined events taking place in it...
Concerning the research that went in John Shade's production, there's a curious observation in VN's 1967 interview by Alfred Appel Jr: "Everything that can be profitably said about Count Godunov-Cherdyntsev's biography of Chernyshevski has been said
by Koncheyev in The Gift. I can only add that I devoted as much honest labor to the task of gathering the material for
the Chernyshevski chapter as I did to the composing of Shade's poem in Pale Fire."
................................................................................................................................................................................
* - Nabokov's "favorite Russian poem" was lent to Fyodor in The Gift ("The Swift") and there's an accessible recording of its being read, in the internet and through Itunes:Vladimir Nabokov Reads Lolita and Selected Poems by ... - Apple itunes.apple.com/...nabokov.../id43... - Reino Unido.:
One night between sunset and river
On the old bridge we stood, you and I.
Will you ever forget it, I queried,
-- That particular swift that went by?
And you answered, so earnestly: Never!
And what sobs made us suddenly shiver,
What a cry life emitted in flight!
Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever
You and I on the old bridge one night.
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jansy Mello: In Strong Opinions Nabokov quotes and explains one of his favorite poems and demonstrates its structural echoes as it appears in the original Russian. Although I can share the effect of a "poetic emotion," after VN's explanations, I'd only effetively appreciate it by hearing it's being read in Russian.*
How could Nabokov compare Pushkin's exclamation "what a silly country" to Tyutchev's and Goethe's a "hundred-eyed beast," if there wasn't something sombrely Russian in his soul to lend perspective, or a "four-dimensional" coutour, to what he'd been experiencing and, desparingly, translating?
Stan observed, in a past posting, "Einstein did indeed make many famous errors. When corrected by his peers, he acknowledged his mistakes, but added the claim: I've earned the right to be wrong! VN, the great novelist/memoirist, has earned similar rights. " He left it open to one's interpretative powers to discover if the conclusion of what "similar rights" mean, embraces both options: Nabokov earned the right to be wrong and Nabokov earned the right to be judged by his peers. btw: Stan's comment fits well in spirit, with the epigraph Housman chose for his lecture on "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (Coleridge's Anima Poetae, pp.127 f). "The question should be fairly stated, how far a man can be an adequate, or even a good (so far as he goes) though inadequate critic of poetry, who is not a poet, at least in posse. Can he be an adequate, can he be a good critic, though not commensurate? But there is yet another distinction. Supposing he is not only not a poet, but is a bad poet! What then?"
From VN's Selected Letters, on p.272/273 there's an answer to the hen/egg matter you raised concerning the writing of PF, poem or novel, from a letter VN addressed to Jason Epstein:
"My main creature, an ex-king, is engaged throught Pale Fire in a certain quest. This quest, or research (which at one point, alas, involves some very sophisticated spiritualism), is completely divorced from any so-called faith or religion, gods, God, Heaven, Folklore, etc...My creature's quest is centered in the problem of heretofore and hereafter, and it is I may say beautifully solved. The story starts at Ultima Thule, an insular kingdom, where a palace intrigue and some assistance from Nova Zembla clear the way for a dull and savage revolution. My main creature the King of Thule, is dethroned. After some wonderful adventures he escapes to America. Certain political complications lead President Kennedy to answer evasively when questioned about the displaced personage. He lives more or less incognito with the lady he loves, somewhere on the border of Upstate New YOrk and Montario...from the picture window of my creature's house one can see the bright mud if a private road and a leafless tree al at once abloom with a dozen waxwings. The book is regularly interrupted, without any logical or stylistical transition, right in the middle of a sentence...by glimpses of an agent, Mr.Copinsay, from Thule, whose job is to find and destroy the ex-king...He does reach Goldenrod in the final chapter - where a surprise awaits the reader and him." (a footnote by Dmitri Nabokov explains that at this stage, March 1957, Ultima Thule had been inherited from Solus Rex, a novel Nabokov was writing in France at the outbreak of World War II, and never completed....All the real or imagined events of the Kingdom of Zembla and the story of the ex-monarch are contained in a presumably mad commentator's notes to a 999-line poem composed for the occasion by an invented poet."
Were it not for Dmitri Nabokov's foot-note I would have endorsed Carolyn Kunin's PF theory. VN's description of "his main creature,", happy heterosexual king in exile surrounded by waxwings and a "l'if-less" tree indicates that Nabokov's "main creature" was both Kinbote and John Shade. The Kingdom of Zembla makes JFK become evasive and there are real and/or imagined events taking place in it...
Concerning the research that went in John Shade's production, there's a curious observation in VN's 1967 interview by Alfred Appel Jr: "Everything that can be profitably said about Count Godunov-Cherdyntsev's biography of Chernyshevski has been said
by Koncheyev in The Gift. I can only add that I devoted as much honest labor to the task of gathering the material for
the Chernyshevski chapter as I did to the composing of Shade's poem in Pale Fire."
................................................................................................................................................................................
* - Nabokov's "favorite Russian poem" was lent to Fyodor in The Gift ("The Swift") and there's an accessible recording of its being read, in the internet and through Itunes:Vladimir Nabokov Reads Lolita and Selected Poems by ... - Apple itunes.apple.com/...nabokov.../id43... - Reino Unido.:
One night between sunset and river
On the old bridge we stood, you and I.
Will you ever forget it, I queried,
-- That particular swift that went by?
And you answered, so earnestly: Never!
And what sobs made us suddenly shiver,
What a cry life emitted in flight!
Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever
You and I on the old bridge one night.
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/