[Fresh emails from John Morris and James Twigg arrived as I had almost finished this reply to Gary Lipon. At the risk of some confusion, I’m posting this as-is. But I am now clearer on the opposing & supporting camps. VN’s accent and his reading all the verses, is duly noted, John.
Jim: I’m less disturbed than you by the Author-Industry phenomenon! I’ld DIE to have an SKB-Industry when I’m dead, if not sooner! Every artist would, I guess. I envisage a Twigg-Industry one day, reacting angrily to any anti-Twigg criticisms, however mild and honest. [Detectable hint of irony?]
The proposed publication of the Cantos (it’s on my must-buy list!), is not quite the ‘what-if’ I had in mind, of course. Some few might be reading the poem for the first time (their assessment would be interesting) but It’s now impossible for most folks to read it without PF-the-novel in mind! I even suspect that the preface to the planned poem-only-book, if aimed at the general public, would have to explain its origin and motivation, or least give some CLUES as to WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON! That Hazel is the daughter of a fictitious poet John Shade, and so on! Might as well er er add footnotes and index SKB]
Strangely irrelevant question(s), Gary, but easily answered (with some new questions). There’s nothing ridiculous or extraordinarily ‘mnemonic’ about committing long poems (good, bad, indifferent or even prosaic) to memory. It was mandatory in my early EngLit schooldays (coveted elocution prizes at stake – I won one declaiming tons of indifferent Tennyson) and many of us retained the habit through adulthood and well unto senility as a source of immense, voluntary pleasure. From verse to worse, as they say, ‘memorableness’ is not directly related to content and ‘quality.’ I can still reel off moiles and teems of Finnegans Wake with only the vaguest glimmer of what, if anything, it all might mean. In my Irish Folksong heyday (as Stan Kelly, un-hyphenated), I would indeed ‘perform’ with Dominic Behan et al, sizeable chunks of ALP and HCE alongside the Croppy Boy and the original ballad of Finnegan’s (apostrophe required) death and revival. Whether the audience (often academic) needed transcripts or footnotes to ‘understand’ our recitals is blazingly rhetorical (not requiring a reply). There’s no doubt, though, that our concerts were enjoyed, applauded and encored.
I see some analogies with VN’s success when reciting Pale-Fire-the-Poem in public. Whether the audience were all tenured Nabokovian scholars, lay-PF-readers, or unversed plebs in from the cold (a mix is most likely), the performance would be pure magic. Prior knowledge of VN’s reputation and the on-going, irresistible mysteries of PF-the-novel would clearly enhance one’s experience, but surely a GOOD TIME would be had by all bar the thickest of pixies? Before I had read Pnin or knew much of VN beyond Lolita, I encountered a recording of his hilarious reading from Pnin, one of the many reasons for my total conversion. I think I have since seen most of his extant recorded interviews (plus the re-enacted Kafka lecture) and my desire to see his PF recital is unbounded. Two points I’m anxious to clarify. Is VN reading (or, rather, guided) from a printed prompt (as was his wont)? Secondly: his enduring, endearing Petrograd [?] accent! This, of course, was ideal for Pnin, and possibly appropriate for readings from the Kinbote/Botkin sections (how much Zemblan accent survived their exile, and how would we recognize it? Discuss). But does PF-the-poem, for maximum performance/interpretive credibility, call for a SHADEAN (John or Hazel!?) New Wye intonation?
My what-if scenario remains ripe for debate in spite of your questions, my answers and my added questions. Donning VN’s scientific-taxonomic hat,* consider the two extreme characterizations s of PF-the-cantos (To remind you, I share BB’s rating of the novel as ‘perfect.’
1. Truly moving pathos, from a bereaved, academic-literary major philosopher-poet pondering his approaching death with fresh insights into the eternal mysteries of the great thereafter (BB and others with minor variations)
2. Deliberate comic-genius, uniquely-Nabokovian parody of a minot poet, dominated by open and thinly-disguised doggerel; to be read mainly as the brilliant core around which the Kinbote annotation-narrative is mysteriouly woven
(Jim Twigg and I are somewhere between these extremes, hedging our bets for different reasons and emphases?)
With EITHER opinion, we can IMAGINE (Gedankenexperiment) PF-the-Cantos appearing in print instead of, or ahead of PF-the-novel (cf Joyce’s Work-in-Progress.)
A trick question on the side: if published anonymously (no hindsight or rumours) would PF-the-poem attract the tag Nabokovian? VN himself disliked literary pigeonholes: this-School and that-School. And we’ve all seen the N-word [sic] applied rashly. (Recall that Marx is not longer a true Marxist according to some true, that is, genuine NEO-Marxists.)
You ask how the poem-in-isolation might be received in print and recital. Under VN’s name, both would attract considerable interest in 1962, given VN’s emerging celebrity-notoriety. We have not only a What-If but also a What-Next! A lot would depend on whether the novel appeared or not, and if so, how soon after the poem. Far too many imponderables.
Poetry still evades a satisfying, widely-accepted, objective definition. Rhyming is neither necessary nor sufficient! ‘Memorable prose’ is useful but misleading, as is the need for presenting the text as a typographical quiltwork of blocked patterns. We usually think of poetry in terms of imaginative, metaphorical (non-literal, whatever that means), puzzling, unobvious use of words, with the ensuing paradox that if the poem’s meaning is too readily fathomed, we are entitled to ask why the poet bothered chopping her thoughts into regular lines and employing other tricks of the ‘trade.’ From this perspective, much of Kinbote’s ‘prose,’ suitably line-broken and caesura-littered (see VN-as-Shade’s obvious layout parodies of Eliot and other ‘modern’ excesses) is obscure enough to make it to a Faber anthology. My drift here is to reject a clear dichotomy between PF-prose and PF-poetry, and focus on the unity of PF, from VN the novelist-poet uniquely able to create a miraculously UNSTABLE narrative featuring characters as diverse as a minor poet (sub-Frost, and, like Frost, so agonizingly near greatness with his final Abschied), a dumpy, suicidal daughter, a cunning-linguist-demanding aunt, and (VN’s crowning creation after HH and Lo) a crazy annotator, but sane enough in a meta-sense, to ensure we get to buy PF-the-novel. (In a remote part of the Multiverse, a VN leaves instructions that if PF-the-novel is unfinished, BURN THE POEM!)
We grew up unashamedly giggling at such major poets as Shakespeare:
For never was there tale of so much WOE
As that of Juliet and her ROM-E-O.
There are ways of reciting this that dilute its shock-horror-fun!
Try reading St Agnes’ Eve straight through with a straight face. It’s the relentless iambics and silly rhymes that tickle the Brit funny bone. Yet unalloyed admiration, of course, for Keats. I’ve never gone for the cliche: a Poem is as weak as its weakest line; the converse, replacing weak/weakest with strong/strongest, carries a bit more credibility, but not a lot.
As I may have posted previously, consider Hamlet’s play-within-the-play. If this had appeared as a stand-alone fragment before the play itself, the verdict might well have been: sad and moving, to be sure, but clearly not the work of our Bard. Read in the context of Hamlet’s plot to unmask Claudius, the embedded playlet is a brilliant SHAKESPEAREAN parody of inferior Elizabethan drama.
An indirectly related study (already made, no doubt) is HH, the Poet. We sortof grant him genius ’novelist’ status as first-person narrator, yet scattered throughout Lolita are amusing snippets.of his verse/doggerel. These are brilliant in context, but we are not led to evaluate HH’s skill as a poet, as opposed to VN’s own poetic prowess. Have the Lolilta poetic ‘lollipops’ (to borrow the musical idiom) ever been published and analzed as part of VN’s corpus?
Final example, lest I outstay my welcome:
Reading from left to right in winter's code:
A dot, an arrow pointing back; repeat:
Dot, arrow pointing back ...
So far, so evocative, so sublime. Nabokov, the super-observant naturalist, fully deserving BB’s euphoria, but is it a VN-Homer-nod or a Shade-Homer-nod when we meet the overwhelmingly bank-sank-type*** anti-climax:
... A pheasant's feet!** (Note carefully, the exclamation mark is VN-as-Shade’s not mine!)
BB writes: ‘As Robert Alter comments, we do a double take as we read Shade's words ... ‘
Indeed, we do -- but to my Brit ears, for different reasons. Pheasant’s Feet? Plain wrong for VN-as-poet, but perfect as VN-having-fun, mocking the minor-versifier Shade. We not only have the forced rhyme (with repeat) but the risible alliteration. Perhaps escaping American ears, but British lug-holes would be drawn towards the London Cockney (th = f) resonances: Firty Fousand Fevvers on a Firsty Feasant’s Froat! (aliter, Frush’s Froat). We also have the rhyming slang: plates (of meat) = feet.
* See, esp., Professor Blackwell’s The Quill And The Scalpel: Nabokov's Art And The Worlds Of Science
Available for 2907 rupees from
http://www.flipkart.com/quill-scalpel-stephen-blackwell-nabokov/0814210996-k7w3fcijsc
** It’s interesting to note that Pheasant tracks are among the most difficult to identify:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2067944_identify-pheasant-tracks.html
*** Re-Jim Twigg’s aversion to this couplet, and redeeming attempts to find echoes with Ophelia’s suicide, my reaction is that
Ships SINK but tragic damsels DROWN.
(no shortage of Shadean rhymes for Drown: down, brown, crown, frown ... Which reminds me of his lawn/gone [more Cockney humour: lorst’n’gorn? )
True, one can read beneath the mundane words and detect Shade’s genuine, stumbling sorrow. That’s ambiguous poetry for you! Who has not wept over a Hallmark condolence card?
One could find FLOWERY INSINCERITY in Gertrude’s over-poetic report of her son’s girl-friend’s demise. MELODIOUS LAY TO MUDDY DEATH is almost as trite as Shade’s bank/sank.
Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
Author, inter alia: The Computer Contradictionary, MIT Press (2nd ed. googlebooks)
Co-author, Lern Yerself Scouse, Scouse Press (16th ed.)
On 19/01/2010 19:24, "Gary Lipon" <glipon@INNERLEA.COM> wrote:
On Jan 19, 2010, at 12:03 AM, Stan Kelly-Bootle wrote:
what if the Cantos had appeared ... as a New Poem..
Let me pose you this question:
What if you were ridiculously
committed to Pale Fire, the poem,
and actually memorized it,
(perhaps you possessed
some extraordinary mnemonic process).
Do you think you could recite it for an hour
to an audience of the academe,
or of a lesser curiosity?
Would they need a transcript, a set of notes?
if so how many pages might that be?
And, of course: "How would it be received?"