Matt Roth: I have been
gently corrected. Braque was, of course, a cubist, not an abstract
expressionist. This fact does not, however, alter my larger assertion: that
Shade is primarily referring to painting here, not poetry. There could, of
course, be a secondary allusion to Stevens, but I find the evidence
inconclusive.
JM: I agree with Matt's point of view
about VN's (and Shade's) reference to painting, not to
poetry. Actually, the wordplay with "Braque and bric-a-brac" is
very misleading. If Shade has "the shakes," this is not applicable
to Nabokov! (this item is amply ellaborated in "Speak, Memory,"
and I remember particular also his references to Picasso and to cubism, in
"Pnin."). Since I'm still occupied with TOoL one thing has just struck me: if,
in "Pale Fire" we find Shade outlining "methods of composition,", in TOoL Philip
Wild is busy with his own "methods of decomposition."
Jerry: It seems that Lucette
represents "Artemisia", as Queen Ada's sister leading us
to the "Common Mugwort Artemisia Vulgaris, L. Felon-herb,
Sailor's Tobacco". Therefore Lucette has
to be distinguished from the "Artemisia dracunculus L."
(dragon's-wort, tarragon, estragon) and the "Artemisia tridentata" (sage-brush).
A task for botanists. The "nicotine" branching into Tobacco and rabbit-doctor
Nikulin is also mysterious.