(this should have gone out some time ago, but...)
I'd like to apologize to Matt for a previous exchange over what is, after all, bric-a-brac.
After some reflection, namely about sources, I realized that VN probably wouldn't have known
of the Frost/Stevens exchange since, even though it occurs in 1940,
it probably wasn't written about until the mid-sixties in the first two volumes
of Thompson's biography of Frost. (There are some shorter, earlier biographies of Frost,
and it's possible it may be mentioned there, or available through some other form of record or medium.)
But the close following of bric-a-brac by Primitivist folk masks
suggests that the author is thinking about Braque and Picasso, in as much
as Primitivist folk masks recollects Picasso's African Period
when he was inspired by African masks.
VN, I now realize, was strongly antipathetic to Picasso and his art.
Certainly he disdained his political views.
I wonder does one precede the other?
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Recounting:
[from Pale Fire, Canto 4:]
Now I shall speak of evil as none has
Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;
The white-hosed moron torturing a black
Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;
Primitivist folk masks; progressive schools;
Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;
Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,
Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.
on
January 31, 2010 7:21:23 AM GMT-05:00 I wrote:
This undoubtably alludes to a famous exchange between ... Frost, ..., and ... Stevens, ...
"The trouble with you, Robert, is that you're too academic."
"The trouble with you, Wallace, is that you're too executive."
"The trouble with you, Robert, is that you write about– subjects."
"The trouble with you, Wallace, is that you write about– bric-a-brac."
on February 1, 2010 9:35:37 AM GMT-05:00
you wrote:
In Ada, chapter 3, we find:
"the mere geographic aspect of the affair possesses its redeeming comic side,
like those patterns of brass marquetry, and bric-a-Braques,
and the ormolu horrors that meant "art" to our humorless forefathers" (17).
Vivian Darkbloom glosses this as "Braques: allusion to a bric-a-brac painter.
on February 1, 2010 2:33:20 PM GMT-05:00
I wrote:
... what ... tends to convince is, ..., that Shade is a poet, associated with Frost
... strict traditional poetics, i.e. meter, rhyme... unambiguous subject matter.
... The ... exchange embodies these aesthetic differences.
It's seems ... natural ... that Shade should share Frost's attitude and ... words.
That said, I have no doubt that VN is alluding to this line ... in the passage that you quote from Ada.
Nonetheless...
on February 1, 2010 2:42:08 PM GMT-05:00
you wrote:
...Shade is primarily referring to painting here, not poetry.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––An african mask and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon(1907).
His African period lasted from 1907 to 1909.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso's_African_Period>
Picasso's 'Massacre in Korea' (1951; in the Musée Picasso, Paris)
illustrates well Picasso's communist leanings.