PS: The poem I was looking for
related to "Pawkings was dead" (The Moth" HGW) is no.12 in my edition of Poems
and Problems (In Paradise):
"My soul, beyond distant death/ Your
image I see like this:/ a provincial naturalist,/an eccentric lost in
paradise...
There, in a glade, a wild angel slumbers,/ a semi-pavonian
creature./Poke at it curiously/ with your green umbrella,...
speculating how,
first of all,/ you will write a paper on it,/ then - But there are no learned
journals,/ nor any readers in paradise! ...
And there you stand, not yet
believing/ your wordless woe./ About that blue somnolent animal/ whom will you
tell, whom?
PPS: "I can always tell when a
sentence I compose happens to resemble in cut and intonation that of any of the
writers I loved or detested half a century ago; but I do not believe that any
particular writer has had any definite influence upon me."
V.Nabokov. Quoted by Dale E.Peterson in "Nabokov and the Poe-Etics of
Composition." SEEJ,vol 33,no.1 (1989).
......................................................................
Fran Assa: I forgot one of
the best, VN-ish parts of "The Moth": The very reliable narrator of the
story actually footnotes three of the written volleys between the warring
entomologists! [FA former footnote: "New Genus, by heavens! And in
England!" said Hapley, staring. Then he suddenly thought of Pawkins.
Nothing would have maddened Pawkins more...And Pawkins was
dead!]
JM: Your excerpts from HGW's
"The Moth" reminded me of a poem by VN in which he describes
a heavenly discovery ( an angel, was it?) and finds there is no
one else in his Paradise with whom he could share this
extraordinary find.
Victor Fet wrote a fascinating article about the
"Zoological Label as Literary Form" (The Nabokovian 60, Spring 2008) and,
here, the lamentation serves to indicate the social side
to labeling, the phantasmatic relationship with known and unknown
fellows, similar to a writer's and his readers.