Charles H-Wallace: Has there been any
discussion on this list about Luc Besson's film "Leon" in relation either to
Lolita, or the two films? In my view this film was far, far superior to
Kubrick's Lolita... t also seemed to contrast constructively and revealingly
with Nabokov's original. Nabokov would have been infinitely better served by
Besson...
JM: Great to
learn that Béla Bartók is one of Gary
Lipon's "idols" and get the musical links and even
some background twitterings. Perhaps this is why Gary is so finely
atuned to the orchestrated, almost tactile Fricsay-rich "wall of sound.../Raised by a trillion
crickets in the fall*" and Sutton's shiny windowpane, in
Shade's lines.
His recreation led me to Pope's reference to
Sci-Fi, and to CHWallace's vision of a violent twelve-year
old in Besson's movie, onto a futuristic poem, written by Nabokov
himself (The New Yorker, Jan. 27,1951) titled "Voluptates
Tactionum" ( I couldn't search long for other places where this poem
appears: I hope my transcription is OK).
" Some inevitable day
On the editorial page of your paper
It will say, "Tactio has come of age."
When you turn a knob
Your set will obligingly exhale forms,
Invisible yet tangible -
A world in Braille.
Think of all the things
That will really be within your reach!
Phantom bottle,
Dreamy pill,
Limpid limbs upon a beach.
Grouped before a Magnotack,
Clubs and families
Will clutch everywhere
The same compact paradise
(In terms of touch).
Palpitating fingertips
Will caress the flossy hair
And investigate the lips
Simulated in mid-air.
See the schoolboy, like a blind lover
Frantically grope for the shape of love,
And find nothing but the shape of
soap "
The "feelies" fantasy is not very accomplished, as I
see it (perhaps I should touch it to set into motion a pirouetting nymph of
soap?), but its rythm and sounds
are.delectable to my untrained ear (page/paper/age; exhale/Braille;
Magnotack/compact, grope/ soap...) together with the
imagetic "tangible and throbbing palpation that will become
a "palpitation").
.................................................................
* - what Autumn is the one we hear, at this point,
in Shade's story?