Carolyn Kunin: "Oak stories? Pnin? Belochkin/Belkina
-- Squirrel Nutkin? Eichkatsel!! Auf Deutsch squirrels are called little oak
tree cats. Cute (mignon), huh? In Russian (belkin) they are apparently white
things."
Jansy Mello: There are hidden Gingko
biloba stories, too, in ADA and PF.
Goethe's verses, read with your theory in mind of a split John
Shade/Kinbote, the divided leaf suggesting the image of "two in one," could be
applicable - but only in a very superficial reading, out of context. I haven't
yet developped any ideas, or any binding relationships: I'm still returning
to the Gingko (I believe there are more informations in the VN-L archives) and
being confused all over again.
Here is the poem (Goethe's)
Gingo Biloba
This leaf from a tree in the East,
Has
been given to my garden.
It reveals a certain secret,
Which pleases me
and thoughtful people.
Is it a living being,
Which has separated in
itself?
Or are these two, who chose
To be recognized as
one?
Answering this kind of question,
Haven't I found the proper meaning,
Don't you feel in my songs,
That I'm one and double?
John Shade's
poem, itself, seems to be totally unrelated:
CK's note to line 49:
"Our poet shared with the English masters the noble knack of
transplanting trees into verse with their sap and shade. Many years ago Disa,
our King’s Queen, whose favorite trees were the jacaranda and the maidenhair,
copied out in her album a quatrain from John Shade’s collection of short poems
Hebe’s Cup, which I cannot refrain from quoting here (from a letter I received
on April 6, 1959, from southern France):"
The Sacred Tree
The ginkgo leaf, in golden
hue, when shed,
A muscat grape,
Is an old-fashioned butterfly,
ill-spread,
In shape.