Subject
Re: THOUGHT on Shade as poet
From
Date
Body
In a message dated 1/19/2010 1:48:07 PM Central Standard Time,
glipon@INNERLEA.COM writes:
>
> Let me pose you this question:
> What if you were ridiculously
> committed to Pale Fire, the poem,
> and actually memorized it,
> (perhaps you possessed
> some extraordinary mnemonic process).
> Do you think you could recite it for an hour
> to an audience of the academe,
> or of a lesser curiosity?
> Would they need a transcript, a set of notes?
> if so how many pages might that be?
> And, of course: "How would it be received?"
>
Poe says that an audience loses comprehension after 100 lines, so "PF"
would be a stretch. But I do think that the poem makes perfect sense without
any footnotes whatsoever, especially if we admit the existence (pace Roland
Barthes) of a "real" author named John Shade and an audience that is at least
partially aware of his other poetry and his family history. For example, I
think that such a reading would make more sense to an audience, even an
uninitiated one, than would, say, a reading by Robert Lowell of Life Studies,
addressed to an audience who had never heard of Robert Lowell. Kinbote's
"good" notes are helpful but hardly necessary to a reading of the poem.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
glipon@INNERLEA.COM writes:
>
> Let me pose you this question:
> What if you were ridiculously
> committed to Pale Fire, the poem,
> and actually memorized it,
> (perhaps you possessed
> some extraordinary mnemonic process).
> Do you think you could recite it for an hour
> to an audience of the academe,
> or of a lesser curiosity?
> Would they need a transcript, a set of notes?
> if so how many pages might that be?
> And, of course: "How would it be received?"
>
Poe says that an audience loses comprehension after 100 lines, so "PF"
would be a stretch. But I do think that the poem makes perfect sense without
any footnotes whatsoever, especially if we admit the existence (pace Roland
Barthes) of a "real" author named John Shade and an audience that is at least
partially aware of his other poetry and his family history. For example, I
think that such a reading would make more sense to an audience, even an
uninitiated one, than would, say, a reading by Robert Lowell of Life Studies,
addressed to an audience who had never heard of Robert Lowell. Kinbote's
"good" notes are helpful but hardly necessary to a reading of the poem.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/