Subject
the secret of a rough shave
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On Jan 31, 2010, at 9:58 AM, jansymello wrote:
> JM: Nabokov and Shade are similar in their disgusts. Cf. Strong
> Opinions, Vintage p.18,1962: "It is also true that some of my more
> responsible characters are given some of my own ideas.
On Jan 31, 2010, at 10:25 AM, Anthony Stadlen wrote:
> how can lumping these things together constitute "speak[ing] of evil
> as none has/ Spoken before"? His dislike of bullfighting is fair
> enough, part of his admirable dislike of cruelty of all kinds. But,
> if Nabokov did not, as he claimed, understand music, of what
> interest is his philistine loathing of jazz? And, acutely conscious
> as he was of the Holocaust, Stalinism, and so on, how could he list
> "swimming pools" as part of his purportedly unprecedented discourse
> on "evil"?
>
> I believe Carolyn proposed that this shows that something strange is
> happening to Shade at this point; specifically, a stroke. But it is
> Nabokov's own endorsement of the list that is "the real thing
> strange".
On Jan 31, 2010, at 3:34 PM, jansymello wrote:
> JM: I don't think Nabokov considered Shade's urge "to speak of evil"
> as taking place on the same level as his, and Shade's, dislike of
> swimming pools and jazz. Different themes are ludicrously mingled to
> great effect: the "Newport Frill" rhetoric of evil, his trivial
> dislikes, shaving procedures, methods of composition...
> ...
> I doubt ... that Nabokov had any intention of engaging in any
> serious denunciation of "evil" at that point. These are some of the
> lines in which I see an authorial intromission, and Shade voicing
> VN's self-parody and his moments of playfulness in S.O.
I agree with Carolyn, assuming the attribution is correct.
Shade is having some kind of stroke, but there's more to it than that.
The mixture of serious loathing with trivial dislikes is symptomatic
of a growing irrationalism.
VN is not philosophizing through Shade here, but creating a device to
move the plot forward.
Shade's embrace of the theory of plexed artistry leads him to believe
he has special powers of insight,
and begins Canto 4 with the intention of demonstrating these new found
powers.
But alas he becomes immediately distracted and begins discoursing on
the mechanics of composition,
abruptly shifting wholly out of the tone of extraordinary resolution
that begins the canto.
And this after only four lines!
He completes his exposition on composition with the tale of the
Shade's shoe,
but then is lost as to what to write next.
He tells of the travails of when he shaves
To some this may amuse, but not to Shade,
for him it holds acute significance,
as seen by the inordinate expense
of time he spends upon discussing it.
Why is this so? Is it perhaps because
Shade does not come from very healthy stock.
His parents died while he was still quite young,
his aunt wound up in a sanitarium,
and his health never really was that great.
John Shade is thinking of his dear aunt's fate,
(and of the languor of Aunt Maud's pet fly.)
Shaving is the daily act whereby
he measures his own flawed neurology.
It isn't just that dewlap that impedes:
As a discreet ephebe in tights assists
A female in an acrobatic dance,
My left hand helps, and holds. And shifts its stance.
Shade's got the shakes, perceives the growing mists!
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