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Fw: [NABOKV-L] Thoughts: Marvell and Donne in Pale Fire...and
Marlowe, of course!
Marlowe, of course!
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Dear List,
In the first place I would like to apologize for having mentioned Marvell and then passed onto Marlowe without any further explanation. I only realized the non-sequitur much later, while I was mulling over the eroticism of Marlowe and Donne, in contrast to that of other poets when the name Marvell came to my mind.
Until then I had been wondering if "Donne and Marvell", mentioned together in Shade's poem ( where he refers to Sybil's translation of their works into French), could indicate the famous line, "Come live with me, and be my love", employed by Donne and Marlowe ( when, by mistake, I was thinking about Marvell!). In my posting I suggested that the poets' names, and their lines in common, might unveil Nabokov's opinions on poetic echoes and replies, plagiarism and the transformations any poem undergoes when quoted or translated.
R S Gywnn's comment ( "If I'm not mistaken, one of the poems that Sybil translated was the "Nymph Complaining of the Death of Her Faun," which of course connects to Kinbote in a couple of ways.") could have been directed to the false connection I had suggested with “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.”. Please, excuse me for a misleading argumentation ( if such was the case of R.S.G's reference, passing from shepherd and fauns to Kinbote).
The theme of a "giant shepherd" ( mentioned already in the story "Double Monster") will appear in "Ada", in a link bt. shepherds and pederasty, when Nabokov parodies the Romantic and the arcadian theme. It is when he mentions a Poet Laureate Robert Brown and describes milkmaids and an enormous shepherd, represented in "a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast, as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare".
In his "Introduction" to Bend Sinister, Nabokov discusses another kind of metamorphosis in relation to "nymphs and fauns" ( artistically crafted and intentional) when he wrote: "Stéphane Mallarmé has left three or four immortal bagatelles, and among these is L'Après-Midi d'un Faune (first drafted in 1865). Krug is haunted by a passage from this voluptuous eclogue where the faun accuses the nymph of disengaging herself from his embrace 'sans pitié du sanglot dont j'étais encore ivre' ('spurning the spasm with which I still was drunk'). Fractured parts of this line re-echo through the book, cropping up for instance in the malarma ne donje of Dr Azureus' wail of rue (Chapter Four) and in the donje te zankoriv of apologetic Krug when he interrupts the kiss of the university student and his little Carmen (foreshadowing Mariette) in the same chapter" . In a posting dated Feb 24,2007, a reference to Monica Manolescu's article in "The Nabokovian" (number 57,2006), discusses several passages in "Lolita" in which Nijinski is brought up and that Susan Elizabeth Sweeney had connected to Nijinksi's role as a faun in the Debussy ballett, based on Mallarmé's " L ' Après Midi d' Un Faune".
All these versions and translations, from English into French, French into English, etc might be worth looking into again if we keep in mind the Index entry in PF under " Translations, poetical" and Kinbote's own translation and interpretation of Goethe's "Erlkönig" (line 662).(Of course nothing here can excuse me for having mixed up the names of Marlowe and Marvell!)
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In the first place I would like to apologize for having mentioned Marvell and then passed onto Marlowe without any further explanation. I only realized the non-sequitur much later, while I was mulling over the eroticism of Marlowe and Donne, in contrast to that of other poets when the name Marvell came to my mind.
Until then I had been wondering if "Donne and Marvell", mentioned together in Shade's poem ( where he refers to Sybil's translation of their works into French), could indicate the famous line, "Come live with me, and be my love", employed by Donne and Marlowe ( when, by mistake, I was thinking about Marvell!). In my posting I suggested that the poets' names, and their lines in common, might unveil Nabokov's opinions on poetic echoes and replies, plagiarism and the transformations any poem undergoes when quoted or translated.
R S Gywnn's comment ( "If I'm not mistaken, one of the poems that Sybil translated was the "Nymph Complaining of the Death of Her Faun," which of course connects to Kinbote in a couple of ways.") could have been directed to the false connection I had suggested with “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.”. Please, excuse me for a misleading argumentation ( if such was the case of R.S.G's reference, passing from shepherd and fauns to Kinbote).
The theme of a "giant shepherd" ( mentioned already in the story "Double Monster") will appear in "Ada", in a link bt. shepherds and pederasty, when Nabokov parodies the Romantic and the arcadian theme. It is when he mentions a Poet Laureate Robert Brown and describes milkmaids and an enormous shepherd, represented in "a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast, as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare".
In his "Introduction" to Bend Sinister, Nabokov discusses another kind of metamorphosis in relation to "nymphs and fauns" ( artistically crafted and intentional) when he wrote: "Stéphane Mallarmé has left three or four immortal bagatelles, and among these is L'Après-Midi d'un Faune (first drafted in 1865). Krug is haunted by a passage from this voluptuous eclogue where the faun accuses the nymph of disengaging herself from his embrace 'sans pitié du sanglot dont j'étais encore ivre' ('spurning the spasm with which I still was drunk'). Fractured parts of this line re-echo through the book, cropping up for instance in the malarma ne donje of Dr Azureus' wail of rue (Chapter Four) and in the donje te zankoriv of apologetic Krug when he interrupts the kiss of the university student and his little Carmen (foreshadowing Mariette) in the same chapter" . In a posting dated Feb 24,2007, a reference to Monica Manolescu's article in "The Nabokovian" (number 57,2006), discusses several passages in "Lolita" in which Nijinski is brought up and that Susan Elizabeth Sweeney had connected to Nijinksi's role as a faun in the Debussy ballett, based on Mallarmé's " L ' Après Midi d' Un Faune".
All these versions and translations, from English into French, French into English, etc might be worth looking into again if we keep in mind the Index entry in PF under " Translations, poetical" and Kinbote's own translation and interpretation of Goethe's "Erlkönig" (line 662).(Of course nothing here can excuse me for having mixed up the names of Marlowe and Marvell!)
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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