Subject
Re: [ Thoughts] A reference to Erlkonig in a parody about T.S.
Eliot
Eliot
From
Date
Body
Dear Sergei,
You are correct when you said there is no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations to "The Waste Land". I didn't check directly Eliot's text yesterday, only my old sribblings about his notes - and they were imprecise, since at the time I had been following B.Boyd's book on Pale Fire where he dwells on Shade, Eliot and Goethe.
I just got my book off the shelf and realized my mistake.
T.S.Eliot mentions Tristan und Isolde and Webster, the latter both in "The Burial of the Dead" ( Cornelia's dirge, in White Devil) and " A Game of Chess" ( note 118: "Is the wind in that door still?)
Kinbote stresses Shade's allusion, as they were written btween lines 653-664:
(1) "What is that funny creaking - do you hear?" "It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear.", PF 653-654;
(2) "...made that thud/ It is old winter tumbling in the mud", PF 659-660;
(3) "Who rides so late in the night and the wind?...It is the father with his child", PF, 662-664.
Kinbote's omission might make us forget Shade's former references that connect the theme, not only to Goethe's Erlking, but to T.S.Eliot and John Webster, in a more tortuous way than I had surmised at first. The first intimation of the Erlking's presence, as I see it, comes on lines 443-447: "Was that the phone?...There was no sense/ In window-rubbing: only some white fence...". These reappear after thirty more verses ( 479-480) "We heard the wind. We heard it rush and throw/ Twigs at the windowpane. Phone ringing? No."
The similar line in T.S.Eliot's "The Waste Land" is not present in Kinbote's selection. And Eliot, indeed, only indicates John Webster: " What is that noise?/ The wind under the door./ 'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'/ Nothing again nothing."
Eliot's quote in the context of wind and nightly noises [ Cf. Webster: "Is the wind in that door still?" ] probably derives from "The Devil's Law Case" (3.2.162). Brian Boyd, inspite of its closeness to Goethe's and Shade's Erlking lines, does not mention this work by Webster. Rather, he emphasizes Eliot's second reference to John Webster: " O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men" ( Cf. the Dirge in Webster's White Devil, as annotated by Eliot and found in Collected Poems, 1909-1962, T.S.Eliot, Faber Paperbacks, page 61-86) .
Boyd's text does not mention Eliot in direct connection with Goethe's Erlking, either, but the link appears through Kinbote! Since BB does write: " what Shade does not realize, but we can see, it that it was indeed in a sense the sinister "Elf King"" of Goethe's poem who was out there in that night of wind, another fantastic king, another pedophile" ( here BB agrees with Kinbote's interpretation about Goethe's Erlkoenig) ..."one of the many things Kinbote cannot understand is a parent's anxious love for a child that runs through Goethe's poem and Shade's agonizing echo" (page 85,TMOAD).
There are various other entries in BB's book, I shall select only a few: " Evoking another warm, windy March night exactly a year after Hazel's death, Shade mimics Eliot ( Part II of "The Waste Land"), in deliberate tribute to the Eliot lines from "Four Quartets" ...The unease in the Eliot lines gives rise in Shade's memory to the deeper unease of Goethe's "Elf King"... For us, though, the Goethe lines bring just as surely to mind the image of Charles II fleeing in dread and darknes over the moountains of Zembrla, muttering these lines to himself. And we will soon understand the depth of the ironic reversal of Shade's sureness that he will hear nothing from Hazel" ( pg 150); " 'shivers of alfear (uncontrollable fear caused by elves,' echoes of Goethe's "Erlkönig" have been gathering..."(page163)
( Both Eliot and James Joyce write about dogs digging corpses and VN was well aware of this. In his Lecture on Literature ( Bowers, page 297) Nabokov observed: "Notice, by the way, the term poor dogsbody. The symbol of a forlorn dog will be attached to Stephen through the book", and a little further: " Stephen will not go to Paddy Dignam's funeral. He answers his riddle, " - The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush" (...) In the sext chapter Stephen, walking on the beach, sees a dog, and the dog idea and fox idea merge as the dog foxily scrapes up the sand, and listen, for he has buried something, his grandmother" ( LEL, Bowers, page 299). )
I always welcome corrections since, unlike Schultze's character Lucy Van der Pelt, I never use a pen...I need a pencil with an attached eraser when writing more informally at the List.
----- Original Message -----
From: "NABOKV-L" <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] [ Thoughts] A reference to Erlkonig in a parody about T.S. Eliot
Dear Jansy,
as far as I know, there is no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations
to "The Waste Land". Maybe I am mistaken, but some years ago I
translated
the poem into Russian, and I don't find any. Please, be precise,
just in case - and cite T.S. Eliot, how he refers to Erlkonig? Maybe
it was not in the annotations at the end of the poem, but, say, in a
foreword?
The references to Wagner are many, in paricular the following quatrain
in the 1-st part of the poem (in German in the poem):
Frisch weht der Wind
Nach Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind
Wo weilest du?
In his annotations Eliot refers to Wagner here.
There is no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations to the part 1;
if we take part 2 and the dialogue of the husband and wife that
apparently
was considered as "obviously" related to Erlkonig, Eliot mentions
in his annotations only Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?”- and
Middletone, “Women Beware Women”.-
In the annotations to the part 3 again is mentioned
Wagner“Gotterdammerung”, III, i
Part 4 - no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations
Part 5 - no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations.
Since there is probably certain relation between "The Waste Land" and
some elements of Shade's poem I think it would be important to find
where exactly is the source of the assertion that Eliot refers
to "Erlkonig". Not in his annotations at the end of "The Waste Land",
as far as I see.
Best regards,
Sergei
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You are correct when you said there is no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations to "The Waste Land". I didn't check directly Eliot's text yesterday, only my old sribblings about his notes - and they were imprecise, since at the time I had been following B.Boyd's book on Pale Fire where he dwells on Shade, Eliot and Goethe.
I just got my book off the shelf and realized my mistake.
T.S.Eliot mentions Tristan und Isolde and Webster, the latter both in "The Burial of the Dead" ( Cornelia's dirge, in White Devil) and " A Game of Chess" ( note 118: "Is the wind in that door still?)
Kinbote stresses Shade's allusion, as they were written btween lines 653-664:
(1) "What is that funny creaking - do you hear?" "It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear.", PF 653-654;
(2) "...made that thud/ It is old winter tumbling in the mud", PF 659-660;
(3) "Who rides so late in the night and the wind?...It is the father with his child", PF, 662-664.
Kinbote's omission might make us forget Shade's former references that connect the theme, not only to Goethe's Erlking, but to T.S.Eliot and John Webster, in a more tortuous way than I had surmised at first. The first intimation of the Erlking's presence, as I see it, comes on lines 443-447: "Was that the phone?...There was no sense/ In window-rubbing: only some white fence...". These reappear after thirty more verses ( 479-480) "We heard the wind. We heard it rush and throw/ Twigs at the windowpane. Phone ringing? No."
The similar line in T.S.Eliot's "The Waste Land" is not present in Kinbote's selection. And Eliot, indeed, only indicates John Webster: " What is that noise?/ The wind under the door./ 'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'/ Nothing again nothing."
Eliot's quote in the context of wind and nightly noises [ Cf. Webster: "Is the wind in that door still?" ] probably derives from "The Devil's Law Case" (3.2.162). Brian Boyd, inspite of its closeness to Goethe's and Shade's Erlking lines, does not mention this work by Webster. Rather, he emphasizes Eliot's second reference to John Webster: " O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men" ( Cf. the Dirge in Webster's White Devil, as annotated by Eliot and found in Collected Poems, 1909-1962, T.S.Eliot, Faber Paperbacks, page 61-86) .
Boyd's text does not mention Eliot in direct connection with Goethe's Erlking, either, but the link appears through Kinbote! Since BB does write: " what Shade does not realize, but we can see, it that it was indeed in a sense the sinister "Elf King"" of Goethe's poem who was out there in that night of wind, another fantastic king, another pedophile" ( here BB agrees with Kinbote's interpretation about Goethe's Erlkoenig) ..."one of the many things Kinbote cannot understand is a parent's anxious love for a child that runs through Goethe's poem and Shade's agonizing echo" (page 85,TMOAD).
There are various other entries in BB's book, I shall select only a few: " Evoking another warm, windy March night exactly a year after Hazel's death, Shade mimics Eliot ( Part II of "The Waste Land"), in deliberate tribute to the Eliot lines from "Four Quartets" ...The unease in the Eliot lines gives rise in Shade's memory to the deeper unease of Goethe's "Elf King"... For us, though, the Goethe lines bring just as surely to mind the image of Charles II fleeing in dread and darknes over the moountains of Zembrla, muttering these lines to himself. And we will soon understand the depth of the ironic reversal of Shade's sureness that he will hear nothing from Hazel" ( pg 150); " 'shivers of alfear (uncontrollable fear caused by elves,' echoes of Goethe's "Erlkönig" have been gathering..."(page163)
( Both Eliot and James Joyce write about dogs digging corpses and VN was well aware of this. In his Lecture on Literature ( Bowers, page 297) Nabokov observed: "Notice, by the way, the term poor dogsbody. The symbol of a forlorn dog will be attached to Stephen through the book", and a little further: " Stephen will not go to Paddy Dignam's funeral. He answers his riddle, " - The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush" (...) In the sext chapter Stephen, walking on the beach, sees a dog, and the dog idea and fox idea merge as the dog foxily scrapes up the sand, and listen, for he has buried something, his grandmother" ( LEL, Bowers, page 299). )
I always welcome corrections since, unlike Schultze's character Lucy Van der Pelt, I never use a pen...I need a pencil with an attached eraser when writing more informally at the List.
----- Original Message -----
From: "NABOKV-L" <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] [ Thoughts] A reference to Erlkonig in a parody about T.S. Eliot
Dear Jansy,
as far as I know, there is no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations
to "The Waste Land". Maybe I am mistaken, but some years ago I
translated
the poem into Russian, and I don't find any. Please, be precise,
just in case - and cite T.S. Eliot, how he refers to Erlkonig? Maybe
it was not in the annotations at the end of the poem, but, say, in a
foreword?
The references to Wagner are many, in paricular the following quatrain
in the 1-st part of the poem (in German in the poem):
Frisch weht der Wind
Nach Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind
Wo weilest du?
In his annotations Eliot refers to Wagner here.
There is no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations to the part 1;
if we take part 2 and the dialogue of the husband and wife that
apparently
was considered as "obviously" related to Erlkonig, Eliot mentions
in his annotations only Webster: “Is the wind in that door still?”- and
Middletone, “Women Beware Women”.-
In the annotations to the part 3 again is mentioned
Wagner“Gotterdammerung”, III, i
Part 4 - no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations
Part 5 - no reference to Erlkonig in the annotations.
Since there is probably certain relation between "The Waste Land" and
some elements of Shade's poem I think it would be important to find
where exactly is the source of the assertion that Eliot refers
to "Erlkonig". Not in his annotations at the end of "The Waste Land",
as far as I see.
Best regards,
Sergei
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
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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
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