Subject
THOUGHTS: VN and Eliot and Jules LaForgue
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Jansy Mello writes:
Dear List,
There are several direct and indirect links between Pale Fire and Eliot.
If we should consider Pale Fire under a different light from the one
we've been pursuing at the moment and take it as a "Love Poem", that is,
as a search into what is human and what could be "transcendental
love", we might perceive then that other echoes and links are also
present, links that we miss when we concentrate more on the meaning of
words or in the academic particularities of style in good verse or
poetry.
Eliot acknowledged that the title of "The Waste Land" , its structure
and symbolism were marked by J. L. Weston's book on the Grail legend,
From Ritual to Romance (1920), as also by James G. Frazer's The Golden
Bough (1890-1915).
As I see it we must include the intense and passionate King Salomon, not
through his Songs. We must add the Ecclesiastes ( mainly Eccl. 3 1-8,
Eccl. 3.11 and Eccl.3:3 ), already referenced and alluded by various VN
scholars ( Meyer, Dolinin, Boyd, etc)
If we depart from the words in Ecclesiastes and consider the entire work
of Pale Fire as a very deep probing about love and truth, various
missing pieces might fall into place. Every real artists' creative
endeavour is towards giving expression of something that belongs to
"real art" , to explore their passions and desires, the mysteries of
transience and time. We may find that 'Beckett is "terrified again of
not loving."...Without love, for Eliot the "cause and end of movement,"
"sad time stretching before and after" is wasted. Can they obtain love?
Or, is love unobtainable? Does the essence of time and mankind's free
will preclude love? ' (E.G. Wiens ).
To reach their own particular answers it is necessary that artist's
employ all the verbal means at their disposal: diction, syntax,
repetition of words and phrases, patterns of sound... And so must the
reader, if he wants to grasp the novel or poem.
I read that among the symbolist poets Eliot elected Jules Laforgue.
Leonard Unger writes that Eliot repeated both Conrad's and Jules
Laforgue's rythm in his poems. Should we not try to check if VN's
parody of Eliot's The Waste Land, The Love Song of A. Prufrock, Four
Quartes, etc ( when he also pays homage to Eliot) carries the same
inspiration for cadence and rhythm as Eliot adapted from Jules Laforgue
?
We have already made allusions and links bt. VN and Mallarmé,
Baudelaire, Rimbaud but I miss longer and clearer references to
Laforgue.
There will be time to murder and create... are these Eliot lines,
inspired in the book of Ecclesiastes, also resounding through Pale
Fire?
The waxwing shattered against the windowpane... is it not a rendering, a
pungent rendering, of VN's preoccupation with time before and time after
deeply tied to Salomon's love songs and the Ecclesiaster? Therefore,
indirectly referencing "Time to murder and create" explored byn Eliot? (
In the Love Song of Prufrock there are also lines about " fog rubbing
against a window")
How can we understand Gradus here, in our space at the list - Gradus,
the ever approaching Gradus, that in the end will arrive and get not
Shade nor Kinbote, but the author of Pale Fire himself - if we don't
see of PF as something more than a parody about an old American poet and
mad Kinbote's ravings ? Or a very entertaining cleverly constructed
novel?
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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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
Dear List,
There are several direct and indirect links between Pale Fire and Eliot.
If we should consider Pale Fire under a different light from the one
we've been pursuing at the moment and take it as a "Love Poem", that is,
as a search into what is human and what could be "transcendental
love", we might perceive then that other echoes and links are also
present, links that we miss when we concentrate more on the meaning of
words or in the academic particularities of style in good verse or
poetry.
Eliot acknowledged that the title of "The Waste Land" , its structure
and symbolism were marked by J. L. Weston's book on the Grail legend,
From Ritual to Romance (1920), as also by James G. Frazer's The Golden
Bough (1890-1915).
As I see it we must include the intense and passionate King Salomon, not
through his Songs. We must add the Ecclesiastes ( mainly Eccl. 3 1-8,
Eccl. 3.11 and Eccl.3:3 ), already referenced and alluded by various VN
scholars ( Meyer, Dolinin, Boyd, etc)
If we depart from the words in Ecclesiastes and consider the entire work
of Pale Fire as a very deep probing about love and truth, various
missing pieces might fall into place. Every real artists' creative
endeavour is towards giving expression of something that belongs to
"real art" , to explore their passions and desires, the mysteries of
transience and time. We may find that 'Beckett is "terrified again of
not loving."...Without love, for Eliot the "cause and end of movement,"
"sad time stretching before and after" is wasted. Can they obtain love?
Or, is love unobtainable? Does the essence of time and mankind's free
will preclude love? ' (E.G. Wiens ).
To reach their own particular answers it is necessary that artist's
employ all the verbal means at their disposal: diction, syntax,
repetition of words and phrases, patterns of sound... And so must the
reader, if he wants to grasp the novel or poem.
I read that among the symbolist poets Eliot elected Jules Laforgue.
Leonard Unger writes that Eliot repeated both Conrad's and Jules
Laforgue's rythm in his poems. Should we not try to check if VN's
parody of Eliot's The Waste Land, The Love Song of A. Prufrock, Four
Quartes, etc ( when he also pays homage to Eliot) carries the same
inspiration for cadence and rhythm as Eliot adapted from Jules Laforgue
?
We have already made allusions and links bt. VN and Mallarmé,
Baudelaire, Rimbaud but I miss longer and clearer references to
Laforgue.
There will be time to murder and create... are these Eliot lines,
inspired in the book of Ecclesiastes, also resounding through Pale
Fire?
The waxwing shattered against the windowpane... is it not a rendering, a
pungent rendering, of VN's preoccupation with time before and time after
deeply tied to Salomon's love songs and the Ecclesiaster? Therefore,
indirectly referencing "Time to murder and create" explored byn Eliot? (
In the Love Song of Prufrock there are also lines about " fog rubbing
against a window")
How can we understand Gradus here, in our space at the list - Gradus,
the ever approaching Gradus, that in the end will arrive and get not
Shade nor Kinbote, but the author of Pale Fire himself - if we don't
see of PF as something more than a parody about an old American poet and
mad Kinbote's ravings ? Or a very entertaining cleverly constructed
novel?
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