Subject
Re: Brian Boyd on Apples in PF
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In a message dated 11/23/2007 10:02:01 AM Central Standard Time,
b.boyd@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ writes:
>
> And from the inside, too, I’d duplicate
> Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate.
>
> I would like to propose another reason for the “apple on a plate,” which
> incidentally I do not see (pace R.S. Gwynn) as referring to Shade’s childhood
> any more than I think the rest of the first verse paragraph does. Kinbote in
> his Note may wish to “visualize John Shade in his early boyhood, a physically
> unattractive but otherwise beautifully developed lad,” but there is no reason
> I can see in Shade’s poem to assume the first twelve lines refer to his
> childhood. Indeed the quality of the imagination Shade attributes to himself here
> seems to me too sophisticated for the much more normally boyish, albeit
> bookish, young Shade depicted in the second half of Canto One.
>
>
I'm just judging by the verb tenses. He is consistently using past and past
perfect in 1-12. He shifts to present ("Retake . . .") in 13-28. 29-48 use
past and past perfect plus the past conditional, "could," and mentions his
going to school, but 44 shifts into present and present perfect. 49-53 use past;
54 clearly shifts to present and present perfect. When Shade restates the
opening line in 131, he's clearly referring to himself as a boy ("a cloutish
freak").
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b.boyd@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ writes:
>
> And from the inside, too, I’d duplicate
> Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate.
>
> I would like to propose another reason for the “apple on a plate,” which
> incidentally I do not see (pace R.S. Gwynn) as referring to Shade’s childhood
> any more than I think the rest of the first verse paragraph does. Kinbote in
> his Note may wish to “visualize John Shade in his early boyhood, a physically
> unattractive but otherwise beautifully developed lad,” but there is no reason
> I can see in Shade’s poem to assume the first twelve lines refer to his
> childhood. Indeed the quality of the imagination Shade attributes to himself here
> seems to me too sophisticated for the much more normally boyish, albeit
> bookish, young Shade depicted in the second half of Canto One.
>
>
I'm just judging by the verb tenses. He is consistently using past and past
perfect in 1-12. He shifts to present ("Retake . . .") in 13-28. 29-48 use
past and past perfect plus the past conditional, "could," and mentions his
going to school, but 44 shifts into present and present perfect. 49-53 use past;
54 clearly shifts to present and present perfect. When Shade restates the
opening line in 131, he's clearly referring to himself as a boy ("a cloutish
freak").
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