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Re: JM query on rowing in KQK; SB replies
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JM: " ...said Dreyer, trying to do as Franz was doing - to flatten his oars over the water, swallow-like on the backstroke... trying again to feather his oars, and again failing" (CCC pages 910,911). What does this mean and what kind of movement is described here?
EDNote: as a sometime rower (not what Dreyer was doing, but the terminology is the same), I'll try to describe: "feathering" is twisting the oar-handle(s) toward oneself, so that the flat part of the oar-blade is parallel to the water, rather than perpendicular (the position needed to grip and drive through). The main goal of feathering is to reduce wind resistance, although if rowing downwind, one might prefer to keep the blades unfeathered. The "swallow-like" refers to the way the flattened blades mimic the low, swift passes of a swallow over water--a remarkable sight worth pursuing, for those who've never seen it.
JM: Thanks, again, SB. May I ask something else? Is the "feathering" particularly connected with a reversion of the oars ( twisting the oar-handles toward oneself), of any motion of inverting the direction of the boat, or does it simply apply to the reduction of wind resistance?
( What a lovely eery experience with the tall witch spindles of fog!)
Returning to the apostrophal "notes for further use", I'd like to thank SS for the wonderful examples:
SS: (a) In the "Poem without a hero" by Akhmatova (Poema bez geroia, 1946-65) Somewhere around this place (...) wandered the following lines but I did not include them in the main text...(the lines follow)...and THIS IS THE MAIN TEXT of canonical edition. (b) In the poem "Hammeln" by Tsvetaeva (1925) : "here begins a little diversion concering buttons"/"here ends the ode to the buttons and the story continues"
Also thanks to JF for bringing up "The Book of Ephraim" by James Merrill , that "is indeed poetry, or at least verse, and section N (beginning with the word "Notes") is mostly in the heroic measure, a lot of it being couplets. So there is an answer to Carolyn's challenge..."
JF observed that "I didn't quite say that Shade's "Disjointed notes" or "Man's life as commentary..." /is/ the book or the poem. I'd say the reader can take both that way, though, ironically, and thus they're linked as you'd been saying... That word "is"--very tricky. I agree with JF, and again when he adds on the subject of BW and CW: "So which /is/ it? In my opinion, you lose nothing by imagining it as a CW as long as you remember the existence of the BW (and the nonexistence of /B. shadei/). (Isn't this a modern way of understanding "fiction", as described by Frege?)
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EDNote: as a sometime rower (not what Dreyer was doing, but the terminology is the same), I'll try to describe: "feathering" is twisting the oar-handle(s) toward oneself, so that the flat part of the oar-blade is parallel to the water, rather than perpendicular (the position needed to grip and drive through). The main goal of feathering is to reduce wind resistance, although if rowing downwind, one might prefer to keep the blades unfeathered. The "swallow-like" refers to the way the flattened blades mimic the low, swift passes of a swallow over water--a remarkable sight worth pursuing, for those who've never seen it.
JM: Thanks, again, SB. May I ask something else? Is the "feathering" particularly connected with a reversion of the oars ( twisting the oar-handles toward oneself), of any motion of inverting the direction of the boat, or does it simply apply to the reduction of wind resistance?
( What a lovely eery experience with the tall witch spindles of fog!)
Returning to the apostrophal "notes for further use", I'd like to thank SS for the wonderful examples:
SS: (a) In the "Poem without a hero" by Akhmatova (Poema bez geroia, 1946-65) Somewhere around this place (...) wandered the following lines but I did not include them in the main text...(the lines follow)...and THIS IS THE MAIN TEXT of canonical edition. (b) In the poem "Hammeln" by Tsvetaeva (1925) : "here begins a little diversion concering buttons"/"here ends the ode to the buttons and the story continues"
Also thanks to JF for bringing up "The Book of Ephraim" by James Merrill , that "is indeed poetry, or at least verse, and section N (beginning with the word "Notes") is mostly in the heroic measure, a lot of it being couplets. So there is an answer to Carolyn's challenge..."
JF observed that "I didn't quite say that Shade's "Disjointed notes" or "Man's life as commentary..." /is/ the book or the poem. I'd say the reader can take both that way, though, ironically, and thus they're linked as you'd been saying... That word "is"--very tricky. I agree with JF, and again when he adds on the subject of BW and CW: "So which /is/ it? In my opinion, you lose nothing by imagining it as a CW as long as you remember the existence of the BW (and the nonexistence of /B. shadei/). (Isn't this a modern way of understanding "fiction", as described by Frege?)
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm