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Re: Edsel, Luna Moth, inquest
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Matthew Roth found a Luna Moth motif in Edself Ford and I must agree that "the poem doesn't strike me as altogether wonderful; nor does it seem to resonate with much in PF. Having learned my lesson, however, from "The Image of Desire," I checked the poem on the facing page (68) ... Inquest for a Poet
We found him crumpled/ In the door;/ He clutched a/ Silver key....Our search has not/ Turned up a lock/ That opens to/ His key..
Matthew added: " I don't want to make too much of this, for fear of seeming too indulgent of a desire to find KEYS where none may exist. If I were indulgent, however, I might point to "He clutched a / Silver key" as having a particular resonance with "still clutching the inviolable shade"--the line from Arnold that Kinbote quotes during his description of Shade's murder. But this is all rather improbable...
At the end we find an [EDNOTE. The significance of the poems on facing pages is interesting, considering the novel's looking-glass logic and Kinbote's advice on how to read the commentary vs. the poem. SES]
Feeling myself again floating against the mainstream, like in the nursery rhyme Edsel Ford's little verses suggested to my ears, I was reminded of
Mary Mary quite contrary,/How does your garden grow?/ With silver bells and cockle shells/And pretty maids all in a row. The associative mood can become deadly. These lines, recited for and by minute Brits and after following a google-link, led me to Mary Tudor, or Bloody Mary ( already discussed at our list in relation to "Ada").
The silver bells and cockle shells referred to were colloquialisms for instruments of torture. The 'silver bells' were thumbscrews which crushed the thumb between two hard surfaces by the tightening of a screw. The 'cockleshells' were believed to be instruments of torture which were attached to the genitals! The mechanical instrument (now known as the guillotine) was called the Maiden - shortened to Maids in the Mary Mary Rhyme.
So, I'll curb my contrariness lest I end-up half-dead amidst metaphors and similes. And yet, it is still a source of wonder, to me, why Nabokov seems to have given such an important place to EdselFord's verses: wouldn't a few scattered allusions be enough?There are Hardy's "trophies of the eaves" to quote (cf.Boyd and Michael Long,1984, "Lone cave's stillicide" ) and oozes of Frosts...
Shade himself ( apud Kinbote) wrote about "the shadow of the doorknob that/ At sundown is a baseball bat/ Upon the door..."( note to line 61) in verses (yes!) reminiscent of E.Ford's. Kinbote, discussing line 130, about Shade who never swung a bat, writes about a spark in a key ( lights and shadows, bats and keys) that causes a "wonderful conflagration to spread in the prisoner's mind..", namely, " the bedside light was just strong enough to put a bright gleam on the gilt key in the lock of the closed door. And all at once that spark on that key..."
Freud and Goethe seemed to suggest that "a key in the lock" indicates something similar to John Rea's find, in the Webster, concerning bacon and bacon sandwich. An erotic key...
Jansy
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We found him crumpled/ In the door;/ He clutched a/ Silver key....Our search has not/ Turned up a lock/ That opens to/ His key..
Matthew added: " I don't want to make too much of this, for fear of seeming too indulgent of a desire to find KEYS where none may exist. If I were indulgent, however, I might point to "He clutched a / Silver key" as having a particular resonance with "still clutching the inviolable shade"--the line from Arnold that Kinbote quotes during his description of Shade's murder. But this is all rather improbable...
At the end we find an [EDNOTE. The significance of the poems on facing pages is interesting, considering the novel's looking-glass logic and Kinbote's advice on how to read the commentary vs. the poem. SES]
Feeling myself again floating against the mainstream, like in the nursery rhyme Edsel Ford's little verses suggested to my ears, I was reminded of
Mary Mary quite contrary,/How does your garden grow?/ With silver bells and cockle shells/And pretty maids all in a row. The associative mood can become deadly. These lines, recited for and by minute Brits and after following a google-link, led me to Mary Tudor, or Bloody Mary ( already discussed at our list in relation to "Ada").
The silver bells and cockle shells referred to were colloquialisms for instruments of torture. The 'silver bells' were thumbscrews which crushed the thumb between two hard surfaces by the tightening of a screw. The 'cockleshells' were believed to be instruments of torture which were attached to the genitals! The mechanical instrument (now known as the guillotine) was called the Maiden - shortened to Maids in the Mary Mary Rhyme.
So, I'll curb my contrariness lest I end-up half-dead amidst metaphors and similes. And yet, it is still a source of wonder, to me, why Nabokov seems to have given such an important place to EdselFord's verses: wouldn't a few scattered allusions be enough?There are Hardy's "trophies of the eaves" to quote (cf.Boyd and Michael Long,1984, "Lone cave's stillicide" ) and oozes of Frosts...
Shade himself ( apud Kinbote) wrote about "the shadow of the doorknob that/ At sundown is a baseball bat/ Upon the door..."( note to line 61) in verses (yes!) reminiscent of E.Ford's. Kinbote, discussing line 130, about Shade who never swung a bat, writes about a spark in a key ( lights and shadows, bats and keys) that causes a "wonderful conflagration to spread in the prisoner's mind..", namely, " the bedside light was just strong enough to put a bright gleam on the gilt key in the lock of the closed door. And all at once that spark on that key..."
Freud and Goethe seemed to suggest that "a key in the lock" indicates something similar to John Rea's find, in the Webster, concerning bacon and bacon sandwich. An erotic key...
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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