Subject
Re: jumping from one tree to another...
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Peter Dale wrote "I've glanced back, after chopping wood for two hours, and failed to see a response to Carolyn's query."
Here is more wood to chop... I examined Marvell's poem "The Garden" ( to check the reference to a "palm" in "Ada").
The first verses are:
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays ;
And their uncessant labors see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid ; "
[Ada 'transversed' them as: "En vain on s'amuse à gagner/ L'Oka, la Baie du Palmier..."
( ...to win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes!" shouted Van. (Vintage page 65)]
and, almost stumbling on melons, reached some ever present Zemblances:
"Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness :
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas ;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade."
until I reached I came to a curious section, returning to the "chtonic" theme and sexuality in "Timon of Athens".
Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate :
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there :
Two paradises 'twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.
Very curious.
And yet, I had originally intended to mention something altogether different - but still demanding a chopper's effort with oats and oaks.
Could we take the exchanges below as an example of VN's Jane Austen being woven at leat three times in "Ada"?
In the first pages of the novel ( Vintage, page 8) Ada observes:
" Dr. Krolik, our local naturalist, to whom you, Van, have referred, as Jane Austen might have phrased it, for the sake of rapid narrative information ( you recall Brown, don't you, Smith?")...
( In his lecture on Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" VN itemizes Austen's "machinery" and her four methods of characterization: the first one is direct description, the second, characterization through directly quoted speech; the third, characterization through recorded speech; fourth, imitate the character's speech when speaking of him...")
This was quick! Besides, some pages later we also come across:
" 'Well,’ he said, getting up, ‘I must be going. Good-bye, everybody. Good-bye, Ada. I guess it’s your father under that oak, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s an elm,’ said Ada."
This is what one may take as "very rapid narrative informations" and I hope to practice it some day. Shorter sentences.Clipped information...
With my best intentions ( paving the way along a primrose path...),
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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Here is more wood to chop... I examined Marvell's poem "The Garden" ( to check the reference to a "palm" in "Ada").
The first verses are:
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays ;
And their uncessant labors see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow-vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid ; "
[Ada 'transversed' them as: "En vain on s'amuse à gagner/ L'Oka, la Baie du Palmier..."
( ...to win the Palm, the Oke, or Bayes!" shouted Van. (Vintage page 65)]
and, almost stumbling on melons, reached some ever present Zemblances:
"Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,
Withdraws into its happiness :
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find ;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas ;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade."
until I reached I came to a curious section, returning to the "chtonic" theme and sexuality in "Timon of Athens".
Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate :
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there :
Two paradises 'twere in one
To live in Paradise alone.
Very curious.
And yet, I had originally intended to mention something altogether different - but still demanding a chopper's effort with oats and oaks.
Could we take the exchanges below as an example of VN's Jane Austen being woven at leat three times in "Ada"?
In the first pages of the novel ( Vintage, page 8) Ada observes:
" Dr. Krolik, our local naturalist, to whom you, Van, have referred, as Jane Austen might have phrased it, for the sake of rapid narrative information ( you recall Brown, don't you, Smith?")...
( In his lecture on Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" VN itemizes Austen's "machinery" and her four methods of characterization: the first one is direct description, the second, characterization through directly quoted speech; the third, characterization through recorded speech; fourth, imitate the character's speech when speaking of him...")
This was quick! Besides, some pages later we also come across:
" 'Well,’ he said, getting up, ‘I must be going. Good-bye, everybody. Good-bye, Ada. I guess it’s your father under that oak, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s an elm,’ said Ada."
This is what one may take as "very rapid narrative informations" and I hope to practice it some day. Shorter sentences.Clipped information...
With my best intentions ( paving the way along a primrose path...),
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