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Fwd: John Donne and Ada
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 16:12:33 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Reply-To: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Subject: John Donne and Ada
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Dear Don and List,
Several authors saw an analogy bt. Lolita ( a new land, America ) and Humbert
Humbert ( the old continent) and John Updike wrote " His most gracious
compliment to the United States was to merge it, in Ada, with the Russia of his
memory to make one paradisal Antiterra"
( I´m certain that B.Boyd would consider this "paradisal Antiterra" with a grain
of salt and fluff?)
I just came across a quotation of a long poem of John Donne ( set into music and
translated by one of our leading musicians, Caetano Veloso, with a happy result
) that made me think about America and Ada in a different way from Updike´s.
Here it is:
License my roaving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my america! my new-found-lande,
My kingdome, safliest when with one man man´d.
My Myne of precious stones, My Emperie,
How blest and I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
.....................
To taste whole joves ...like books gay covering made
For lay-men, are all women thus array´d;
Themselves are mystick books, which only wee
( Whom their imputed grace will dignifie)
Must see reveal´d. Then since that I may know...
( John Donne - " Going to Bed" )
Ada, "a mystick book" ... "America, new-found-lande... "
Just a curiosity, perhaps it might interest someone else...
----- End forwarded message -----