Subject
Fw: Pale Fire and R. Frost's "New Hampshire"
From
Date
Body
SEE EDNOTE AT END.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Bellino" <iambe@rcn.com>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (39
lines) ------------------
> Hmmm . . . I read through "New Hampshire" (as much of it as
> I could anyway), and while we New Englanders might well find
> it amusing, it doesn't seem to have much to do with "Pale
> Fire." Though it's only fair to say that the one Frost poem
> that IS quoted in _Pale Fire_, "Stopping by the Woods on a
> Snowy Evening," is from the same 1923 collection -- but of
> course that poem is readily available in anthologies. Both
> Kinbote and Shade seem to admire the gentle Frost of
> "Stopping" more than the sanctimonious, rather bitter Frost
> of "New Hampshire." In short, I don't see any "definite and
> plainly intentional connections" between the two poems.
>
> Don is of course right that Frost met many of the Georgian
> poets while he was living in England (1912-15); he knew
> Brooke fairly well, I believe, but then he knew Pound pretty
> well too. As for the three-letter society devoted to the
> study of the afterlife, Nabokov knew of the SPR (Society for
> Psychical Research) long before he ever thought of writing
> _Pale Fire_. The SPR is the most venerable and famous group
> of its kind; its heyday in England occurred while Nabokov
> was living there (and it was very active in Cambridge),
> while the American branch is headquartered in Boston. While
> I'm not sure that the IPH is supposed to be the SPR, Nabokov
> hardly needed Frost to inform him of the latter's existence.
> In the stanza of "New Hampshire" that mentions the SPR,
> Frost seems to be drawing on the long tradition of Boston as
> a center of crackpot religions (19th and early 20th century
> Boston was the Southern California of its time, believe it
> or not) and the tendency of wealthy Bostonians to fall for
> them -- or, to put it more kindly, to be freethinkers in
> religious matters.
>
> Nabokov and Frost, along with MacLeish and Eliot, were part
> of the annual "Poet's Reading " series at Wellesley in 1946
> (Boyd, VNAY 112-13); presumably they didn't all read at the
> same session, but perhaps Nabokov attended Frost's reading
> -- and doubtless he read "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening."
>
> MarY
------------------------
EDNOTE. I'm inclined to agree with Mary B. Thanks to Keith McMullen, I
skimmed "New Hampshire" and didn't see anything that persuaded me VN alludes
to it in PF, but thought I might have overlooked something.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Bellino" <iambe@rcn.com>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (39
lines) ------------------
> Hmmm . . . I read through "New Hampshire" (as much of it as
> I could anyway), and while we New Englanders might well find
> it amusing, it doesn't seem to have much to do with "Pale
> Fire." Though it's only fair to say that the one Frost poem
> that IS quoted in _Pale Fire_, "Stopping by the Woods on a
> Snowy Evening," is from the same 1923 collection -- but of
> course that poem is readily available in anthologies. Both
> Kinbote and Shade seem to admire the gentle Frost of
> "Stopping" more than the sanctimonious, rather bitter Frost
> of "New Hampshire." In short, I don't see any "definite and
> plainly intentional connections" between the two poems.
>
> Don is of course right that Frost met many of the Georgian
> poets while he was living in England (1912-15); he knew
> Brooke fairly well, I believe, but then he knew Pound pretty
> well too. As for the three-letter society devoted to the
> study of the afterlife, Nabokov knew of the SPR (Society for
> Psychical Research) long before he ever thought of writing
> _Pale Fire_. The SPR is the most venerable and famous group
> of its kind; its heyday in England occurred while Nabokov
> was living there (and it was very active in Cambridge),
> while the American branch is headquartered in Boston. While
> I'm not sure that the IPH is supposed to be the SPR, Nabokov
> hardly needed Frost to inform him of the latter's existence.
> In the stanza of "New Hampshire" that mentions the SPR,
> Frost seems to be drawing on the long tradition of Boston as
> a center of crackpot religions (19th and early 20th century
> Boston was the Southern California of its time, believe it
> or not) and the tendency of wealthy Bostonians to fall for
> them -- or, to put it more kindly, to be freethinkers in
> religious matters.
>
> Nabokov and Frost, along with MacLeish and Eliot, were part
> of the annual "Poet's Reading " series at Wellesley in 1946
> (Boyd, VNAY 112-13); presumably they didn't all read at the
> same session, but perhaps Nabokov attended Frost's reading
> -- and doubtless he read "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening."
>
> MarY
------------------------
EDNOTE. I'm inclined to agree with Mary B. Thanks to Keith McMullen, I
skimmed "New Hampshire" and didn't see anything that persuaded me VN alludes
to it in PF, but thought I might have overlooked something.