Subject
Re: Pale Fire and Eliot's Wasteland (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
Nabokov liked to spell Eliot's name and initials backwards -- i.e. ToileTS
-- and that pretty much sums us how he felt about the author of the
*The Waste Land.* As to the endnotes in *The Waste Land,* I do not think
they are tongue-in-cheek, and, as far as I know, hardly anyone suggests
they are. They refer people to Frazer's *The Golden Bough,* and numerous
biblical and literary texts which Eliot echoes or cites in the poem
(Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes, Tristan and Isolde, Divine Comedy, Metamorphoses,
Aeneid, Anthony and Cleopatra, etc). All that appears to be very much in
earnest. If I remember it correctly, Ezra Pound, who edited the poem for
Eliot (and whipped it into the marvelous shape in which it now exists) was
against Eliot's inclusion of these notes, but lost on that one.
Galya Diment
>
>
> From: Jim Morrison <jamorrison@metronet.de>
>
>
> The recent Pale Fire thread has made me wonder if there has
> been anything written on T.S. Eliot's relationship
> to the composer of the end notes to The Wasteland.
> Do most people consider those notes to be Eliot's sincere
> explanation of what is going on in the poem? Or, are
> the notes considered to of doubtful integrity?
> I know there are a few references to Eliot in Pale Fire. Has
> there been much written on how Nabokov felt about Eliot?
>
Nabokov liked to spell Eliot's name and initials backwards -- i.e. ToileTS
-- and that pretty much sums us how he felt about the author of the
*The Waste Land.* As to the endnotes in *The Waste Land,* I do not think
they are tongue-in-cheek, and, as far as I know, hardly anyone suggests
they are. They refer people to Frazer's *The Golden Bough,* and numerous
biblical and literary texts which Eliot echoes or cites in the poem
(Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes, Tristan and Isolde, Divine Comedy, Metamorphoses,
Aeneid, Anthony and Cleopatra, etc). All that appears to be very much in
earnest. If I remember it correctly, Ezra Pound, who edited the poem for
Eliot (and whipped it into the marvelous shape in which it now exists) was
against Eliot's inclusion of these notes, but lost on that one.
Galya Diment
>
>
> From: Jim Morrison <jamorrison@metronet.de>
>
>
> The recent Pale Fire thread has made me wonder if there has
> been anything written on T.S. Eliot's relationship
> to the composer of the end notes to The Wasteland.
> Do most people consider those notes to be Eliot's sincere
> explanation of what is going on in the poem? Or, are
> the notes considered to of doubtful integrity?
> I know there are a few references to Eliot in Pale Fire. Has
> there been much written on how Nabokov felt about Eliot?
>