Subject
Re: Applejohn and primrose--one Nabokovian explanation (fwd)
Date
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Sorry to quote myself on-line, but I answer this question in my essay,
"Sinistral Details: Nabokov, Wilson, and HAMLET in BEND SINISTER,"
which appeared in the first volume of NABOKOV STUDIES. The essay
argues that that novel's Shakespearean allusions are a private joke, in
part, for Edmund Wilson, as well as a continuation of Nabokov's
epistolary argument with Wilson about prosody, translation, and the
versification of Shakespeare and Pushkin.
The "pale primrose" is from a passage in THE WINTER'S TALE that Wilson
had sent to VN as evidence of the superor flexibility of English iambic
meter; the "applejohn," from the second part of KING HENRY IV (VN
quotes from the first part in a subsequent letter that he wrote to Wilson
as he completed BEND SINISTER).
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Associate Professor of English
Holy Cross College
Worcester, MA 01610
Telephone (508) 793-2690
"Sinistral Details: Nabokov, Wilson, and HAMLET in BEND SINISTER,"
which appeared in the first volume of NABOKOV STUDIES. The essay
argues that that novel's Shakespearean allusions are a private joke, in
part, for Edmund Wilson, as well as a continuation of Nabokov's
epistolary argument with Wilson about prosody, translation, and the
versification of Shakespeare and Pushkin.
The "pale primrose" is from a passage in THE WINTER'S TALE that Wilson
had sent to VN as evidence of the superor flexibility of English iambic
meter; the "applejohn," from the second part of KING HENRY IV (VN
quotes from the first part in a subsequent letter that he wrote to Wilson
as he completed BEND SINISTER).
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Associate Professor of English
Holy Cross College
Worcester, MA 01610
Telephone (508) 793-2690