Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0025411, Sat, 24 May 2014 11:42:44 -0700

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Re: [NABOKV -L] A certain kind of immortality...
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Jansy's quote recalls General MacArthur's famous remark "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away." Part of his resignation speech I believe. Was Shade perhaps suggesting that Kinbote abdicate? Of course he would have done this tongue-in-cheek as he knew there was no Zembla, or any king thereof. I wonder too, perhaps someone knows, if MacArthur was making reference to an earlier quote?



Carolyn


p.s. To those interested in such things, I went last night to see a dreadful production of Cosi fan tutte, and was telling my neighbor how I discovered that Mozart had taken the second theme, on which most of the overture is based, from four bars of entr'acte music from the Barber of Seville commissioned by Catherine II of Paisiello (not the more famous Rossini, to which Jansy refers above). Mozart heard itin Prague when he was there for the performance of one of his own operas, and how he did it I'll never know, managed to pick out those four inconsequential bars and spin them into musical gold. 


On Friday, May 23, 2014 6:26 PM, Jansy Mello <jansy.mello@OUTLOOK.COM> wrote:



[NABOKV -L] A certain kind of immortality...
Variations on: “Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die — they only disappear, eh, Charles?"”(Pale Fire)
Still wondering about Erwin’s song (from VN’s “A Nursery Tale”adapted short-storyin a London play) andthe musicianG.Rossini, I finally came tohisoverture of“The Barber of Seville”-where I reada comment on the youtube linkstating that“old artists never die, theyjust becomeenchanted”.
Itreminded me ofKinbote’sreported dialogue with John Shadeand this timeI found a new sitewith innumerous variationsofthe same idea.
 
The closest to Nabokov’s isthe already mentioned“Old magicians never die, they just disappear”[already discussed in a past VN-L exchangeonThursday, August 03, 2006 12:49 PMwithSubject: [NABOKV-L] Kings never die...( Pale Fire).https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A3=ind0608&L=NABOKV-L&E=quoted-printable&P=133618&B=------%3D_NextPart_000_0023_01C6B721.C7AC00E0&T=text%2Fhtml;%20charset=iso-8859-1]
For other examplesfound at this new site:http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_sep2004/Old_People_Never_Die.htm
Kinbote’s quip isn’t very original at all…

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