Subject
Re: The Ballad of Longwood Glen
From
Date
Body
Alexey Sklyarenko spotted the theme I had asked about (Nabokov's The Ballad of Longwood Glen ) and sent the lines obtained from the NY site.
He remarked on a curious word, perhaps a misspelling, and inquired about "And the rrkoon* dripped gold) was felled and searched." :
*crown?
After being reminded of Nabokov's poem, I remembered that it's been printed by Page Stegner in "The Portable Nabokov", so I checked. The word is "moon"
"And the sky-bound oak (where owls had perched
And the moon dripped gold) was felled and searched." (July 6, 1957)
My desktop-search was equally informative.Abraham P. Socher, in "Shades of Frost" observed that: "In the spring of 1958, Nabokov was still in the midst of his seemingly endless commentary on Pushkin's great verse novel Eugene Onegin, which also included a foreword and an index. Nabokov had already observed misguided waxwings crashing against his window, and even composed a narrative in heroic couplets, "The Ballad of Longwood Glen", which he had recently revised and published in the New Yorker, though it was a much lighter poem than his eventual "Pale Fire". He was also contemplating a novel which involved an exiled king (though he was neither a homosexual nor a literary commentator) and the question of immortality. When Nabokov read "Of a Winter Evening", after almost two decades of American exile in which he seemed to be always shadowing Frost, it combined with these and other elements in his imagination."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
He remarked on a curious word, perhaps a misspelling, and inquired about "And the rrkoon* dripped gold) was felled and searched." :
*crown?
After being reminded of Nabokov's poem, I remembered that it's been printed by Page Stegner in "The Portable Nabokov", so I checked. The word is "moon"
"And the sky-bound oak (where owls had perched
And the moon dripped gold) was felled and searched." (July 6, 1957)
My desktop-search was equally informative.Abraham P. Socher, in "Shades of Frost" observed that: "In the spring of 1958, Nabokov was still in the midst of his seemingly endless commentary on Pushkin's great verse novel Eugene Onegin, which also included a foreword and an index. Nabokov had already observed misguided waxwings crashing against his window, and even composed a narrative in heroic couplets, "The Ballad of Longwood Glen", which he had recently revised and published in the New Yorker, though it was a much lighter poem than his eventual "Pale Fire". He was also contemplating a novel which involved an exiled king (though he was neither a homosexual nor a literary commentator) and the question of immortality. When Nabokov read "Of a Winter Evening", after almost two decades of American exile in which he seemed to be always shadowing Frost, it combined with these and other elements in his imagination."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/