Dear Don and List,
Don sent us a very interesting article. Without
taking sides ( not enough scholarship for that ), I'd like to take a plunge
since the article raised the issue concerning Zembla and Boyd's book on
Pale Fire. Nevertheless I shall be restricting myself to one question ( or
two, perhaps).
Neither Cedarn, Utana may be pinpointed in a Map,
or New Wye, although Apalachia ( from Miami to Maine) may be and has been so
described by VN ( the route of "Hurricane Lolita" and various
other references linked to weather forecasts in Shade's poem). Kinbote once linked Cedarn to a cave ( which brings to
our minds both Coriolannus and Titus Andronicus). There was a "cedarn cave"
cited by an explorer who tried to reach the sources of the
Nile. It seems that Coleridge took up his description of an "edenic
place" at the source of the Nile as inspiration
for "Xanadu".
I was curious
about the link bt. Zembla and Xanadu.
In our List ( in 2003) there
has been a reference to both, and to Salman Rushdie who mentioned them
together in a 2003 poem - but the text distributed to
us came in Russian and I could not follow it.
Here is Salman Rushdie's poem:
Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu:
All our dream-worlds
may come true.
Fairy lands are fearsome too.
As I wander far from
view
Read, and bring me home to you.
Here is Coleridge's poem describing cedars, caves and
Xanadu:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where
Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a
sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers
were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous
rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here
were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
-
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill
athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for
her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil
seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty
fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted
burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain
beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and
ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles
meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river
ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to
a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of
pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled
measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare
device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was
an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she
played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her
symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with
music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome !
those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all
should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating
hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with
holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of
Paradise.
After wondering about
Shade's "auto-da-fé" I happened on a Brazilian poem about the Phoenix and
in which the poet wrote about King Sardanapal (
Assyria) who set all his books and jewels afire to deprive his
country's invadors from their booty ( Shade and Kinbote?). Coleridge's
"river Alph" may take us back to the Nile and to Greek mythology ( the
story of Alpheus).
This set me on the trail of Assyria and Egypt and the
Nile, fabulous countries and animals and then I picked up B.Boyd's book on
"Pale Fire" to check Coleridge's reference to "river Alph". I
was then planning to read what Boyd wrote about the "alphabetic
family", Alpha and Omega, going from A to Z and King
Alfin. Priscilla Meyer's excellent book was separated to follow her
lead, too.
Despite my plans, the posting gave me the idea to share
these "hints" with the List and get help to proceed - or - to
abandon the project.
While perusing Boyd's chapters I was struck by the ellision of the
letter "E" ( we have four names with A,B,C and D. We know that number four
figures prominently in Pale Fire) and, in Zembla, we will find a kind of
alphabetical continuation if we ennumerate Fleur, Garth...
"E", as in Eliot, might
have been omitted to stress a sexual allusion hidden by the limits that
extend from Alpha to Delta ( from the source to the delta of the Nile, for
example) since this Greek letter represents graphically a woman's sexual "
delta". Eric Naiman, in his exploration of VN's bawdy allusions in "Lolita",
mentioned how one word or image is "overdetermined" in VN and I agree
with his observation. Although one may recognize VN's sexual allusions at
the surface, there is a more serious game of discovery taking place at the same
time, with Cedarns and caves and hidden treasures in imaginary paradises, such
as Xanadu ( and I tremble when I add Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, Xanadu and
Rosebud) and
Zembla.
While using the
"Google" I found a curious note offered at the Wikipaedia where it deals
with imaginary countries. Zembla is mentioned among "Questionable cases" (
Countries from stories, myths, legends, that some people have believed to
actually exist) since "the proof" about Zembla is based in VN's "Pale Fire"!
Their list reads: Atlantis Aztlán El Dorado Lemuria Mu (continent) Ophir Shangri-la or Shambala Xanadu Zembla (See Pale Fire) Zinj
Best,
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 1:13 AM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Shade and Shape in
Pale Fire by Brian Boyd
.
NOTE: I
picked this up off a Praue TV web page. As i recall it first appeared in
NABOKOV STUDIES and them as part of Boyd's Pale Fire
monograph.
D.Barton
Johnson
(....)
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