The words, following Charles Wallace, could be found and copied easily, so
I reproduce them here:
1. The hymn that we are told has inspired the song:
"There is a happy land far far away where saints in glory stand, bright,
bright as day. Oh how they sweetly sing, "Worthy is our Savior King", Loud let
his praises ring, praise, praise for aye."
There is an old cookhouse, far far away
Where we get pork and beans,
three times a day.
Beefsteak we never see, damn-all sugar for our tea
And
we are gradually fading away.
cho: Old soldiers never
die,
Never die, never
die,
Old soldiers never
die
They just fade away.
Privates they love their
beer, 'most every day.
Corporals, they love their stripes, that's what they
say.
Sergeants they love to drill. Guess them bastards always will
So we
drill and drill until we fade away.
Kinbote would note that in the beer song there is a
mention of "gradus" ( "we are gradually fading away") and identify Zembla in the
"happy land far far away" or in "worthy is our Savior King". I won't, of
course. But I think it worthwhile now to quote the sentence that
prompted this paper/digital chase:
Kinbote, line 894 ( a king):
Shade: ... "The Extremists and
their friends invented a lot of non-sense to conceal their discomfiture; but the
truth is that the King walked out of the palace, and crossed the mountains, and
left the country, not in the black garb of a pale spinster but dressed as an
athlete in scarlet wool."
"Strange, strange," said the German visitor, who by some
quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the eerie note that had
throbbed by and was gone.
Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: Kings do not die - they
only disappear, eh, Charles?"
"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a
trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English
Department.
A few lines later we find one of the references to Pnin when Kinbote
mentions that he speaks Russian and is thereby indirectly acknowledging that he
had chatted with this Russian "Punoo"( this item has already brought
up in a recent posting).
More lines and we find Gerald Emerald
"spreading out his palms like a disciple in Leonardo's Last supper" ( such as
Andrew, Simon and James, also Christ, but not Judas).
Kinbote or Dan Brown might also have noted ( had the first not
been distraught by Emerald's words) that the name "Leonardo" doesn't appear
in VN's novels with a great frequency. There is an apparition in "Pnin", though.
"To the latest issue
of the school magazine Victor had contributed a poem about painters, over the
nom de guerre Moinet, and under the motto 'Bad reds should all be
avoided; even if carefully manufactured, they are still bad' (quoted from an old
book on the technique of painting but smacking of a political aphorism). The
poem began:
Leonardo! Strange
diseases
strike at madders mixed
with lead:
nun-pale now are Mona
Lisa's
lips that you had made so
red. "
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, August 04, 2006 2:31
PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Kings never
die...( Pale Fire)
Actually, the text to this song, complete with music, showing it to be a
parody of a well-known hymn, is easily available via Google: see
here:
Mention of "sugar for our tea", inter alia, identifies it as
British, imho.
Charles Harrison Wallace
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