Wrote
A. Brown: "Isn’t the Shades’ passion referred to a number of times in
the poem ... a stanza mentioning how their mattress indicates how many
times they have been conjoined there? Doesn’t Shade...describe his earliest love
for Sybil... refer to her lovingly as they grow older...how he lovingly observes
her even as they prepare for a trip and she zips ...Many children, today at
least, are born after a long period of “sterility.”.. something about that
term strikes me as inaccurate)...So I guess I would have to say that the Pale
Fire poem does have traces of eroticism, or sensuality. ..I agree that “a
writer’s grief” in the context in which it occurs is a dead giveaway to Shade’s
true self-centered nature. Wasn’t Frost kind of like
this?"
"four thousand times your pillow has
been creased/ By our two heads"...
Pillow, not mattress. But I concede the point:
if they had kept separate rooms, the mention to "your
pillow" suggests, in fact, his visits to Sybil's bed.
The
poem describes past passion with nostalgia and, in the present, a loving
tenderness at most.
I find
it hard to imagine mother and lover, flesh and blood, spirit and
body Sybil taking shape in the poem.
When I wrote about
"sterility" I didn't refer to any genetic incapacity to
procreate, but to a possible avoidance of fertilizing conjunctions. The
context was provided by a discussion about Darwin's evolutionary
theories and this is why I wanted to stress that Shade was not
an Appolo himself.
Wrote
A. Brown: Hazel’s activities in the barn may have
been childish, but no more childish, and perhaps less so, than the activities of
a large number of adult spiritualists, many of them serious and sober
individuals who had strong thoughts on the subject. To return to the
point, although Hazel’s actions or activities may have been naïve, I don’t think
they were childish....I, too, reject the beautiful ghost that
metamorphoses into a butterfly. Too simple.
Dear Andrew, I don't
think that a discussion about religious creeds and spiritualism would fit
into the scope of our VN-List, but I didn't want to imply that there are no
serious and mature individuals who are spiritualists. The faith in the life of
the spirit is not restricted to spiritualistic table-rappings, though,
neither to spiritualism proper. Besides, Hazel still looks to me as
a problematic, resentful and mentally unbalanced young
woman.