JM: Bereft of Freudian sense or not, JA's contribution on "linguistic proxy" comes close to what I think, as regards VN's prose in general and not only HH's. I was reminded of N.Tharne's views on Dante and Beatrice "...indeed he may have dreamed the whole poem, Borges suggests, in order to engineer a re-encounter:..He receives her smile at the end of Paradiso only to see her turn away from him forever. But Dante has gained the poem... " * With a malevolent turn this also happens in Ian McEwan's "Reparation" by Briony in relation to the pair of lovers she'd forced apart. The writer power over past and future events can be, fetichistically, extreme.
Stan K-B noted that since Dante and Beatrice were 8 and 9 when they first met "there is no HH/Lo or HH/Annabelle syndrome." And yet, both HH/Annabel met as children (just like VN's "first love", Colette , in SM. Poe, as we know, was in his late twenties when he married his cousin Virginia Clemm, then 13 and in a different direction, in Lolita, we read:"The only definite sexual events that I can remember as having occurred before my thirteenth birthday (that is, before I first saw my little Annabel)" whereas in Poe's Annabel poem we find: I was a child and she was a child,/In this kingdom by the sea;/But we loved with a love that was more than love-I and my Annabel Lee, returning to the theme related to courtly idealized
love like Dante's.)
S K-B also criticized the comparison bt. Nabokov and those romance autors who pursue inspiration by submitting to literary constraints, with which I agree! I know that John Shade labored under the strictures of rhyme and cadence almost successfuly **, but this exceptional example remains the only clear example I can now bring to mind.
In old classic movies there were often scenes in which the hero, in the verge of falling in love, quoted lines by famous poets and his heart fell head over heels ( a Borgian "wink of the metaphor" ) when the beloved quoted back without resorting to Google. I always had the impression that to be truly English, or to fall in love, you needed a quick memory for the "iambic motors" of a thousand lines by Keats, Marvel, Pope and Shakespeare.
As if, when falling in love, it was Mnemosyne who strived to find a mirror to kiss herself...(naughty Mnemosyne)
Fortunately these are mere movie ploys, since I only know very few famous lines to recite. And yet, whenever I read one or two lines by Shade there is an insistent mumble at the back of my mind. As if another poet was trying to fall in step or finger the windowpane. I could never get rid of this troubling rumble. I Finally managed to spot one of these murmuring moans in Shakespeare's sonnet XXX.
(I'd been trying to discover it through Eliot's references *** but it didn't work. It had to do with feet and jambes)
Shade wrote:(line 865/6) Now I shall spy on beauty as none has/ Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as";(line 924/5)Now I shall speak of evil as none has/Spoken before....)"
The crazy not really matching rythm I heard was: "Then can I grieve at grievances foregone..." [...]
Query: Has anyone experienced something similar, this hidden noise, adding a familiar but forgotten depth to Shade's lines? I wonder what poets would make their ghostly appearance that way in some of the readers.
.........................................
* - Wikipedia extracts: Beatrice Portinari, real name Bice di Folco Portinari [1] (1266–1290) was a woman from Florence, Italy, who was the principal inspiration for Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova. She also appears as his guide in Divine Comedy (La Divina Commedia) in the last book, Paradise, and in the last four canti of Purgatory. There Beatrice takes over as guide from the Latin poet Virgil because, as a pagan, Virgil cannot enter Paradise and because, being the incarnation of beatific love, as her name implies, it is she who leads into the Beatific vision [...] According to the autobiographic La Vita Nuova, Beatrice and Dante met only twice during their lives. This statement, however, is highly questionable[...] Even less credible is the numerology behind these encounters; marking out Dante's life in periods of nine years. This amount
of time falls in line with Dante's repeated use of the number three or multiples of, derived from the Holy Trinity[...] It is more likely that [...]Beatrice, like Petrarch's Laura, seem to blur the line between an actual love interest and a means employed by the poet in his creations[...].Dante first met Beatrice in Florence, his home city, when he was nine years old and she was eight, around 1274. He... wrote in La Vita Nuova: Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi ("Behold, a deity stronger than I; who coming, shall rule over me.") he made great efforts to ensure his thoughts of Beatrice remained private, even writing poetry for another lady, so as to use her as a "screen for the truth" Dante's courtly love for Beatrice continued for nine years...In one of Dante's dreams God made Beatrice eat his flaming heart:"he made her to eat that thing which flamed in his hand; and she ate as one
fearing."[...]The manner in which Dante chose to express his love for Beatrice often agreed with the Middle Ages concept of courtly love. Courtly love was a secret, unrequited and highly respectful form of admiration for another person.[...Dante's idea of] her being a force for good that he fell in love with, a force which he believed made him a better person. This is certainly viable, since he does not seem concerned with her appearance - at least not in his writings.
T.S.Eliot: Four Quartets, East Cocker:
**[...]A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.
***- John Shade (line 167/178): "There was a time in my demented youth"..."There was the day when...","there was the sleepless night " & line 993: (Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk.)
T.S. Eliot: [...]... there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
[...] In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
[...]Where you lean against a bank while a van passes...
John Shade( line 368): "Mother, what's grimpen" ..(line 499/500)"a blurry shape stepped off the reedy bank/ Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank. ."[...] T.S.Eliot:In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
but all the way, in a dark wood, in
a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment [...]