Siri Vane:Currently
reading a seminal work about the history of Iraq, the authors' surname
"Sluglett" triggered in me a memory of many diminuitive "-lets" in V.N.'s novels
and I decided for myself that maybe "sluglet" was a word only waiting to be
discovered and put to use by V.N. [ Siri Vane also remembered Ada's "goblets of
light" ...]
JM: It is always worth our while to
return to VN's writing to explore a particular word. In ADA we find not a
literal "goblet of light" but Siri's mental image and mood seems to have
been precise in connection to young Ada's game of light and shadow, a play
with evanescence, dissolution (!) and, in its reference to Proust (the
herbal infusion in which a madeleine was soaked), involuntary memory and
epiphanies.
The shadows of leaves on the sand were
variously interrupted by roundlets of live light. The player chose his roundlet
— the best, the brightest he could find — and firmly outlined it with the point
of his stick; whereupon the yellow round light would appear to grow convex like
the brimming surface of some golden dye. Then the player delicately scooped out
the earth with his stick or fingers within the roundlet. The level of that
gleaming infusion de tilleul would magically sink in its goblet of
earth and finally dwindle to one precious drop [...] As she dug a firm little
circle around a particularly fine goldgout, Ada squatted [...] while her
haunches and hands worked [...] A gentle breeze suddenly eclipsed her fleck.
When that occurred, the player lost one point, even if the leaf or the cloud
hastened to move aside[...] The other game[...]one had to wait for p.m. to
provide longer shadows [...]You outline my shadow behind me on the sand. I move.
You outline it again....
Anyway,
the contour created by "goldgouts" or by shadows of one's body
has a strong suggestive power. Almost like
registering the motion of sun and moon with hints of Plato, or about
nature as a heraclitean fire
(the first game deals with a fascination that
brought to my mind GMHopkins's "dappled" things. GMH also writes of a
"tilleul"(linden, elms) effect in "dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
/Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair. /.../ in
pool and rut peel parches /Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust;
stanches, starches/ Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil
there..."
btw: initial hints about paternity and
siblinghood, in Ada, confuse elms and oaks
(chêne).
(a) "I think we are supposed to
go and look at the grand chêne which is really an elm.’ Did he like
elms? Did he know Joyce’s poem about the two washerwomen*? He did, indeed. Did
he like it? He did. In fact he was beginning to like very much arbors and ardors
and Adas. They rhymed. Should he mention it?"
(b) ‘Good-bye, Ada. I guess it’s your father under that oak, isn’t
it?’/ ‘No, it’s an elm,’ said
Ada.
....................................................................
* in short, the metamorphosis of stone, river,
tree and humans, in FW. Long before VN was acquainted with Joyce he
wrote about something similar in "Gods"
"See those
lindens lining the street? ... All the trees in the world arc journeying
somewhere. Perpetual pilgrimage.... Remember the twelve poplars conferring about
how to cross the river? Earlier, still, in the Crimea, I once saw a cypress
bending over an almond tree in bloom. Once upon a time the cypress had been a
big, tall chimney sweep with a brush on a wire and a ladder under his arm. Head
over heels in love, poor fellow, with a little laundry maid, pink as almond
petals."