Dear Matt,
Braque's a cubist, who broke up and rearranged space, but was still representational, still painted things.
This doesn't altogether negate what you say though.
Nevertheless you seem to assume that VN would maintain a strict and single value semantics between these two occurrences,
instead of a freer, plastic, developmental kind of semantics, which I think makes more sense for VN's overall creative enterprise.
But what really tends to convince is, simply, that Shade is a poet, associated with Frost in the context of the work, and similar to him in possessing a pretty strict traditional poetics, i.e. meter, rhyme(often), and generally unambiguous subject matter.
Things that Stevens was not, or only on occasions (e.g. Postcard, Key West).
The Frost/Stevens exchange embodies these aesthetic differences.
It's seems entirely natural to me that Shade should share Frost's attitude and allude to his words.
That said, I have no doubt that VN is alluding to this line in Pale Fire in the passage that you quote from Ada.
Nonetheless, I appreciate your thoughts,
Gary L
On Feb 1, 2010, at 9:35 AM, Matthew Roth wrote:
Gary,
Interesting note about Frost and Stevens. My own feeling is that Shade/VN had the abstract expressionist painters in mind, rather than Stevens. In Ada, chapter 3, we find: "the mere geographic aspect of the affair possesses its redeeming comic side, like those patterns of brass marquetry, and bric-a-Braques, and the ormolu horrors that meant "art" to our humorless forefathers" (17). Vivian Darkbloom glosses this as "Braques: allusion to a bric-a-brac painter."
Best,
Matt Roth
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