Anthony Stadlen
wrote: Dear Carolyn, You write: << You say that
he is not honest and that his readers are entitled to expect honesty: I don't
think so. Nobody could be "honest" about such a thing and we, readers are not
his judges, are not in any way "entitled" to expect a full confession from him.
>>
Carolyn Kunin answered:
Dear Mr Stadlen, No idea what you are talking about - - I never wrote any such
thing. Carolyn Kunin
SES notes that Anthony
Stadlen was quoting a post written not by Carolyn Kunin but from Laurence
Hochard...
JM: Since we're clarifying 'maladressed' points,
I'd like to add a correction to two typos in my answer to
Haan's (coincidentally its subject is: "putting words in his
mouth")*
I meant to write:
(a) "I'm doubtful whether biographical data
CARRYING wild psychological acessments offer useful information;
(b) I'm almost certain that Mademoiselle NEVER
read Baudelaire to her charges.
Changing the subject:
R.S.Gwynn wrote: "Shade has
earlier told us, in his long (895-938) passage on how much he hates his daily
shave (an ode to simply being alive) that he is "in the class of fussy
bimanists" when it comes to wielding a razor. Thus, the "slaves [who] make
hay between his mouth and nose" are his two hands."
JM: Great association and
conclusion about the "fussy bimanist"! The irrepressible slaves 'making
hay' (an idiomatic expression) who are also drawing blood from his
skin. are Shade's two hands!
The silent liner that docks, and the
tourists in Lebanon, lines that antecede "Old Zemblan fields,"** might
indicate something else in the tub which is enjoying some sort of a
pleasure cruise, and floating in the bath-tub like a toy-duck ( hopefully his
slaves were not carrying a razor then).
R.S. Gwynn also noted: "What's even stranger is that this single mention of Zembla in Shade's
poem is not commented on by Kinbote at all." I
agree with his (RSG's) puzzlement. I don't remember how
exactly did Alexander Pope mention Zembla ( was it "New Zembla"? Was
it "Old Zembla"?) And didn't Swift write a "tale of a tub"***?
Anyway, Shade is not being sloppy at all,
inspite of the activity of his two clumsy hands and his complicated
similes and metaphors.
*- Like Stadlen, I was also taken in by the way
Hochard inserted Carolyn's name in the middle of his posting - and
this is why I attributed to Carolyn a reference to Maar and a quote from
Transparent Things (they were Hochard's). I thought he'd been
initially quoting her lines!
**- From Shade's lines: "And now a silent liner docks, and
now/ Sunglassers tour Beirut, and now I
plough/ Old Zembla’s fields where my gray
stubble grows,/ And slaves make
hay between my mouth and nose."
*** - Wiki explains that the pun on "tub," following Alexander
Pope's observation, considers that the tub "was a common term for a
Dissenter's pulpit, and a reference to Swift's own position as a
clergyman." and that Marat was killed in his tub a only a few years
before Pope and Swift themselves died . My connection
(Pope,Swift, Marat) is too forced,
alas.