Subject:
Re: [NABOKV-L] Fwd: Fountain - Mountain in PF - OBSERVATION
From:
Jansy Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Date:
7/27/2013 4:04 PM
To:
Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>


Barrie Akin: I haven't seen anything in the archive on the following:- JS is disappointed to find that Mrs. Z's "tall white fountain" in line 758 is not his own "tall white fountain" of line 707 because of the misprint. But isn't there something which echoes Mrs. Z's "tall white mountain" (i.e. after correcting for the misprint) in PF anyway? In lines 509 onwards we have: "To Yewshade, in another, higher state./I love great mountains. From the iron gate/Of the ramshackle house we rented there/One saw a snowy form..."
 
Jansy Mello: Perhaps other quotations from PF might confirm or add something to your observation 

Extracted from PF:

Poems, Shade’s short: The Sacred Tree, 49; The Swing, 61; Mountain View, 92*; The Nature of Electricity, 347; one line from April Rain, 470; one line from Mont Blanc, 782**; opening quatrain of Art, 957.

Shade, John: [    ]his last ramble with S and his joy at learning S is working hard on the "mountain" theme - a tragic misunderstanding, 802 ***

 

...................

* Extracted from "The Mountain View" The mountain is too weak to wait —// Even if reproduced and glassed// In me as in a paperweight."

** Mont Blanc: "An image of Mont Blanc’s "blue-shaded buttresses and sun-creamed domes" is fleetingly glimpsed through the cloud of that particular poem which I wish I could quote but do not have at hand. The "white mountain" of the lady’s dream, caused by a misprint to tally with Shade’s "white fountain," makes a thematic appearance here, blurred as it were by the lady’s grotesque pronunciation."

*** - ""Well," I said gaily, "what were you writing about last night, John? Your study window was simply blazing."

"Mountains," he answered.//The Bera Range, an erection of veined stone and shaggy firs, rose before me in all its power and pride.[  ] That mountain air had gone to my head: he was reassembling my Zembla!

 
(cf. also Glitterntin, Mt., a splendid mountain in the Bera Range (q.v.); pity I may never climb it again, 149.// Kronberg, a snow-capped rocky mountain with a comfortable hotel, in the Bera Range, 70, 130, 149.)
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