]".Q: Is the capacity to recall and to celebrate
patches of past time a special quality of yours? A: No, I don't think so. I could name many writers, English, Russian,
and French, who have done it at least as well as I have. Funny, I notice that
when mentioning my three tongues, I list them in that order because it is the
best rhythmic arrangement: either dactylic, with one syllable skipped, "English,
Russian, and French," or anapestic, "English, Russian, and French." Little
lesson in prosody."
Jansy Mello: Let's píck up one of VN's
answers to the BBC-2 (1969) interview, when he is disturbed by an intruding
thought and escapes this quandary by offering the interviewer a "little
lesson in prosody." To find out the cause of his "resistance" (his
hidden personal "truth") is of no interest to me, but the fact
that the example he offered carried me away to a particular moment
in Pale Fire.
And
minds that died before arriving
there:
Poor old man Swift,
poor —, poor Baudelaire
Not that the lines that came to my mind fit the bill (the "and"
is missing; "Baudelaire" can be pronounced in two ways), but, should the
disguised reference be found, the omitted name must be more easily
uncovered using style, not logic - as the commentator clearly realizes when he
wonders about "the many writers, English, Russian, and French" that he could
have named:
"What might that dash stand for? Unless Shade gave prosodic
value to the mute e in "Baudelaire,"
which I am quite certain he would never have done in English verse (cp.
"Rabelais," line 501), the name required here must scan as a trochee. Among the
names of celebrated poets, painters, philosophers, etc., known to have become
insane or to have sunk into senile imbecility, we find many suitable ones. Was
Shade confronted by too much variety with nothing to help logic choose and so
left a blank, relying upon the mysterious organic force that rescues poets to
fill it in at its own convenience? Or was there something else — some obscure
intuition, some prophetic scruple that prevented him from spelling out the name
of an eminent man who happened to be an intimate friend of his? Was he perhaps
playing safe because a reader in his household might have objected to that
particular name being mentioned? And if it comes to that, why mention it at all in this tragical
context? Dark, disturbing thoughts." *
........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
* Here we see that the author is telling the reader that Kinbote was
(momentarily) aware of his insanity, although most of the time he is
careful to show CK's mad innocence, as in:
"It is so easy for a cruel person to
make the victim of his ingenuity believe that he has persecution mania, or is
really being stalked by a killer, or is suffering from hallucinations.
Hallucinations! Well did I know that among certain youthful instructors whose
advances I had rejected there was at least one evil practical joker; I knew it
ever since the time I came home from a very enjoyable and successful meeting of
students and teachers...and found in my coat pocket a brutal anonymous note
saying: "You have hal.....s real bad, chum," meaning evidently "hallucinations,"
although a malevolent critic might infer from the insufficient number of dashes
that little Mr. Anon, despite teaching Freshman English, could hardly
spell."