JM to Dave (off list): I couldn’t get the point here: “reference to Silvio helps
to establish Sybil (nee Irondell) Shade's identification with the pivotal
Sylvia O'Donnell (well-connected to Zemblans and Wordsmith administrators
alike)”.
Dave to JM (off list)
(a) “Names are part of the connective tissue in the commentary. Not for nothing is
Kinbote an expert on names. (It's partly why I included the second link in my
response.) Brian Boyd answered my question
about what to make of Sylvia O'Donnell (as alter ego for Irondell, Sybil
transformed) in "Azure Afterimages", Nab Studies #6, and when I was
investigating the poetic titles, the correspondence between faun references
(Silvio reinforcing the Sybil-Sylvia link) hit me, so I lifted that bit from http://nnyhav.blogspot.com/2005/10/garden.html
[Here] …another name bit that Matt Roth uncovered in PF: http://kobaltana.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/the-strange-case-of-nabokov-and-w-f-kirby/
(b) speaking of serendipity, I just
stumbled on this:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/mar/10/poem-of-the-week-andrew-marvell-nymph-fawn
which tickles, especially in the conclusion to its
commentary: "Marvell's fawn is a paragon, but
not a unicorn. His Nymph, abandoning herself to full-on adolescent despair, is
a real girl, if in an imaginary garden." (the Marvell line 678
immediately precedes "Hurricane Lolita"). Maybe the links (and
bobolinks) go deeper than I can imagine ... [ ] (c) It's just the tickly quote
below* compressed it so well (real girl, imaginary garden) ... “You went on/Translating into
French Marvell and Donne./It was a year of
Tempests: Hurricane/Lolita swept from
Florida to Maine.”
Jansy Mello: It’s
impossible for me to search Marvell in depth as a reply to Dave's commentaries demand. Important information is lurking behind "links and bobolinks," though, just as he observed to me...
A
comparison between shared particularities between V.Nabokov and A.Marvell are
promised here: “Marvell, Nabokov: Childhood and Arcadia by Michael
Long.
See, also, Di Santo's article (Project Muse) with a promising parallel in its abstract: Andrew Marvell's Ambivalence toward Adult Sexuality Michael DiSanto - SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 Volume 48, Number 1, Winter 2008 pp. 165-182 | 10.1353/sel.2008.0007
Abstract Some of Andrew Marvell's poems are
marked by the presence of powerful and attractive nymphets and threatening
adult women. They are the manifestation of a disturbance in Marvell's thought
concerning adult sexuality. At times, his speakers read like early versions of
Humbert Humbert, the famous narrator of Nabokov's Lolita, whose attraction to
young virgins betrays a desire to avoid adult sexuality. Continuities in the
use of language and the valuation of women suggest that, despite the change of
speakers, several poems can be read as a kind of confession and justification
by Marvell, raising some questions about the poet's sexuality.
....................................................................................................................................................
* - “Marvell's fawn is a
paragon, but not a unicorn. His Nymph, abandoning herself to full-on adolescent
despair, is a real girl, if in an imaginary garden.” (Carol Rumen’s commentary
at the address Dave brought up: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/mar/10/poem-of-the-week-andrew-marvell-nymph-fawn.
I could only wander as far as the
lines by Marianne Moore (quoted by Alfred Appel Jr. – if I remember it
correctly – in The Annotated Lolita), on poetry’s "imaginary gardens
with real toads in them," and how they apply to VN’s novels more than to
VN’s poems (except via J.Shade, as I see now).
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