Hello List
I've noted a few postings on the List referring to literary uses of
"bobolink" before it appears in PF (e.g. by Emily Dickinson) but
none that I have looked at suggests any thematic link (sorry)
between those earlier uses and VN's use of the word in PF.
Since the boblink is an incredibly rare visitor to the UK, the word
has no currency here at all here, so my immediate (and possibly very
wrong) thought was that it was likely that there was some literary
source on which VN drew for the word. Obviously, if "boblolink" is
such a commonly used word in the US that anyone might drop it into
the conversation at any moment, even if (unlike VN) they had little
interest in birds, then what follows might be a waste of everyone's
time....
I have come accross two perhaps less exalted uses of "bobolink" than
Emily Dickinson's and wonder if there is a connection with VN.
The word is used in two Broadway musicals.
"Bloomer Girl" (Harold Arlen and E Y Harburg) - first run 5 October
1944 to 27 April 1946 - uses the word in one song -"Evelina". I
don't see anything special in these lyrics:-
"Evelina, wont ya ever take a shine to that moon?
Evelina, aint ya bothered by the bobolink's tune?
Tell me, tell me how long
Ya gonna keep delayin the day."
In "Camelot" (Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe) - first run 3
December 1960 to 5 January 1963, it appears in the introductory
recitative to the well known "How to Handle a Woman."
"And what of teaching me by turning me to animal and
bird?
>From beaver to the smallest bobolink
I should have had the whirl
To change into a girl
To learn the way the creatures think!"
VN was in New York during the first runs of both musicals (clear
from Brian Boyd's VNAY) and he co-operated with Lerner on the
stillborn "Lolita, My Love" some ten years after "Camelot", so
presumably he was impressed with Lerner's lyrics. Could VN have seen
either or both musicals? Did he have any interest in "musical
theatre"? Or did he read any of Lerner's librettos before writing
PF?
The context in which "boblink" appears in "How to Handle a Woman" is
interesting (to me at least) because of the reference to the
transformation of a person (here, King Arthur) into other creatures.
The only direct parallel with PF I can think of is the allusion to
Keats's "Lamia" in Canto II ("crimson barred") but we do of course
have Brian Boyd's views on the transformation of the dead Hazel into
the red admiral.
Barrie Akin