Subject
Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3636 Pale Fire
From
Date
Body
----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 7:27 PM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3636
>
> pynchon-l-digest Monday, November 3 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3636
>
>
> NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (1)
> NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (2)
>
> Re: NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (2)
>
> Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 09:29:15 -0500
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (1)
>
> p. 224
> "She had weaned her husband not only from the Episcopal Church of his
> fathers, but from all forms of sacramental worship"
>
> K blames Sybil for Shade's apostasy.
>
> p. 224
> "nebulation"
>
> From Webster's 1913:
>
> neb"u*la`ted (?), a. Clouded with indistinct color markings, as an animal.
>
> p. 224
> "Confession with us is auricular"
>
> auricular "Of confession: spoken into the ear, private. LME" (OED).
>
> p. 224
> "shaped almost exactly as the coronation chair of a Scottish king"
>
> Perhaps alluding to the "Stone of Scone" or Stone of Destiny, reputedly
> first referred to in Genesis 28:18 as Jacob's pillow, passed on to the
> Egyptians and then to the King of Spain. In 700 BCE it supposedly
traveled
> to Ireland with an invasion force led by Simon Brech, the Spanish King's
> son, and placed atop the sacred Hill of Tara where it was called the Stone
> of Desinty ("Lia-Fail" or the "fatal" stone). When an Irish king sat on
it
> during his coronation, it was said to groan aloud if the king was of the
> royal race but remain silent if he was a pretender. Something like a
> millennium later it was brought to Scotland by Fergus Mor MacEirc, the
> founder of the Scottish monarchy, and later installed in the monastery of
> Scone in Perthshire where it remained as the seat of the throne upon which
> the kings of Scotland were crowned. In 1296 King Edward I brought it to
> Westminster Abbey and installed it in a new Coronation Chair. For a long
> time thereafter it became a symbol of oppression for Scottish
nationalists,
> who eventually managed to steal it in 1950. It was recovered a few months
> later and stored in a vault until 1996 when John Major had it returned
> finally to Scotland. It can now be seen in Edinburgh Castle, but will
> travel back to Westminster for the next coronation.
>
> http://www.westminster-abbey.org/tour/coronation_chair/
>
>
> p. 224
> "SHADE:" etc
>
> The dramatic format of the next several pages parallels a number of
similar
> passages from Boswell's Life of Johnson, notably:
>
> BOSWELL. 'But you would not have me to bind myself by a solemn
obligation?'
> JOHNSON. (much agitated,) 'What! a vow--O, no, Sir, a vow is a horrible
> thing, it is a snare for sin. The man who cannot go to Heaven without a
> vow-- may go--' Here, standing erect, in the middle of his library, and
> rolling grand, his pause was truly a curious compound of the solemn and
the
> ludicrous; he half-whistled in his usual way, when pleasant, and he
paused,
> as if checked by religious awe. Methought he would have added--to
Hell--but
> was restrained. I humoured the dilemma. 'What! Sir, (said I,) In caelum
> jusseris ibit?' alluding to his imitation of it,--
>
> 'And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes.'
>
> (Boswell, Chapter XXIX)
>
> p. 225
> "L'homme est nИ bon"
>
> Man was born good.
>
> p. 225
> "SHADE: Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an
> even greater one."
>
> See Emerson's "Circles": "Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess
> to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow."
>
> http://www.emersoncentral.com/circles.htm
>
> Shade's speech reinforces the surprise / death connection, as with Dim
Gulf
> / Gulf of Surprise (p. 68, 138).
>
>
> p. 226
> "psychopompos"
>
> "A mythical conductor of souls to the place of the dead. Also, the
spiritual
> guide of a (living) person's soul" (OED)
>
> p. 227
> "St Augustine said"
>
> The quote is from Augustine's _De Trinitate_ (On the Trinity).
>
> http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1301.htm
> http://phil.flet.mita.keio.ac.jp/person/nakagawa/texts.html#august
>
>
> p. 228
> "I have no time for such stupidities"
>
> He doesn't have time because he will be dead soon. He's making amends for
> any of his perceived sins in anticipation of having just one to report
> (suicide) when he arrives in the afterlife.
>
>
> p. 228
> "Far be it from me to hint at the existence of some other woman in my
> friend's life."
>
> Kinbote then does exactly that.
>
>
> p. 229
> "A farcical pedant of whom the less said the better"
>
> In reference to Professor Pnin from VN's novel of the same name. Note
that
> _Pnin_ is shorter than _Pale Fire_.
>
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 09:29:23 -0500
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (2)
>
> p. 230
> "as Parmentier had his pet tuber undergo"
>
> French agriculturalist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737-1813) who
> introduced the potato to France.
>
> http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11506a.htm
>
>
> p. 231
> "see note to line 664"
>
> Whether this is a typo or if there's some deeper meaning, there is no note
> to line 664; the Goethe reference is in the note to line 662.
>
> p. 231
> "Tanagra Dust"
>
> Tanagra, a Boeotian town near Pindar's Thebes. Birthplace of the Greek
poet
> Korinna (~500 BCE), one of the nine earthly muses, who according to
> Pausanias defeated Pindar in a poetry competition.
>
> "Korinna wrote choral poetry for celebrations using a Boeotian dialect.
> Unlike Pindar, she focused on local myths, and drew parallels between the
> world of mythology and ordinary human behavior."
>
> http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/glossary/bl_korinna.htm
>
> Tanagra was also the site of a large battle in 457 BCE (First
Peloponnesian
> War) in which the Spartans defeated the Athenians (recorded by
Thucydides).
> The Peloponnesian Wars eventually ended in the domination of Sparta and
the
> destruction of Athens, so Gradus is more or less being equated with the
end
> of classical civilization.
>
> http://www.lbdb.com/TMDisplayBattle.cfm?BID=412&WID=55
>
> Tanagra is also a site where archeologists discovered terracotta figurines
> dating from 330-200 BCE (recalling the cracked krater near the headless
> statue of Mercury in the tunnel under the Onhava palace).
>
>
http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/bycountry/germany/berlin/museums/altesmuseum
> /ceramics/greece/tanagra/index.html
>
> And finally in mythology Tanagra was the daughter of Aeolus and Enarete,
> written of by Korinna, who married Poemander (another name worth
> investigation qua PF) who named his city after her. Later in life,
Tanagra
> was nicknamed Graea (shades of Gradus?).
>
> http://www.forumromanum.org/mythology/tanagra.html
>
> Graea may have formed some source material for Shakespeare's MacBeth: they
> were three withered old crones who shared one eye and one tooth between
> them, extorted by Perseus for information (he took their eye). The word
> Graea shares the root for "old man" and "old woman", so they may have
> personified old age.
>
> http://www.ndavidking.com/portfolio/graea.htm
> http://www.dl.ket.org/latin1/mythology/2creatures/graeae.htm
>
>
> p. 231
> "/shargar/"
>
> Has some similarity to garПr. There must be more in this word though...?
>
>
> p. 231
> "'Lenin/grad/ /us/ed to be Petrograd?' 'A pri/g/ /rad/ (obs. past tense
of
> read) /us/?'"
>
> Movement of time and change embodied again by Gradus as associated with
> Leningrad / Petrograd. "prig rad us" has a similarity to "prigorod," a
> Russian suburb, which is derived from "grad" for city from which the word
> "gorod" has evolved. In the suburbs of St. Petersburg (aka Petrograd,
> Leningrad) is the Vyra estate, once the summer home of the Nabokov family.
>
>
> p. 232
> "his eyesight was not too good"
>
> Again, Gradus as a bat.
>
> p. 232
> "Oh my sweet Boscobel!"
>
> Charles II of England's departure point into exile.
>
>
> p. 232
> "the maddening intimations, and the star that no party member can ever
> reach"
>
> Wordsworth's Intimations Ode again.
>
> Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
> The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
> Hath had elsewhere its setting,
> And cometh from afar.
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html
>
>
> p. 233
> "I am thinking of yet another Charles, another long dark man above two
yards
> high"
>
> Charles II of England.
>
>
> p. 234
> "Edsel Ford"
>
> The name of Henry Ford's son after whom the famously failed automobile is
> named. They were in production around the time Shade writes his poem and
> Kinbote his commentary.
>
> http://www.edsel.com/pages/edslford.htm
>
> p. 235
> "Now it is quieter" etc
>
> Kinbote is completely alone now as his work nears completion.
>
> p. 235
> "two tongues"
>
> Aside from Zemblan, English/American is the only non-Slavic language.
> "American and European" would be VN himself.
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: 03 Nov 2003 12:18:38 -0500
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (2)
>
> On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 09:29, Jasper Fidget wrote:
> >
> > p. 231
> > "see note to line 664"
> >
> > Whether this is a typo or if there's some deeper meaning, there is no
note
> > to line 664; the Goethe reference is in the note to line 662.
>
> K didn't necessarily do things in order.
> Maybe when he got around to annotating line 584 he decided it might be
> nice to direct our attention to line 664 ("Es ist der Vater mit seinem
> Kind" rendered by Shade into English) which he had already annotated in
> a note referred to as 662 and was too lazy to go back and relabel
> things.
>
> ------------------------------
>
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 7:27 PM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3636
>
> pynchon-l-digest Monday, November 3 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3636
>
>
> NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (1)
> NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (2)
>
> Re: NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (2)
>
> Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 09:29:15 -0500
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (1)
>
> p. 224
> "She had weaned her husband not only from the Episcopal Church of his
> fathers, but from all forms of sacramental worship"
>
> K blames Sybil for Shade's apostasy.
>
> p. 224
> "nebulation"
>
> From Webster's 1913:
>
> neb"u*la`ted (?), a. Clouded with indistinct color markings, as an animal.
>
> p. 224
> "Confession with us is auricular"
>
> auricular "Of confession: spoken into the ear, private. LME" (OED).
>
> p. 224
> "shaped almost exactly as the coronation chair of a Scottish king"
>
> Perhaps alluding to the "Stone of Scone" or Stone of Destiny, reputedly
> first referred to in Genesis 28:18 as Jacob's pillow, passed on to the
> Egyptians and then to the King of Spain. In 700 BCE it supposedly
traveled
> to Ireland with an invasion force led by Simon Brech, the Spanish King's
> son, and placed atop the sacred Hill of Tara where it was called the Stone
> of Desinty ("Lia-Fail" or the "fatal" stone). When an Irish king sat on
it
> during his coronation, it was said to groan aloud if the king was of the
> royal race but remain silent if he was a pretender. Something like a
> millennium later it was brought to Scotland by Fergus Mor MacEirc, the
> founder of the Scottish monarchy, and later installed in the monastery of
> Scone in Perthshire where it remained as the seat of the throne upon which
> the kings of Scotland were crowned. In 1296 King Edward I brought it to
> Westminster Abbey and installed it in a new Coronation Chair. For a long
> time thereafter it became a symbol of oppression for Scottish
nationalists,
> who eventually managed to steal it in 1950. It was recovered a few months
> later and stored in a vault until 1996 when John Major had it returned
> finally to Scotland. It can now be seen in Edinburgh Castle, but will
> travel back to Westminster for the next coronation.
>
> http://www.westminster-abbey.org/tour/coronation_chair/
>
>
> p. 224
> "SHADE:" etc
>
> The dramatic format of the next several pages parallels a number of
similar
> passages from Boswell's Life of Johnson, notably:
>
> BOSWELL. 'But you would not have me to bind myself by a solemn
obligation?'
> JOHNSON. (much agitated,) 'What! a vow--O, no, Sir, a vow is a horrible
> thing, it is a snare for sin. The man who cannot go to Heaven without a
> vow-- may go--' Here, standing erect, in the middle of his library, and
> rolling grand, his pause was truly a curious compound of the solemn and
the
> ludicrous; he half-whistled in his usual way, when pleasant, and he
paused,
> as if checked by religious awe. Methought he would have added--to
Hell--but
> was restrained. I humoured the dilemma. 'What! Sir, (said I,) In caelum
> jusseris ibit?' alluding to his imitation of it,--
>
> 'And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes.'
>
> (Boswell, Chapter XXIX)
>
> p. 225
> "L'homme est nИ bon"
>
> Man was born good.
>
> p. 225
> "SHADE: Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an
> even greater one."
>
> See Emerson's "Circles": "Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess
> to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow."
>
> http://www.emersoncentral.com/circles.htm
>
> Shade's speech reinforces the surprise / death connection, as with Dim
Gulf
> / Gulf of Surprise (p. 68, 138).
>
>
> p. 226
> "psychopompos"
>
> "A mythical conductor of souls to the place of the dead. Also, the
spiritual
> guide of a (living) person's soul" (OED)
>
> p. 227
> "St Augustine said"
>
> The quote is from Augustine's _De Trinitate_ (On the Trinity).
>
> http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1301.htm
> http://phil.flet.mita.keio.ac.jp/person/nakagawa/texts.html#august
>
>
> p. 228
> "I have no time for such stupidities"
>
> He doesn't have time because he will be dead soon. He's making amends for
> any of his perceived sins in anticipation of having just one to report
> (suicide) when he arrives in the afterlife.
>
>
> p. 228
> "Far be it from me to hint at the existence of some other woman in my
> friend's life."
>
> Kinbote then does exactly that.
>
>
> p. 229
> "A farcical pedant of whom the less said the better"
>
> In reference to Professor Pnin from VN's novel of the same name. Note
that
> _Pnin_ is shorter than _Pale Fire_.
>
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 09:29:23 -0500
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (2)
>
> p. 230
> "as Parmentier had his pet tuber undergo"
>
> French agriculturalist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (1737-1813) who
> introduced the potato to France.
>
> http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11506a.htm
>
>
> p. 231
> "see note to line 664"
>
> Whether this is a typo or if there's some deeper meaning, there is no note
> to line 664; the Goethe reference is in the note to line 662.
>
> p. 231
> "Tanagra Dust"
>
> Tanagra, a Boeotian town near Pindar's Thebes. Birthplace of the Greek
poet
> Korinna (~500 BCE), one of the nine earthly muses, who according to
> Pausanias defeated Pindar in a poetry competition.
>
> "Korinna wrote choral poetry for celebrations using a Boeotian dialect.
> Unlike Pindar, she focused on local myths, and drew parallels between the
> world of mythology and ordinary human behavior."
>
> http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/glossary/bl_korinna.htm
>
> Tanagra was also the site of a large battle in 457 BCE (First
Peloponnesian
> War) in which the Spartans defeated the Athenians (recorded by
Thucydides).
> The Peloponnesian Wars eventually ended in the domination of Sparta and
the
> destruction of Athens, so Gradus is more or less being equated with the
end
> of classical civilization.
>
> http://www.lbdb.com/TMDisplayBattle.cfm?BID=412&WID=55
>
> Tanagra is also a site where archeologists discovered terracotta figurines
> dating from 330-200 BCE (recalling the cracked krater near the headless
> statue of Mercury in the tunnel under the Onhava palace).
>
>
http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/bycountry/germany/berlin/museums/altesmuseum
> /ceramics/greece/tanagra/index.html
>
> And finally in mythology Tanagra was the daughter of Aeolus and Enarete,
> written of by Korinna, who married Poemander (another name worth
> investigation qua PF) who named his city after her. Later in life,
Tanagra
> was nicknamed Graea (shades of Gradus?).
>
> http://www.forumromanum.org/mythology/tanagra.html
>
> Graea may have formed some source material for Shakespeare's MacBeth: they
> were three withered old crones who shared one eye and one tooth between
> them, extorted by Perseus for information (he took their eye). The word
> Graea shares the root for "old man" and "old woman", so they may have
> personified old age.
>
> http://www.ndavidking.com/portfolio/graea.htm
> http://www.dl.ket.org/latin1/mythology/2creatures/graeae.htm
>
>
> p. 231
> "/shargar/"
>
> Has some similarity to garПr. There must be more in this word though...?
>
>
> p. 231
> "'Lenin/grad/ /us/ed to be Petrograd?' 'A pri/g/ /rad/ (obs. past tense
of
> read) /us/?'"
>
> Movement of time and change embodied again by Gradus as associated with
> Leningrad / Petrograd. "prig rad us" has a similarity to "prigorod," a
> Russian suburb, which is derived from "grad" for city from which the word
> "gorod" has evolved. In the suburbs of St. Petersburg (aka Petrograd,
> Leningrad) is the Vyra estate, once the summer home of the Nabokov family.
>
>
> p. 232
> "his eyesight was not too good"
>
> Again, Gradus as a bat.
>
> p. 232
> "Oh my sweet Boscobel!"
>
> Charles II of England's departure point into exile.
>
>
> p. 232
> "the maddening intimations, and the star that no party member can ever
> reach"
>
> Wordsworth's Intimations Ode again.
>
> Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
> The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
> Hath had elsewhere its setting,
> And cometh from afar.
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html
>
>
> p. 233
> "I am thinking of yet another Charles, another long dark man above two
yards
> high"
>
> Charles II of England.
>
>
> p. 234
> "Edsel Ford"
>
> The name of Henry Ford's son after whom the famously failed automobile is
> named. They were in production around the time Shade writes his poem and
> Kinbote his commentary.
>
> http://www.edsel.com/pages/edslford.htm
>
> p. 235
> "Now it is quieter" etc
>
> Kinbote is completely alone now as his work nears completion.
>
> p. 235
> "two tongues"
>
> Aside from Zemblan, English/American is the only non-Slavic language.
> "American and European" would be VN himself.
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: 03 Nov 2003 12:18:38 -0500
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF some notes pp 224-235 (2)
>
> On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 09:29, Jasper Fidget wrote:
> >
> > p. 231
> > "see note to line 664"
> >
> > Whether this is a typo or if there's some deeper meaning, there is no
note
> > to line 664; the Goethe reference is in the note to line 662.
>
> K didn't necessarily do things in order.
> Maybe when he got around to annotating line 584 he decided it might be
> nice to direct our attention to line 664 ("Es ist der Vater mit seinem
> Kind" rendered by Shade into English) which he had already annotated in
> a note referred to as 662 and was too lazy to go back and relabel
> things.
>
> ------------------------------
>