SS wrote
> Odevalla, a fine town north of Onhava in
> the worthy Zule
("chessrook") Bretwit, granduncle of Oswin Bretwit (q.v.,
> q.v., as the
crows say).
in what language "Zule" is the "chessrook"? Not in russian.
(Ferz in indeed the "chessqueen".)
Does Zule mean anything at all in
Russian? The comment “q.v., q.v.,
as the crows say” links the chessrook with crows.
There seems to be a veiled allusion to Shakespeare’s "Light thickens; and the
crow makes wing to the rooky
wood..." [Macbeth, Act III, Scene ii]. There also seems to be an
undercurrent of the phrase "as the crow flies" --- as well as the manner in
which it croaks, or caws. How is "q" pronounced in Zemblan, one
wonders.
MR wrote:
MR: This poet's ear
definitely favors the iamb as the central foot in that
line. [Note to l. 231] Otherwise, one has to read "poor" as unstressed in the
first and
third foot but stressed in the fourth foot--a highly unnatural
combination
that is very difficult to read. If, however, the middle foot is
"poor
Shade," the line is perfectly balanced, including a nice chime
between "Poor old" and "poor Baud-". Moreover, it continues the completely
iambic cadence of the stanza, with lovely caesurae at the end to resolve
the chord.
If the missing name is Shade, the first stress comes on “Poor”; if the missing name is Kinbote, the first stress comes on “old”. This is not necessarily so very difficult to read (or, at least, I don’t find it so), particularly as in the two preceding lines of the “rejected variant” the first stress comes on the second syllables: “pets” and “minds”. Kinbote’s note goes on to mention “senile imbecility”, so the sense-emphasis could well be on “old”. The sense of the preceding line: “And minds that died before arriving there” emphasizes age and senile imbecility, so a stress on “old” might follow reasonably naturally.
JM wrote:
Does
anyone remember who said: "images are eminently fascist"?
Google
suggests to me that this idea can perhaps be found in Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay "The
Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction".
On
the subject of Buñuel and VN, I confess that I cannot see Nabokov as
a "surrealist", neither any of his written works seems to
fit.
Reflecting
on this I’ve been thinking that all art in the C20th, post Dada and post WWI, is
somewhat surrealist and absurd. When historical events make no sense, in the
spirit of C19th confidence in the direction mankind was going, the thoughts of
writers and other artists appear to fall back on the subconscious, and
connections are made between events and images that dispute linear logic or
"progress". VN seems to me to have been quite strongly influenced by cinematic
imagery in much that he wrote. The passage I mentioned earlier, Gordon’s
appearance in sudden successive changes of bathing attire, would seem to
translate especially well to film. Another surrealistic example that comes to
mind is his short story A Visit to a Museum --- if I’ve remembered the title
correctly.
Does Duchamp’s 1917 fountain also resemble a mountain?
Charles