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EDNote: a few of Sergei Soloviev's posts over the last couple days fell
afoul of my filtering scheme. Here are two; one is still missing.
Thanks for your patience as I work this out. ~SB
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To me, the criticism we discuss here sounds more sloppy than
the lines of PF it tries to criticize - and naive, and provocative.
It doesn't take into account the function of PF as a part of
the novel, it slips to the slippery ground of general comparisons
(VN versus Frost).
To elaborate on "false azure" - the line speaks about a bird
(waxwing) killed by "false azure" - does a bird have the
notion of the "sky"? To us "azure ~ blue" may have sky only
as a secondary connotation, but not to the waxwing, to whom
the sky is probably indeed "the" "Blue". To butterflies even
the light of a lamp may be "the" Space? Sun? Now in the novel
we have also some metaphoric parallelism between Shade himself
and this poor waxwing. Shade inside the novel is in a way this waxwing.
All these complexities/links make impossible
to judge the PF (poem) as poetry in itself, because even
sloppyness in the context of the novel is something else,
weaknesses may be strengths. This assessment is not symmetric.
Poetic weaknesses in PF may be not weaknesses, but poetically strong
places ARE strong.
I consider the criticism we discuss as naive, not fair. Naive
and too self-assured criticism easily becames denigration.
Regards to all -
Sergei
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Frost was indeed a great poet, but he permitted himself a lot
of freedom with the color "blue" and the "sky", more maybe than Shade
and VN:
Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)--
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.
Best to all -
Sergei