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NABOKOV-L [ Mythology] Ganymede, Hebe,Hercules,Argus
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Dear List,
A follow up of my former message about cup-bearers, catamites and Ganymede [ plus Ida (Mlle La Riviere)] in "Ada", takes us more explicitly to "Pale Fire".
Hebe was Ganymede's predecessor and there is a line in Shade's poem where he describes the works he'd already published and mentions "Hebe's Cup".
The mythological links go from Ganymede to Hebe and next, to Hercules. Also in "Transparent Things" we return Hercules and one of his wives, Dejanira ( the Dejanira theme has alreaby been brought up in the list).
There are references to the old dog Argus, who recognized Ulysses, also in Pale Fire, by the anagram D'Argus-Gradus.
This connection was made by Kinbote in the note that precedes the one (on line 957) quoted below, where Kinbote's reminiscences lead him to "Odysseys" ( ie, Homer's Ulysses...or any other poetic adventure about a hero's return).
Mammoth hunts, of course, takes us back to Lolita's "aurochs"...
PALE FIRE: Shade's HEBE's CUP
Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote
Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float
In that damp carnival, for now I term
960 Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm.
(But this transparent thingum does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.)
CK note to line 49 (not in 958): Many years ago Disa, our King's Queen, whose favorite trees were the jacaranda and the maidenhair, copied out in her album a quatrain from John Shade's collection of short poems Hebe's Cup, which I cannot refrain from quoting here (from a letter I received on April 6, 1959, from southern France):
CK Line 957: Night Rote
I remember one little poem from Night Rote (meaning "the nocturnal sound of the sea") that happened to be my first contact with the American poet Shade. A young lecturer on American Literature, a brilliant and charming boy from Boston, showed me that slim and lovely volume in Onhava, in my student days. The following lines opening this poem, which is entitled "Art," pleased me by their catchy lilt and jarred upon the religious sentiments instilled in me by our very "high" Zemblan church.:From mammoth hunts and Odysseys/And Oriental charms/ To the Italian goddesses/With Flemish babes in arms.
TRANSPARENT THINGS: Dejanira and Hercules
....have never been able to get rid of my mother's Canadian accent, though I hear it clearly when I whisper French words. Ouvre ta robe, Déjanire that I may mount sur mon bucher...
Data from the Internet:
Tennyson:
"There, too, flushed Ganymede his rosy thigh
Half buried in the eagle's down,
Sole as a flying star shot through the sky
Above the pillared town."
Shelley:
In his "Prometheus", Jupiter calls to his cup-bearer thus:
"Pour forth heaven's wine, Idaean Ganymede,
And let it fill the Daedal cups like fire."
Goethe also wrote poems about Ganymede and Prometheus.
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