Subject
Re: SPEAK, MEMORY question (fwd)
Date
Body
From: David R. Slavitt <slavitt@MSCF.MED.UPENN.EDU>
The Epistulae Ex Ponto are Ovid's heartbreaking poems of exile. The joke,
of course, is the combination of words to make Windex, which is what you
clean windows with.
Cheese Louise!
David Slavitt, translator of Ovid's Poetry Of Exile
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 11:56:00 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Brian D. Walter <bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu>
>
>Can anyone offer a specific explanation of the verse at the end of
>Nabokov's foreword to the revised SPEAK, MEMORY?
>
> Through the window of that index
> Climbs a rose
> And sometimes a gentle wind _ex
> Ponto_ blows.
>
>Various echoes and motifs come to mind, but it's hard to see how they
>might gloss the lines. Stained glass windows figure prominently in SPEAK,
>MEMORY while windows in general are foregrounded repeatedly in Nabokov's
>work, sometimes as an apparent conduit to the 'Otherworld' of the tricky
>author (e. g. in BEND SINISTER and PALE FIRE). Rose imagery is especially
>prevalent in LOLITA and PALE FIRE, the latter of which features a
>memorable reference to the ascendant flower in the midst of Charles and
>Disa's meeting in Nice: "Up in the trellis a telephone climbed with the
>roses" (p. 212 in the Vintage edition). EX PONTO is a collection of poems
>by Ovid, another famously exiled poet, and is mentioned in the commentary
>to EUGENE ONEGIN. Also, the picture of Nabokov in the punt on the Cam
>(subject of one of the most beautiful passages in SPEAK, MEMORY, pp.
>270-1) is given extra prominence on the cover of the paperback Vintage
>edition.
>
>Any theories?
>
>Brian Walter
>6800 Vernon
>St. Louis, MO 63130-2524
>(314) 863-4041
>bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu
**********************************
David R. Slavitt
TEL:(215) 382-3994
The Epistulae Ex Ponto are Ovid's heartbreaking poems of exile. The joke,
of course, is the combination of words to make Windex, which is what you
clean windows with.
Cheese Louise!
David Slavitt, translator of Ovid's Poetry Of Exile
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 11:56:00 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Brian D. Walter <bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu>
>
>Can anyone offer a specific explanation of the verse at the end of
>Nabokov's foreword to the revised SPEAK, MEMORY?
>
> Through the window of that index
> Climbs a rose
> And sometimes a gentle wind _ex
> Ponto_ blows.
>
>Various echoes and motifs come to mind, but it's hard to see how they
>might gloss the lines. Stained glass windows figure prominently in SPEAK,
>MEMORY while windows in general are foregrounded repeatedly in Nabokov's
>work, sometimes as an apparent conduit to the 'Otherworld' of the tricky
>author (e. g. in BEND SINISTER and PALE FIRE). Rose imagery is especially
>prevalent in LOLITA and PALE FIRE, the latter of which features a
>memorable reference to the ascendant flower in the midst of Charles and
>Disa's meeting in Nice: "Up in the trellis a telephone climbed with the
>roses" (p. 212 in the Vintage edition). EX PONTO is a collection of poems
>by Ovid, another famously exiled poet, and is mentioned in the commentary
>to EUGENE ONEGIN. Also, the picture of Nabokov in the punt on the Cam
>(subject of one of the most beautiful passages in SPEAK, MEMORY, pp.
>270-1) is given extra prominence on the cover of the paperback Vintage
>edition.
>
>Any theories?
>
>Brian Walter
>6800 Vernon
>St. Louis, MO 63130-2524
>(314) 863-4041
>bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu
**********************************
David R. Slavitt
TEL:(215) 382-3994