Vladimir Nabokov

Arcadia/Arcady/Acadie

By MARYROSS, 18 September, 2019

Gerard De Vries, I want to thank you for your recent posts about Sybil and Huguenot Protestantism. It has helped me find another link to forge in my Jungian/alchemic theories of Pale Fire.

 

I wish to make clear that this is not a refutation of your statements, but as I said before, more a case of how much VN could pack into each allusion in PF. I think there may actually be some mutual support, particularly in that whereas Catholicism is more concerned with sin and guilt, Protestantism is generally characterized with a sense moral righteousness,  so that Sybil’s forthright, upstanding character would have that as a background (even if lapsed into a “religion of her own.”) It would certainly support her unsympathetic attitude towards Hazel. Also, it seems that you are also looking at the homosexual issues in PF? That would be supported in my Jungian theory of anima/animus issues in PF (see my “Vanessa atalanta: Butterfly of Doom”(The Nabokovian: Notes 75).

Anyway, I was checking myself on the latitudes of Appalachia, and as a side bar found out that the maritime provinces of Canada and Quebec were once called “Acadia,” or “Acadie,” Champlain’s spelling for “Arcadia.” The French territories extended from Acadie down through most of what is now Appalachia. After the French and Indian War, many of the Acadiens, dispersed into the lower territory of what later became the “Louisiana Purchase.” As a tie-in to the Romantic poets of Pale Fire, Longfellow’s poem Evangeline is subtitled A Tale of Acadie. So, clearly, Kinbote’s jocular use of “Arcady” for New Wye is more than a suggestion of the idyllic enchanted Arcadia, the Western land of Greek myth and the home of Atalanta. Perhaps Pale Fire is, indeed, a tale of Arcady.

The myth of Atalanta is the essential myth of alchemy. It is emblematic of the coniunctio, the “marriage of Art and Nature,” the joining of opposites to produce the philosopher’s stone of the redeemed artifex. (This is the theme I follow in my work-in-progress, “Archetype, Alchemy and Art: Jungian Motifs as Allegory in Nabokov’s Pale Fire.”) In the myth, Atalanta is the nymph princess of Arcadia, who, being of masculine spirit, refused to marry unless there was a man who could outrun her. Hippomenes agreed to the challenge. With the help of Venus who gave him golden apples to strew as he ran, causing Atalanta to tarry as she picked them up, he won the race. Atalanta thereupon fell in love and lust with him and the couple hastened to the Temple of Cybele to consummate their ardor. The mother-goddess, Cybele, furious at the desecration of her temple, changed the couple into red lions which she yoked to her chariot. The meaning of this for the alchemists was that “you can’t fool Mother Nature.” That is man can use his arts to affect Nature, but in the end, Mother Nature is still in control and must be obeyed.

Now, back to Sybil. She is associated with Atalanta through the butterfly Vanessa atalanta. Her name is a homophone for Cybele. Her home, like Cybele’s temple is in Arcadia/Acadie/Arcady/Quebec. Does Sybil, like Cybele, also furious at the desecration of the temple of her marriage, want to punish her husband and his co-ed paramour? (See also my previous posts about the Black Queen)