Subject
[NABOKV] {THOUGHTS] Coleridge's paradisical flower,
Shade's impress and a bitter lemon.
Shade's impress and a bitter lemon.
From
Date
Body
"If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake - Aye! and what then?" ( "Anima Poetæ : From the Unpublished Note-books of Samuel Taylor Coleridge" (1895) edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, p. 282)
Jorge Luiz Borges referred to Coleridge's paradisical flower in "Otras Inquisiciones" (1952), in an article that deserves attention from Nabokovian readers for various reasons, soon to be presented in another posting. Today I simply want to link Coleridge's note about dream and "reality", to two possible allusions to it by VN. The first one, in "Pale Fire," presents a possibly wide-awake Shade with a brown shoe lying in the lawn. The second, contrary to any arcadian dream, adds another twist between oneirical states and the dark lemon that was found in the grass.* I haven't checked if this connection has been mentioned before in the VN-L.
................................................................................................................................................................
* Pale Fire: lines 878 a 886
"And caught up with myself - upon the lawn
Where clover leaves cupped the topaz of dawn,
And where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe.
And then I realized that this half too
Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke
Safe in my bed as day its eggshell broke,
And robins walked and stopped, and on the damp
Gemmed turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp,
The Shade impress, the mystery inborn.
Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn."
Nabokov's Short-Story "La Veneziana": (excerpts)
"And Simpson...effortlessly entered the painting...He was standing in a bare black room of some kind, by a window that opened on evening, and at his very side stood a real, Venetian, Maureen-tall, gorgeous, all aglow from within. He realized that the miracle had happened, and slowly moved toward her. With a sidewise smile la Veneziana gently adjusted her fur and, lowering her hand into her basket, handed him a small lemon..."
"Simpson looked about the room in which he was standing, but with- out any awareness of a floor beneath his feet. In the distance, instead of a fourth wall, a far, familiar hall glimmered like water...It was then that a sudden terror made him compress the cold little lemon."
"McGore...looked where his hand was pointing and saw something truly incredible. On the Luciani canvas, next to the Venetian girl, an additional figure had appeared. It was an excellent, if hastily executed, portrait of Simpson... [ ] ...he scraped and rubbed Simpson's dark figure and white face from the varnish...In half an hour Simpson's portrait was completely gone, and the slightly damp paints of which he had consisted remained on McGore's rags.[ ]He looked at the rags with the paint sticking to them, and abruptly...wadded them together and tossed them out the window by which he had been working...-and...went out of the hall straight into the garden./There, beneath the window, between the wall and the rhododendrons, the gardener stood scratching the top of his head over a man in black lying facedown on the lawn[ ] Simpson gave another laugh./"I'm awfully sorry.... It's so silly.... I went out for a stroll last night and fell right asleep, here on the grass...I had a monstrous dream...[ ] the gardener ...looked at the matted lawn. Then he bent down and picked up a small dark lemon bearing the imprint of five fingers. He stuck the lemon in his pocket ..."
.
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Jorge Luiz Borges referred to Coleridge's paradisical flower in "Otras Inquisiciones" (1952), in an article that deserves attention from Nabokovian readers for various reasons, soon to be presented in another posting. Today I simply want to link Coleridge's note about dream and "reality", to two possible allusions to it by VN. The first one, in "Pale Fire," presents a possibly wide-awake Shade with a brown shoe lying in the lawn. The second, contrary to any arcadian dream, adds another twist between oneirical states and the dark lemon that was found in the grass.* I haven't checked if this connection has been mentioned before in the VN-L.
................................................................................................................................................................
* Pale Fire: lines 878 a 886
"And caught up with myself - upon the lawn
Where clover leaves cupped the topaz of dawn,
And where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe.
And then I realized that this half too
Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke
Safe in my bed as day its eggshell broke,
And robins walked and stopped, and on the damp
Gemmed turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp,
The Shade impress, the mystery inborn.
Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn."
Nabokov's Short-Story "La Veneziana": (excerpts)
"And Simpson...effortlessly entered the painting...He was standing in a bare black room of some kind, by a window that opened on evening, and at his very side stood a real, Venetian, Maureen-tall, gorgeous, all aglow from within. He realized that the miracle had happened, and slowly moved toward her. With a sidewise smile la Veneziana gently adjusted her fur and, lowering her hand into her basket, handed him a small lemon..."
"Simpson looked about the room in which he was standing, but with- out any awareness of a floor beneath his feet. In the distance, instead of a fourth wall, a far, familiar hall glimmered like water...It was then that a sudden terror made him compress the cold little lemon."
"McGore...looked where his hand was pointing and saw something truly incredible. On the Luciani canvas, next to the Venetian girl, an additional figure had appeared. It was an excellent, if hastily executed, portrait of Simpson... [ ] ...he scraped and rubbed Simpson's dark figure and white face from the varnish...In half an hour Simpson's portrait was completely gone, and the slightly damp paints of which he had consisted remained on McGore's rags.[ ]He looked at the rags with the paint sticking to them, and abruptly...wadded them together and tossed them out the window by which he had been working...-and...went out of the hall straight into the garden./There, beneath the window, between the wall and the rhododendrons, the gardener stood scratching the top of his head over a man in black lying facedown on the lawn[ ] Simpson gave another laugh./"I'm awfully sorry.... It's so silly.... I went out for a stroll last night and fell right asleep, here on the grass...I had a monstrous dream...[ ] the gardener ...looked at the matted lawn. Then he bent down and picked up a small dark lemon bearing the imprint of five fingers. He stuck the lemon in his pocket ..."
.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/