Dear Don and List,
Several authors saw an analogy bt. Lolita ( a
new land, America ) and Humbert Humbert ( the old continent) and
John Updike wrote " His most gracious compliment
to the United States was to merge it, in Ada, with the Russia of his memory to
make one paradisal Antiterra"
( I´m certain that B.Boyd would
consider this "paradisal Antiterra" with a grain of salt and
fluff?)
I just came across a quotation of a long poem of
John Donne ( set into music and translated by one of our leading musicians,
Caetano Veloso, with a happy result ) that made me think about
America and Ada in a different way from Updike´s.
Here it is:
License my roaving hands, and let them
go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my
america! my new-found-lande,
My kingdome, safliest when with one man
man´d.
My Myne of precious stones, My
Emperie,
How blest and I in this discovering
thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be
free;
.....................
To taste whole joves ...like books gay covering
made
For lay-men, are all women thus
array´d;
Themselves are mystick books, which only
wee
( Whom their imputed grace will
dignifie)
Must see reveal´d. Then since that I may
know...
( John Donne - " Going to Bed" )
Ada, "a mystick book" ... "America,
new-found-lande... "
Just a curiosity, perhaps it might interest someone
else...