Tuesday, October 13

The Password is Pity

BLOG ASSIGNMENTS:

• Read all of the 2 page papers online, chose the best and comment on it
• Chose the top 6 things that you hate about Kinbote and blog about it

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PALE FIRE: DAY 1

Gen: generosity

Richard Powers' novel Generosity: An Enhancement a novel about someone who is too happy

Happy Go Lucky

Pity: pg 225 PF

"Do you deny that there are sins?" "I can name only two: murder, and the deliberate infliction of pain." "Then a man spending his life in absolute solitude could not be a sinner?" "He could torture animals. He could poison the springs on his island. He could denounce an innocent man in a posthumous manifesto." "And so the password is--?" "Pity." "But who instilled it in us, John? Who is the Judge of life, and the Designer of death?" "Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one."

"Generosity, pity and passion are the norm"

There are infinite ways to interpret a text, and none of them are original!

"Do you really think these ideas pop out of your head like Athena popped out of Zeus'?" ~Dr S

At it's most elementary level this book is "about a poem and a guy that really likes the poem"

4 parts of the novel:

1. Forward by Kinbote
2. Poem by Shade
3. Commentary by Kinbote
4. Index by Kinbote

This is a story about literary critics, "critics are parasites on the work of literature because they wouldn't exist w/o the novel/ work in the first place"
Alfred Appel quoted PF numerous times in his Lolita intro

V. Nabokov's posthumous new book: The Original of Laura

Intro of Lolita vs Intro of PF:

"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By the false azure in the windowpane;/ I was the smudge of ashen fluff- and I/ Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky./ And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate/ Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:/ Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass/ Hang all the furniture above the grass,/ And how delightful when a fall of snow/ Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so/ As to make chair and bed exactly stand/ Upon that snow, out in the crystal land!"

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-Lee-Ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

Which wins?

waxwing:

Did you know Rocky Votolato is in a band named Waxwing?

Zembla: A distant northern land

Novaya Zemlya: The new land

Off on a 'tangent' math, what?

Bandit Animals: "mask is the key word"

Raccoon

African Antelope

Australian Masked Owl

owl

panda

lemursmonkey

Zembla and waxwing: Stalkers/ lovers of Nabokov

glass and "reality": is a window

Nabokov's major theme: 'living beyond the prison walls of life'

HH: an ape who draws the bars of his own cage

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: the governess tells the story, but she is crazy!

Parker's Discovery about Kinbote

"All of your English teachers are crazy, crazy narcissists!" ~Dr S

Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock

Pale Fire:

• about a poem about a man who loses his daughter to suicide
• or the escape of Charles II from Zembla (a fictional land)

Neverwas

Robert Frost: 'Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening'

"you can only tell your own story, you cannot tell anyone elses"

It is always important when Nabokov points out that it is unimportant!!

Keat's 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer'