NPPF - Canto Two Synopsis

[Michael Joseph]

On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, David Morris wrote:

>
> There is something strange about Shade's decision to be a founding member of
> IPH (Canto Three) after he's reach this crucial conclusion below in Canto Two.
> IPH is all about the silly speculations about the hereafter which he
> acknowledges are so venerable to ridicule.  His description of IPH is also
> ridiculing.  So why did he take on this task of organizing IPH after reaching
> the insight below?
>
Perhaps he does it with a degree of ironic detachment, and perhaps mostly
because he's compelled by the sense of poignancy that transcends the
illogic of it.  Shade's dazed from grief, he needs to escape the terror of
his loss, and, like any poet worth his salt, he realizes that reason is
the Big lie, so the unreason of his act doesn't matter. Nabokov adored
this kind of temporary leave-taking of one's sanity in the face of loss.
It's useful to contextualize Shade, imho, in terms of Lear's discovery of
the dead Cordelia, and to think of the lamentable comfort which he bestows
upon Cordelia (V.iii)

So we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales and laugh
As gilded butterflies

Nabokov quotes it twice in his Quixote lectures.

Michael



> --- From the Synopsis:
> > He then reasons about death and resurrection to reach logical absurdities.
> And he reaches a wonderful conclusion via a big “if”:  The hereafter, if it
> exists, is most likely beyond our imaginations ability to perceive.  Therefore
> he decides not to join in the “vulgar laughter” (note the use of that word
> again) and lists a few hereafters that those vulgarians laugh at, and concludes
> that these possibilities seem silly only because “we do not make it seem
> sufficiently unlikely,” a thought related to his conclusion that imagining the
> hereafter is likely beyond our ability.
>
> BTW,  Canto Three is presently without a host.  Would someone care to take on
> that task?
>
> David Morris
>
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