NPPF: Canto Three: Some Notes (1)

[Jasper Fidget]

ln 531-532: "the trail of silver slime / Snails leave or flagstones": a
misprint?  Is this different in other editions?

ln 596: see 231 for K's variant including "Tanagra dusk"

ln 601-: "We'll think of matters only known to us-" etc: has a resonance of
Marvell's "To his Coy Mistress".  Marvell is mentioned on line 678.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm

Maybe also Eliot's "A Game of Chess" from the Waste Land (see below): "'What
shall we ever do?'"

ln 609-614: see 234 for K's variant

ln 627-630: K chooses these lines in particular to be replaced by the
Tanagra dusk variant (p. 231)

ln 627: "Starover Blue": see ln 189: "College astronomer Starover Blue"

ln 629: see 237 for variant

ln 651: "In the dark garden by the shagbark tree." see ln 990

ln 656-661: "I hate that wind! Let's play some chess.' 'All right.'" etc: a
parody of Eliot's "A Game of Chess", part II of "The Waste Land":

"What is that noise?"
       The wind under the door.
"What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?"
       Nothing again nothing.
            "Do
"You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
"Nothing?" 

      I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?"
            But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag--
It's so elegant
So intelligent
"What shall I do now? What shall I do?"
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
"With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
"What shall we ever do?"
     The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door. 

http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Eliot/Waste_2.htm

The wind is howling while the characters talk -- mirror images and love
eroded.  These characters are NOT Shade and Sybil!

ln 662-664: "Who rides so late in the night and the wind?" etc.  "Pale Fire"
is interpolated here with Goethe's "Der Erlkönig" (1782).  Especially given
the previous several verses, one is compelled to put quotes around the
quoted lines and continue the Waste Land-ish conversation, or perhaps start
a new one between Shade and Goethe (or with Goethe's poem anyway):

G: "Who rides so late in the night and the wind?" (ln 1)
S: It is the writer's grief.  It is the wild March wind.
G: "It is the father with his child." (ln 2)

The boy in Goethe's poem is transposed into a girl (Male->Lass in word golf,
as with K's gender switching in the Timon quote (pg 80) and elsewhere).

That Goethe is quoted so earnestly while Eliot is parodied, I think says
something about Shade's opinion about both of these authors.

http://www.fln.vcu.edu/goethe/erl_dict.html (this is really cool btw:
translations on the fly)

ln 671-672: "_The Untamed Seahorse_": see Browning's "My Last Duchess":
"Notice Neptune, though, / Taming a sea-horse"

http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem288.html

Jasper