NPPF Canto 1: 1-4

[charles albert]

According to Fowler, there is possibly something else at play
here..........F suggests that Nab, upon confronting Eliot and his fellow
symbolists, reacted negatively to the genre.....F suggests that part of the
purpose of PF is to respond to such excesses.....Fowler cites Eliot's
"Marina" and contrast it with what he believes to be a Nabokov model, John
Crowe Ransom's "Bells forJohn Whitesides Daughter"...

it is an interesting argument........

love,
cfa
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "charles albert" <calbert at hslboxmaster.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 9:22 AM
Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1: 1-4


> Jbor:
>
> > Shade characterises himself as the "shadow" of the bird which was killed
> by
> > (because of/due to) the reflection of sky in the window.
>
> It is the likeliest, but not the only possibility........
>
> "All the definite
> > articles make it sound like something which had actually happened,"
>
> So?
>
> " a scene
> > Shade had witnessed from inside his bedroom."
>
> I'm not sure the "optics" would allow Shade to see the shadow of the
waxwing
> from INSIDE the window.....and others have suggested that Shade has
actually
> picked up the bird, a neat trick from inside the house.....
>
> " But it's the "I was ... I was
> > ... I lived ... " -- the unashamed yet hopelessly banal self-involvement
> of
> > it all -- which butchers what could otherwise have been quite a stunning
> > setpiece."
>
> but the "I"s don't consistently point to the same "entity" and more
> importantly, have you eyeballed many elegies lately? 1st person, singular
> and plural dominates the action. Elegies, are, after all, the
reminiscences
> of someone.....
>
> For one of many Wordsworthian examples see
>
> ODE: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
>
> or Goldsmith's
> The Deserted Village
>
> these stand in contrast, again, to the much less personal concerns of
Pope.
> I didn't want to go here yet, but......
>
> "In his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth attacks the poetic
> diction and elaborate figures of speech characteristic of 18th century
> poetry, asserting that he had 'taken as much pains to avoid it as others
> take to produce it' and advoating the 'language really used by men'. He
> rejected the notion of a poetic hierarchy ranking epic and tragedy over
the
> SUBJECTIVE mode of lyric; declared 'INCIDENTS AND SITUATIONS FROM COMMON
> LIFE' as fit subjects for art; and SUBSTITUTED SINCERITY FOR STUDIED
> ARTIFICE.......Wordsworth ascribed to art the duty of cultivating
emotional
> and moral response in an increasingly desensitized age, one more
interested
> in titillation than meditation."
>
> From Norton Anthology of Poetry, Biographical Sketches, pg. 1179..
>
> and that's long before we get to the great sollipcist, Keats - yeeeaaach!
>
> >
> > As the bird hits the window it leaves a "smudge of ashen fluff" (the
first
> > of many jarring prosodies and a hopelessly overwrought image to boot) --
>
> Smudge works because its a WAXwing, and as I pointed out, ashen plays to
> both Gray and shade........
>
> > Shade announces himself as this too. Then he also envisions himself, as
> the
> > imaginary shadow of the now-dead bird, flying on into the reflection of
> the
> > sky. Ugh.
>
> Eh.........I see it more as illustrating the possibility of "breaking
> through" (a concept central to the work, and one which will play into
> another of my "theories" - due later in the week....appleshiners should go
> to the description of Shade's seizure and ponder)
>
> >
> > It's the epitome of bombast, and it sets the stage for the many crimes
> > against craft and subtlety which lay ahead.
>
> I'm not sure the above indictements merit such a judgement.....
>
> respectfully...
>
> love,
> cfa
>
>
>
> > best
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>