NPPF Canto 1 Incest Motif

[Michael Joseph]

Keith, thanks for your good work. I thought about your argument, and
I guess I have doubts. Here are a couple of quick responses. Please feel
free to respond, if you'd like.

Michael


> (34) indoor scene
> (40) indoor scene

Keith, are you saying that VN has Shade repeating the generalized refeence
because he wants to repress the memory or the trauma of incest here?

> (46) fold or furrow to displace/the fragile vista

Interesting. You have helped me see the vaginal imagery here as signifying
a fall from grace, but I don't quite agree with your sense that it is
specifically Aunt Maud's genitalia. It
seems more plausible in terms of the overall ontological concerns of
the poem that Shade is expressing an inability to intellectually grasp why
the grace he enjoyed as a child is gone. The invisible fold or furrow
additionally signifies the imminence of what is missing, fecundity, the
mystery of life.


> (55) White butterflies turn lavender as they/Pass through its shade

A lovely image reflecting on the refractive nature of reflecting and
introducing the somber image of the phantom swing.

> (62) The stiff vane so often visited/By the naive
> (63) mockingbird/Retelling all the programs she had heard;
> (66) come here,/Come here, come herrr'; flirting her tail aloft

Let me place my response in context here. The lines are part of a stanza
that follows the first foreshadowing of the hazel story (foreshadowing in
shade/swing/tree/color), and precedes the poem's rebeginning on line 71,
which reflects upon the poet's death of his parents (a death that deepens
the poem: Shade is reflecting upon his own life, swinging as it were
between the death of parents and the death of a child - or the
unattainable past and unattainable future. The stanza begins with a sense
of brokenness ("One wing/"), wearily with weak verbs ("We've had revamped.
There's a solarium. There's/A picture window.")  Perhaps even meaning to
reflect Yeats again (Lapis Lazuli - 'there goes Hamlet, there King Lear."
(I'm quoting from memory and may have this a bit wrong, but I'm sure about
the reference I think (grin), since it's thematically appropraite - Yeats
is reflecting upon loss, regrowth and, in essence, keeping one's shit
together. Hence, there's a sence of stoicism and a concession to feminine
fancy "A picture window flanked with fancy chairs." (60)

Then, lines 61-70 involve the mockingbird, which I think is not intended
to be Maud, but the poet mocking himself. The mockingbird telling is
programs rehearses the silly, trivial, affairs of the culture that it
picks up from the airwaves, in its own "naive, gauzy" way. "Chippo-chippo"
(cheap-oh?), "To-wee, to-wee," and the seductive "come here,/Come here,
come herr" parody the superficiality and silliness of quotidian life, a
parody that then becomes the TV: just as the waxwing returns as the inane
mockingbird, the windowpane into which the reflecting poet is gazing
returns as the imbecilically twittering TV - although, the comic relief is
undercut by the bird's "come herr," which rather seems another
foreshadowing of Hazel and a sign of the poet's anguish.


> (69) Upward hop-flop (seizure imagery at line *69*)

Another reference to Shade.

> (86) I was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud,

Maud is yet another parodic image of the poet. Shade's poem clearly
envisions an unfathomable, even mystical, commonality in our shared
humanity. Maud/Shade are sonic echoes of each other. Her room, her
paperweight, are all Shadean emanations. This doesn't necessarily rule out
your incest theory, of course, but it (the congruence of Shade and Maud)
makes it more difficult to accept. It forces us to decide whether Shade is
so remote from himself that he can contemplate his youthful violation at
the hands of his batty aunt while he also slyly pokes fun at his serious
poetic ambitions. Or, alternately, we would have to consider whether VN is
undermining Shade's poetic theme by intimating that it may merely be the
result of being sexually molested - which has the effect of authorially
molesting Shade yet again - or, by insinuating that Shade's theme is
actually less vivid and less complex than the repressed trauma, which
seems a kind of untenable self abuse, since I think Shade's theme is VN's.

Also, Maud seems more of an aside. The stanza before it ends with "and
God," and the stanza following with "My God . . .." Could this digression
really possess all that much narrative importance? (grin)


> (87) A poet and a painter with a taste
> (103) And how my childish palate loved the taste

Coincidence.

> (101)  but was I free?

Free will, etc.

> (106) The painted parchment papering our cage:(waxwing caged)

Right, but the world as cage, all that one can see (and Shade's eyesight
is prodigious) constitutes a boundary. Would Shade reflect with equanimity
upon being a sexual chattel in lines 86-99 and then, in line 101 feel the
weight of psychological terror?

> (112) Reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm (seizure image:
> aura/brainstorm)

Yes, I like this connection, but disconnect it from your interpretation.

> (113) Which in a distant valley has been staged (feigned remote vagina)
> (114) For we are most artistically caged (captive by artist, Maud)

But Maud is essentially Shade, a creator imprisoned by his/her own sight,
imagination, creations. (Later, ironically, caged within Kinbote's
mad artistry.)

> (147) That blackness was sublime.

Yep, transcendence over color.

> (149) one hand/Under the pebbles of a panting strand

"pebbles" ?

> (153) There were dull throbs in my Triassic
> (155) An icy shiver down my Age of Stone

Yes, sexual language, but I think in the same spirit as e.g. Donne's
"batter my heart three=personed God." An eruption of the sacred, the
mysterium tremendum, utter self-annihilation. I guess I am clinging to an
"entry level" interpretation of this stanza. It seems to resonate with
descriptions of the sacred, as in Rudolf Otto for example:

"Numinous consciousness"

Otto refers to this crucial encounter with grace as a revelation of
"numinous consciousness," i.e., direct experience of the numinosum, of the
mysterium. And this experience forever alters us: we are no longer the
same after such a revelation / revaluation (mysterium tremendum (=
revelation [yang]) / mysterium fascinans (= revaluation [yin]). In short,
we have in the moment of this experience transcended ordinary
consciousness, as the self has been graced, destined to touch for a moment
the fabric of the higher Self -- what we may call the eternal, or god
within.

http://www.dominantstar.com/numinous_consc.htm (or google "Otto sacred")

I think VN's concern with time and transcendence make this reading
attractive.

> (157) During one winter every afternoon (cf., winter's code)
> (161) But like some lad forced by a wench
> (162) With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,
> (163) I was corrupted, terrified allured,
> (166) The wonder lingers and the shame remains.
>
Yeah, okay; what about that, indeed!!


> Incest is the menace hidden, yet reflected, in the innocent imagery of a
> seizure.
>
I found your insights stimulating. I loved them. I just didn't agree.



Michael