NPPF: CANTO ONE More Fowler/for Jbor

[cfalbert]

You argue that "consonant dissonance" (or some such thing) works against Nab.s purposes in the opening lines.......in the first couplet, there are TWO "conspicuous" consonants, the "x" in waxwing  and the "p" in windowpane........these two hardly a dissonant stew generate........in fact, as MalignD suggests, and I and Boyd insist  - these lines scan exquisitely....

Far from being "tone deaf" or anything like it, Nab shows a degree  of dexterity in the first verse as the "pace" of the first four lines is undeniably slower than that of the last four, which, consistent with the "lighter" sense seem almost "Seussian"......

You commented on Fowler.....here is the relevant excerpt - judge for yourself whether or not it complements your argument....

"It is interesting to know that although Nabokov cannot stand Eliot's poetry, he likes the John Crowe Ransom poem "Bell's for John Whiteside's Daughter". The reason may well lie not so  much with the obvious parallel dramatic situation - for the Eliot poem shares it - as with Ransom's success in smuggling into his poem full blown, potentially mawkish feelings, and yet making the poem work......Just as with Nabokov's vision of the swan, and his alliance of it with Mademoiselle only after he brings it under controll as a  "dodo-like creature", so Ranosm's immortal geese, retaining both a fairytale beauty and yet convincingly visualized as "lazy" and comical, contribute to the poem a means by which its emotional effect can be dilated without being sentimentally compromised....."

Fowler, Reading N. , pgs. 110-111.

The first verse is representative.....

"There was much speed in her little  body, 
And such lightness in her footfall, 
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all......"

This is, as Fowler points out, very similar to PF's potentially "hyperelegaic" opening being contrasted with, what I consider, a rather amusing debate about the properties of reflection....

I also believe, as MalignD has stated, that it would be out of "character" for Nab to "lead" with some obvious clue, even if satire was his intent..........If that is indeed at work here, I expect that the job of smoking it out is gonna require a little more effort...

love,
cfa
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