The first post on Look at the Harlequins! is from Emily, click here to read her blog post. And so it begins. .....
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Want to continue reading (re-reading) Nabokov?..........
Anyone want to join in reading Look at the Harlequins! by V. Nabokov?
Look At the Harlequins! is a fictional autobiography narrated by Vadim Vadimovich N., a Russian-American writer with uncanny biographical likenesses to the novel's author, Vladimir Nabokov.
Just a thought, sounds interesting. I'll pick it up to start reading this weekend perhaps??
Look At the Harlequins! is a fictional autobiography narrated by Vadim Vadimovich N., a Russian-American writer with uncanny biographical likenesses to the novel's author, Vladimir Nabokov.
Just a thought, sounds interesting. I'll pick it up to start reading this weekend perhaps??
Exam Day, our last official meeting, but the conversation will sustain.....
December 15, 2009 marked the last official meeting of the Major Author Class LIT 431 at Montana State University led by our Psychopompos/Professor Dr. Michael Sexson featuring Vladimir Nabokov and his works: Speak Memory, Lolita, Pale Fire, and Transparent Things.
We offered a sacrifice and ended the class with a ritual bibliocide, taking out the perforated cards in The Original of Laura, Nabokov's final book, unfinished. The book was passed around the class several times and each student removed a card and brought it to the front of the room. Riley led this activity because he is now an expert on The Original of Laura and he had already removed the cards from his book to learn more for his Term Paper (click on the link to read it and see his blog).
I will be monitoring the blogs of the class in the days, weeks, months, years to come and report any activity. Check in for updates. We will continue to run into VN outside of class and we can share it all here. Thanks for a great class that extends beyond the walls of Willson.
We offered a sacrifice and ended the class with a ritual bibliocide, taking out the perforated cards in The Original of Laura, Nabokov's final book, unfinished. The book was passed around the class several times and each student removed a card and brought it to the front of the room. Riley led this activity because he is now an expert on The Original of Laura and he had already removed the cards from his book to learn more for his Term Paper (click on the link to read it and see his blog).
I will be monitoring the blogs of the class in the days, weeks, months, years to come and report any activity. Check in for updates. We will continue to run into VN outside of class and we can share it all here. Thanks for a great class that extends beyond the walls of Willson.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Final Paper
Hermetic Trickery of Vladimir Nabokov
As the author, the teacher, the storyteller, the enchanter, the trickster Nabokov leads the reader into a labyrinth where there are more dead ends than open passages. If we only focus on the little games he plays that are enjoyable, causing us to not only read his novels, but participate and experience them, we miss out on his way of playing a trickster that expresses the quintessential qualities to understanding Nabokov as an author and more. Lewis Hyde discusses the character of the trickster in his book Trickster Makes This World, but he gives one mere desultory and seemingly tangential sentence acknowledging Nabokov as such a character saying, “Or there is Vladimir Nabokov; if you think his deft magic is serious, you’re wrong, and if you think it’s just a game, you’re wrong” (Hyde 209). By looking at a legendary trickster known as Hermes from Greek mythology who strongly resembles what Nabokov accomplishes through his writing, and it becomes clear that tricksters are not just creatures of myth, but working figures of our current culture.
Hermes is commonly known as “Hermes the Thief” however, his thievery is not a product of greed but results from a need “to disturb the established categories of truth and property and, by so doing, open the road to possible new worlds” (Hyde 13). The Homeric Hymn to Hermes is where we learn of baby Hermes stealing Apollo’s cattle, walking backwards to try and mislead Apollo, inventing and sharing a method of making fire. Hermes “is simultaneously presenting the human race with the domestic beasts whose meat the fire will cook. A whole complex of cultural institutions around killing and eating cattle are derived from the liar and thief, Hermes” (Hyde 9). Hermes’ thievery is an act of culture bringing rather than motivated by personal gain, - he is the culture hero. Through looking at Nabokov’s Pale Fire we see this trickster quality come into play.
The title Pale Fire, as some scholars believe, was most likely used from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens passage,
This motif of theft is one applicable to the trickster, as we have seen in Hermes, and to Nabokov. When we read Nabokov’s novels we feel the influences of previous authors, Shakespeare, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Coleridge and more than any one scholar can identify. Nabokov can’t help but steal other images from previous authors, because if nothing is original, then the only way to deal with any sort of anxiety of influence is to embrace it. Nabokov is as Hyde describes trickster as “disturbing the established categories of property” by blatantly emulating previous great authors to open the road to a new realm of literature (Hyde 13). Nabokov writing “Pale Fire” by John Shade within his novel Pale Fire cries out openly in the poem, “But this transparent thingum does require/Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire” (Nabokov 68). Nabokov, through candidly thieving from other authors, is the reader’s own culture bringer. Taking an old image and putting it in a new context as a form of bricolage. Nabokov and Hermes have stolen needed goods to give to the mortals of this world and enliven our lives with mischief and knowledge of the other realm that may not be a place we should go alone and unprepared.
If Nabokov is starting to sound more like a god than human because he is likened to Hermes, it is because he has truly become an immortal figure through the art of his works. Living beyond the end of his human life through the pages he has written. Nabokov truly has omnipresence in his novels, through his own personal habits found in his characters and, for example, the anagram Vivian Darkbloom in Lolita. No longer do you have to become an alchemist to create the sorcerer’s stone, but rather write something worthwhile. One way to live beyond the dark abyss is to achieve immortality. As Humbert Humbert concludes his journal, and Nabokov finishes Lolita saying, “I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share” (Nabokov 309). Hermes is the messenger god, an immortal benefiting human kind, as Nabokov has found his own immortality through his novels that are available for people to read and experience and convey a message as an immortal figure.
The wily and light-fingered qualities found in Hermes are not the only way the trickster model enlightens our understanding of Nabokov. As Hermes is designated as the psychopompos by Zeus, the guide of souls from this world to Hades, Nabokov is the reader’s psychopompos who helps the reader in their transition between worlds. Both Hermes and Nabokov are moving us across the threshold as figures of the doorway or the in-between. “Hermes will deliver a soul into whatever world or mental state lies across the line” (Hyde 208). No longer is Nabokov just playing games in his books, he is the guide through the novel, but something much more, he is the guide of our souls. Nabokov leaves clues in Pale Fire indicating that something darker and mysterious is going on by using vocabulary like chthonic, wraith, underworld, stygian, Lethe, Mercury, Lower World (Nabokov 46, 56, 85, 133, 231). Nabokov is the liminal figure, neither one thing nor the other in relation to the reader, moving between the living and dead, guiding us through the experience of his novels or his expressions of the stygian abyss. Nabokov’s novels serve as the limn, because while Nabokov writes he is in the doorway, and we the readers are neither in this world or the next. Kinbote relates to the reader a conversation that he had with Shade where Shade (an anagram for Hades), says, “There is always a psychopompos around the corner isn’t there?” (Nabokov 226). Is the corner the turn of the page, or perhaps the turn of death?
Nabokov is concerned with the in-between of life and death, writing about communications of the dead to the living in Pale Fire, and the dead narrating the living in Transparent Things. The question stems from mortality and immortality, what happens after we die? Brian Boyd highlights an important answer to the afterlife question given by Nabokov in his book The Magic of Artistic Discovery, “Asked by an interviewer: Do you believe in God? he answered: To be quite candid- and what I’m going to say now is something I never said before. And I hope it produces a salutary little chill- I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more” (Boyd 248). The eerie elusive answer Nabokov gives relays the notion that he is a religious author in a broad sense, omnipresent, taking us on a journey to the underworld, and communicates the notions of a deeper meaning of “Pale Fire”, the phosphorescent footprints of the deity himself perhaps. Nabokov seems to be a messenger of the gods, as is one of the activities of the trickster Hermes, expressing what he can for us mere mortals reading his novels, delivering secrets from the other world where we cannot go. Nabokov transforms such things that we deem inexpressible into “something that can be turned over to the reader in printed characters to have him cope with the blessed shiver,” something he ponders in Speak Memory, perhaps Nabokov as messenger and thief works to bring us the salutary chill that runs down the spine at epiphany (Nabokov 212).
Transparent Things by Nabokov is a novel where the lines are blurred between reality and fiction, author and reader. Several specters, who are deceased characters from the novel, in the other world are narrating Hugh Person’s experiences, past, present, future. The deceased Mr. R is helping Hugh Person transition from one world to the other at the very end saying, “This is, I believe, it: not the crude anguish of physical death but the incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass from one state of being to another. Easy, you know, does it son” (Nabokov 158). Mr. R is present guiding Hugh Person through the transition, a sort of psychopompos, making the mysterious mental maneuver manageable for Hugh Person, because Mr. R has done this before. Nabokov is psychopompos to the reader, you person, as it seems like when the novel talks about Hugh Person, it is really talking to you, the person, the reader. Nabokov breaks the assumed boundaries between reader and author speaking directly to us through the novel as our guide, in short, trickster is a boundary-creator and crosser (Hyde 7).
Nabokov is following in the steps of other great writers whose works he most likely read and subsequently influenced by. The protagonists of the author’s novels communicate with the dead, as in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, Joyce’s Ulysses, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Allusions strongly indicate that Nabokov read these listed works and used their influence in his novels. In Chapter 6 of Joyce’s Ulysses, Hades, for example, covers the 11:00 hour when Bloom and his companions ride through the cemetery towards Patty Dignam’s funeral. This chapter corresponds with Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus goes to the underworld, a visit to Hades, and communicates with “shades” or shadows of the dead. Sounds like John Shade from Pale Fire. The characters in Joyce’s Ulysses correspond with Homer’s characters, Sisyphus with Martin Cunningham, Cerberus with Father Coffey, Hades with the caretaker, Elopenor with Dignam. Nabokov uses Joyce, as Joyce uses Homer. The theft runs deep in the literary world, and is crucial to exploring new ideas with old ones. The concern with the underworld, the afterlife, beyond the pale fire, is explored much as Nabokov likes to explore what happens after we die. The reader is able to safely explore what happens after death through the psychopompos, in this case the author, Nabokov, crossing the boundary between earth and Underworld, the river Styx, through his writing.
The first lines of “Pale Fire” read, “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain /By the false azure in the windowpane; /I was the smudge of ashen fluff-and I /Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky” (Nabokov 33). The waxwing lives on in the optical illusion created by the glass after dying from the impact; the only way to reach the reflection is to cross the liminal boundary between worlds, of this life and the next, to be a wraith in the pale fire of our world. Nabokov openly reveals his fascination with the black void or abyss before and after this life in chapter one of Speak Memory saying, “Over and over again, my mind has made colossal efforts to distinguish the faintest of personal glimmers in the impersonal darkness on both sides of my life...Short of suicide, I have tried everything” (Nabokov 20). He also says that the dark abyss that lies on either side of life, the two eternities of darkness, “are identical twins, [and] man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more clam that the one he is heading for” (Nabokov 19). This helps explain his deep fascination with the notions of the Underworld and mortality that pervade his novels.
Hyde says this of trickster in his book, which we can now associate with Nabokov,
While Nabokov may not be writing his novels with the intention of being a trickster as he has been described, understanding Nabokov in this way is helpful to comprehending and appreciating his works of literature. Nabokov is the messenger from the other side, wherever that may be, thieving from those before him to bring to us the culture we might have missed, cluing us in on immortality and expressing the inexpressible.
Vladimir Nabokov becomes part of the mythic tradition in terms of a trickster figure: he is not a moral figure, nor do his novels tell us how to behave, but rather they tell us who we might become. If Humbert from Lolita had understood something about Quilty, just as if we understand something about Nabokov we can understand something about ourselves. Quilty is a trickster figure to Humbert, as Nabokov is to the reader. As Hermes enchants Apollo with the homemade lyre and the experience of music, Nabokov enchants the reader with his novel. Nabokov as a trickster leads us through the epiphany of experience rather than meaning.
Works Cited
Boyd, Brian. Nabokov's Pale Fire The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 248. Print.
Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World. New York: First North Point Press, 1999. 6, 7, 13, 208-9. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. 50th Anniversary ed. New York: Vintage International, 1997. 309. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage International, 1989. 33, 46, 56, 68, 85, 133, 226, 231. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory. New York: Vintage International, 1989. 19,20,19. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Transparent Things. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, 1974. 158. Print.
As the author, the teacher, the storyteller, the enchanter, the trickster Nabokov leads the reader into a labyrinth where there are more dead ends than open passages. If we only focus on the little games he plays that are enjoyable, causing us to not only read his novels, but participate and experience them, we miss out on his way of playing a trickster that expresses the quintessential qualities to understanding Nabokov as an author and more. Lewis Hyde discusses the character of the trickster in his book Trickster Makes This World, but he gives one mere desultory and seemingly tangential sentence acknowledging Nabokov as such a character saying, “Or there is Vladimir Nabokov; if you think his deft magic is serious, you’re wrong, and if you think it’s just a game, you’re wrong” (Hyde 209). By looking at a legendary trickster known as Hermes from Greek mythology who strongly resembles what Nabokov accomplishes through his writing, and it becomes clear that tricksters are not just creatures of myth, but working figures of our current culture.
Hermes is commonly known as “Hermes the Thief” however, his thievery is not a product of greed but results from a need “to disturb the established categories of truth and property and, by so doing, open the road to possible new worlds” (Hyde 13). The Homeric Hymn to Hermes is where we learn of baby Hermes stealing Apollo’s cattle, walking backwards to try and mislead Apollo, inventing and sharing a method of making fire. Hermes “is simultaneously presenting the human race with the domestic beasts whose meat the fire will cook. A whole complex of cultural institutions around killing and eating cattle are derived from the liar and thief, Hermes” (Hyde 9). Hermes’ thievery is an act of culture bringing rather than motivated by personal gain, - he is the culture hero. Through looking at Nabokov’s Pale Fire we see this trickster quality come into play.
The title Pale Fire, as some scholars believe, was most likely used from Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens passage,
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction / Robs the vast sea; the moon's
an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun; / The sea's a
thief whose liquid surge resolves / The moon into salt tears. – (4.3.435-40)
This motif of theft is one applicable to the trickster, as we have seen in Hermes, and to Nabokov. When we read Nabokov’s novels we feel the influences of previous authors, Shakespeare, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Coleridge and more than any one scholar can identify. Nabokov can’t help but steal other images from previous authors, because if nothing is original, then the only way to deal with any sort of anxiety of influence is to embrace it. Nabokov is as Hyde describes trickster as “disturbing the established categories of property” by blatantly emulating previous great authors to open the road to a new realm of literature (Hyde 13). Nabokov writing “Pale Fire” by John Shade within his novel Pale Fire cries out openly in the poem, “But this transparent thingum does require/Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire” (Nabokov 68). Nabokov, through candidly thieving from other authors, is the reader’s own culture bringer. Taking an old image and putting it in a new context as a form of bricolage. Nabokov and Hermes have stolen needed goods to give to the mortals of this world and enliven our lives with mischief and knowledge of the other realm that may not be a place we should go alone and unprepared.
If Nabokov is starting to sound more like a god than human because he is likened to Hermes, it is because he has truly become an immortal figure through the art of his works. Living beyond the end of his human life through the pages he has written. Nabokov truly has omnipresence in his novels, through his own personal habits found in his characters and, for example, the anagram Vivian Darkbloom in Lolita. No longer do you have to become an alchemist to create the sorcerer’s stone, but rather write something worthwhile. One way to live beyond the dark abyss is to achieve immortality. As Humbert Humbert concludes his journal, and Nabokov finishes Lolita saying, “I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share” (Nabokov 309). Hermes is the messenger god, an immortal benefiting human kind, as Nabokov has found his own immortality through his novels that are available for people to read and experience and convey a message as an immortal figure.
The wily and light-fingered qualities found in Hermes are not the only way the trickster model enlightens our understanding of Nabokov. As Hermes is designated as the psychopompos by Zeus, the guide of souls from this world to Hades, Nabokov is the reader’s psychopompos who helps the reader in their transition between worlds. Both Hermes and Nabokov are moving us across the threshold as figures of the doorway or the in-between. “Hermes will deliver a soul into whatever world or mental state lies across the line” (Hyde 208). No longer is Nabokov just playing games in his books, he is the guide through the novel, but something much more, he is the guide of our souls. Nabokov leaves clues in Pale Fire indicating that something darker and mysterious is going on by using vocabulary like chthonic, wraith, underworld, stygian, Lethe, Mercury, Lower World (Nabokov 46, 56, 85, 133, 231). Nabokov is the liminal figure, neither one thing nor the other in relation to the reader, moving between the living and dead, guiding us through the experience of his novels or his expressions of the stygian abyss. Nabokov’s novels serve as the limn, because while Nabokov writes he is in the doorway, and we the readers are neither in this world or the next. Kinbote relates to the reader a conversation that he had with Shade where Shade (an anagram for Hades), says, “There is always a psychopompos around the corner isn’t there?” (Nabokov 226). Is the corner the turn of the page, or perhaps the turn of death?
Nabokov is concerned with the in-between of life and death, writing about communications of the dead to the living in Pale Fire, and the dead narrating the living in Transparent Things. The question stems from mortality and immortality, what happens after we die? Brian Boyd highlights an important answer to the afterlife question given by Nabokov in his book The Magic of Artistic Discovery, “Asked by an interviewer: Do you believe in God? he answered: To be quite candid- and what I’m going to say now is something I never said before. And I hope it produces a salutary little chill- I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more” (Boyd 248). The eerie elusive answer Nabokov gives relays the notion that he is a religious author in a broad sense, omnipresent, taking us on a journey to the underworld, and communicates the notions of a deeper meaning of “Pale Fire”, the phosphorescent footprints of the deity himself perhaps. Nabokov seems to be a messenger of the gods, as is one of the activities of the trickster Hermes, expressing what he can for us mere mortals reading his novels, delivering secrets from the other world where we cannot go. Nabokov transforms such things that we deem inexpressible into “something that can be turned over to the reader in printed characters to have him cope with the blessed shiver,” something he ponders in Speak Memory, perhaps Nabokov as messenger and thief works to bring us the salutary chill that runs down the spine at epiphany (Nabokov 212).
Transparent Things by Nabokov is a novel where the lines are blurred between reality and fiction, author and reader. Several specters, who are deceased characters from the novel, in the other world are narrating Hugh Person’s experiences, past, present, future. The deceased Mr. R is helping Hugh Person transition from one world to the other at the very end saying, “This is, I believe, it: not the crude anguish of physical death but the incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass from one state of being to another. Easy, you know, does it son” (Nabokov 158). Mr. R is present guiding Hugh Person through the transition, a sort of psychopompos, making the mysterious mental maneuver manageable for Hugh Person, because Mr. R has done this before. Nabokov is psychopompos to the reader, you person, as it seems like when the novel talks about Hugh Person, it is really talking to you, the person, the reader. Nabokov breaks the assumed boundaries between reader and author speaking directly to us through the novel as our guide, in short, trickster is a boundary-creator and crosser (Hyde 7).
Nabokov is following in the steps of other great writers whose works he most likely read and subsequently influenced by. The protagonists of the author’s novels communicate with the dead, as in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, Joyce’s Ulysses, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Allusions strongly indicate that Nabokov read these listed works and used their influence in his novels. In Chapter 6 of Joyce’s Ulysses, Hades, for example, covers the 11:00 hour when Bloom and his companions ride through the cemetery towards Patty Dignam’s funeral. This chapter corresponds with Homer’s Odyssey where Odysseus goes to the underworld, a visit to Hades, and communicates with “shades” or shadows of the dead. Sounds like John Shade from Pale Fire. The characters in Joyce’s Ulysses correspond with Homer’s characters, Sisyphus with Martin Cunningham, Cerberus with Father Coffey, Hades with the caretaker, Elopenor with Dignam. Nabokov uses Joyce, as Joyce uses Homer. The theft runs deep in the literary world, and is crucial to exploring new ideas with old ones. The concern with the underworld, the afterlife, beyond the pale fire, is explored much as Nabokov likes to explore what happens after we die. The reader is able to safely explore what happens after death through the psychopompos, in this case the author, Nabokov, crossing the boundary between earth and Underworld, the river Styx, through his writing.
The first lines of “Pale Fire” read, “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain /By the false azure in the windowpane; /I was the smudge of ashen fluff-and I /Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky” (Nabokov 33). The waxwing lives on in the optical illusion created by the glass after dying from the impact; the only way to reach the reflection is to cross the liminal boundary between worlds, of this life and the next, to be a wraith in the pale fire of our world. Nabokov openly reveals his fascination with the black void or abyss before and after this life in chapter one of Speak Memory saying, “Over and over again, my mind has made colossal efforts to distinguish the faintest of personal glimmers in the impersonal darkness on both sides of my life...Short of suicide, I have tried everything” (Nabokov 20). He also says that the dark abyss that lies on either side of life, the two eternities of darkness, “are identical twins, [and] man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more clam that the one he is heading for” (Nabokov 19). This helps explain his deep fascination with the notions of the Underworld and mortality that pervade his novels.
Hyde says this of trickster in his book, which we can now associate with Nabokov,
“He is the adept who can move between heaven and earth, and between the living
and the dead. As such he is sometimes the messenger of the gods and sometimes
the guide of souls, carrying the dead into the underworld or opening the tomb to
release them when they must walk among us. Sometimes it happens that the road
between heaven and earth is not open, whereupon trickster travels not as a
messenger but as a thief, the one who steals from the gods the good things that
humans need if they are to survive this world” (Hyde 6).
While Nabokov may not be writing his novels with the intention of being a trickster as he has been described, understanding Nabokov in this way is helpful to comprehending and appreciating his works of literature. Nabokov is the messenger from the other side, wherever that may be, thieving from those before him to bring to us the culture we might have missed, cluing us in on immortality and expressing the inexpressible.
Vladimir Nabokov becomes part of the mythic tradition in terms of a trickster figure: he is not a moral figure, nor do his novels tell us how to behave, but rather they tell us who we might become. If Humbert from Lolita had understood something about Quilty, just as if we understand something about Nabokov we can understand something about ourselves. Quilty is a trickster figure to Humbert, as Nabokov is to the reader. As Hermes enchants Apollo with the homemade lyre and the experience of music, Nabokov enchants the reader with his novel. Nabokov as a trickster leads us through the epiphany of experience rather than meaning.
Works Cited
Boyd, Brian. Nabokov's Pale Fire The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. 248. Print.
Hyde, Lewis. Trickster Makes This World. New York: First North Point Press, 1999. 6, 7, 13, 208-9. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. 50th Anniversary ed. New York: Vintage International, 1997. 309. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage International, 1989. 33, 46, 56, 68, 85, 133, 226, 231. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory. New York: Vintage International, 1989. 19,20,19. Print.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Transparent Things. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, 1974. 158. Print.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Let's Recap the class Lit 431, quickly now
I liked Adam's quick recap of the class by ranking the Nabokov books that we've read. I think it is a good way to reflect. Of course there is no way to truly rank these against each other or anything else for that matter. (I will be posting my final term paper tomorrow after I've proofread it a couple more times. Then I present on Tuesday.)
4 - Lolita, this was my second encounter with the novel. I had read it only once before so that I could write a paper for my Literary Criticism class. Sutter suggested the novel for the paper, so I read it quickly so I could use it. I felt like I knew so much about this book having already written a paper on it, but little did I know how little I knew. Lolita is when I truly realized you never just read a Nabokov book, but rather you must be a re-reader. I learned that through my overconfidence approaching the novel. Vivian Darkbloom is Vladimis Nabokov....or is it the other way around? What do we do with the child molestation part of the novel? Is it an allegory of the artistic process? Do you think Humbert asked for this role? Maybe he never wanted to like little girls, he dreamed of being an astronaut. (picnic, lightening). Waterproof.
3 - Speak Memory, good read with clever writing. The most interested I've ever been in an autobiography. I love the insight into the mysterious Nabokov, although presented of himself by himself. I realize he has a certain slant on things. We learned not to look lazily at things and look at a photograph the way Nabokov might, seeing the divine detail in everything. We thought about our earliest childhood memory, hopefully at a pure image, an experience before it had labels. Christina's blog has a good example of this.
2 - Pale Fire, I had no idea what to expect with this novel. I was under the impression it might be a bit boring because it was just about a guy commenting on another guy's poem. This is called a novel, but really it just looked like a poem being explicated. I was so pleasantly suprised at how much I enjoyed this. I read this side by side with Sutter. And we fell in love with the pedantic Kinbote and I genuinely felt for Shade and the loss of Hazel. This is when I started to notice a deeper experience to Nabokov's novels. Everyone is a thief, and like the moon can't help but take the silvery light from the sun, we all can't help but take our material from everything that surrounds us. Nothing is original....perhaps. I also had never seen a waxwing bird before, and really very beautiful with their black mask. Lemniscate (Bloom and Stephen). Timon of Athens, I had never heard of that Shakespeare play before. I watched the Prisoner of Zenda. This novel seemed to have so much more going on than I could have EVER imagined.
1- Transparent Things, I can't wait to sit down and read this again. and then again. Just because it is short does not mean it's a fast read. It was by far the most interesting to me. The way the past, present and future were wound together, narrators who were characters who died in the novel narrating Hugh Persons's life.....you person. The multiple narrators and the levels of narration were at first very confusing, but as we talked in class things clicked! Armande was my favorite character, perhaps I just like her name. somnambulism. And the most interesting of all: mysterious mental manuever.
Thank you Dr. Sexson, our professor and psychopompos for the class. We quite literally would never have made it this far without you....ever.
4 - Lolita, this was my second encounter with the novel. I had read it only once before so that I could write a paper for my Literary Criticism class. Sutter suggested the novel for the paper, so I read it quickly so I could use it. I felt like I knew so much about this book having already written a paper on it, but little did I know how little I knew. Lolita is when I truly realized you never just read a Nabokov book, but rather you must be a re-reader. I learned that through my overconfidence approaching the novel. Vivian Darkbloom is Vladimis Nabokov....or is it the other way around? What do we do with the child molestation part of the novel? Is it an allegory of the artistic process? Do you think Humbert asked for this role? Maybe he never wanted to like little girls, he dreamed of being an astronaut. (picnic, lightening). Waterproof.
3 - Speak Memory, good read with clever writing. The most interested I've ever been in an autobiography. I love the insight into the mysterious Nabokov, although presented of himself by himself. I realize he has a certain slant on things. We learned not to look lazily at things and look at a photograph the way Nabokov might, seeing the divine detail in everything. We thought about our earliest childhood memory, hopefully at a pure image, an experience before it had labels. Christina's blog has a good example of this.
2 - Pale Fire, I had no idea what to expect with this novel. I was under the impression it might be a bit boring because it was just about a guy commenting on another guy's poem. This is called a novel, but really it just looked like a poem being explicated. I was so pleasantly suprised at how much I enjoyed this. I read this side by side with Sutter. And we fell in love with the pedantic Kinbote and I genuinely felt for Shade and the loss of Hazel. This is when I started to notice a deeper experience to Nabokov's novels. Everyone is a thief, and like the moon can't help but take the silvery light from the sun, we all can't help but take our material from everything that surrounds us. Nothing is original....perhaps. I also had never seen a waxwing bird before, and really very beautiful with their black mask. Lemniscate (Bloom and Stephen). Timon of Athens, I had never heard of that Shakespeare play before. I watched the Prisoner of Zenda. This novel seemed to have so much more going on than I could have EVER imagined.
1- Transparent Things, I can't wait to sit down and read this again. and then again. Just because it is short does not mean it's a fast read. It was by far the most interesting to me. The way the past, present and future were wound together, narrators who were characters who died in the novel narrating Hugh Persons's life.....you person. The multiple narrators and the levels of narration were at first very confusing, but as we talked in class things clicked! Armande was my favorite character, perhaps I just like her name. somnambulism. And the most interesting of all: mysterious mental manuever.
Thank you Dr. Sexson, our professor and psychopompos for the class. We quite literally would never have made it this far without you....ever.
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes
Here is part of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, you can read parts on my blog, or click the link in the title below and read the whole thing. It is not very long and it's a fun read. I'm using Hermes in my final paper, so if you don't know Hermes very well, this will help you.
THE HOMERIC HYMN TO HERMES
HERMES IS BORN
Muse, sing in honor of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia, lord of Kyllene, lord of Arcadia with all its sheep, bringer of luck, messenger of the gods. His mother was Maia with the wonderful hair, a shy and shamefaced nymph who stayed in her shady cave, avoiding the company of the blessed gods. In the darkest night, when sweet sleep held white-armed Hera fast, Zeus, the son of Kronos, used to lie with the nymph with the fabulous hair. No one knew about it, neither the gods, who do not die, nor human beings, who do.
Now, when he had finished what he had in mind and when ten moons had risen in the sky, Zeus led his notorious child into the light. Maia gave birth to a wily[1] boy, flattering and cunning, a robber and cattle thief, a bringer of dreams, awake all night, waiting by the gates of the city—Hermes, who was soon to earn himself quite a reputation among the gods, who do not die.
As the sun rose on the fourth day of the month, lady Maia bore him; by noon he played the lyre and by evening he had stolen the cattle of Apollo, who shoots from afar.
[1] Or "cunning," "versatile," "much traveled," "polytropic": polútropon (literally, turning-many-ways). In all of Greek literature, three characters are polytropic: Hermes, Odysseus, and Alcibiades.
HERMES INVENTS THE LYRE
Indeed, he didn't lie around in his sacred cradle, no, the minute he slipped from his mother's immortal arms he leapt up and set out to find Apollo's herds. As he crossed the threshold of that roomy cave, he happened on a turtle and got himself an endless source of wealth. For you should know that it was Hermes who first made the turtle into something that could sing. Their paths crossed at the courtyard gate, where the turtle was waddling by, chewing the thick grass in front of the dwelling. Hermes, the bringer of luck, took a close look, laughed, and said:
"Here's a bit of luck[1] I can't ignore! Hello there, you shapely thing, dancing girl, life of the party. Lovely to see you. How'd a mountain girl with a shiny shell get so playful? Let me carry you inside! What a blessing! Do me a favor, come on, I'll respect you. It's safer inside, you could get in trouble out there. A living turtle, they say, keeps troublesome witchcraft away. And yet, if you were to die you'd sing most beautifully."
So saying, Hermes picked up the turtle with both hands and carried his lovely toy into the house. He turned her over and with a scoop of gray iron scraped the marrow from her mountain shell. And, just as a swift thought can fly through the heart of a person haunted with care, just as bright glances spin from the eyes, so, in one instant, Hermes knew what to do and did it. He cut stalks of reed to measure, fitted them through the shell, and fastened their ends across the back. Skillfully, he tightened a piece of cowhide, set the arms in place, fixed a yoke across them, and stretched seven sheep-gut strings to sound in harmony.
When he was finished, he took that lovely thing and tested each string in turn with a flat pick. It rang out wonderfully at the touch of his hand, and he sang along beautifully, improvising a few random snatches the way teenagers sing out insults at a fair. He sang the song of Zeus, the son of Kronos, and Maia with the wonderful shoes, how they used to chat in comradely love; he broadcast the story of his own famous conception. And he sang in praise of Maia's servant girls and stately rooms, of all the tripods and caldrons she had to her name.
[1] Hermaion: “a lucky find.”
HERMES STEALS APOLLO'S CATTLE
As he sang, however, his mind wandered to other matters. For Hermes longed to eat meat. So, taking the hollow lyre and tucking it in his sacred cradle, he sped from the sweet-smelling halls to a lookout point, a tricky scheme brewing in his heart, the kind that mischievous folk cook up in the middle of the night.
The chariot and horses of Helios were going down below the earth toward Ocean when Hermes came running to the shadowed mountains of Pieria. There the divine cattle of the blessed gods have their stable and graze in lovely, unmown meadows.
There and then, Maia's son, the keen-eyed slayer of Argus,[1] cut fifty loudly lowing cattle from the herd and drove them zigzag across the sandy place. He thought to drive them backward, too, another crafty trick, mixing up their footprints—the front behind and the hind before—while he himself walked straight ahead.
And right away on that sandy beach he wove himself fabulous sandals, such as no one ever thought or heard of. Tying together the newly sprouted myrtle twigs and tamarisk, he bound them, leaves and all, securely to his feet, a pair of shoes for those who travel light. (The glorious slayer of Argus had picked those shrubs in Pieria when getting ready for this trip, inventing on the spot as one will do when packing in a hurry.)
But as he was hurrying through the grassy fields of Onchestus, he was seen by an old man setting up his flowering vineyard.[2] The notorious son of Maia spoke first:
"Hey, old man stooping over the hoe, you're sure to have barrels of wine when all those vines bear fruit. If, that is, you listen to me and bear in mind that you haven't seen what you've seen, and you haven't heard what you've heard, and, in general, keep your mouth shut as long as nobody's bothering you personally."
Having said all this, Hermes gathered the excellent herd of cattle and drove them through many shadowy mountains and echoing gorges and fields in flower.
And now divine night, his dark helper, was almost over and the dawn, which forces mortals to work, was quickly coming on. Bright Selene—daughter of Pallas, lord Megamedes' son—had just climbed to her watch-post when the sturdy child of Zeus drove Apollo's wide-browed cattle to the river Alpheus. They arrived unwearied at a high-roofed barn and watering troughs standing before a remarkable meadow.
[1] Argus Panoptes (the bright one, all eyes) was a watchful giant. He had a hundred or more eyes all over his body; some of his eyes would sometimes close for sleep, but never all of them. I take him to be an image of the watchfulness of a shame society.
[2] From other versions of the story we know this man's name is Battus.
A SACRIFICE TO THE GODS
Then, having foddered the bellowing herd and packed them into the stable, chewing fresh lotus and sweet ginger, he gathered a pile of wood and set himself to seek the art of fire, for Hermes, you should know, is responsible for fire-sticks and fire.[1]
He took a stout laurel branch, trimmed it with a knife, and spun it on a block of wood held firmly in his hand until the hot smoke crept up. Then he piled thick bunches of dry sticks in a sunken trench. The flames caught and spread fiercely.
While the power of glorious Hephaestus kindled the fire, Hermes, full of his own power, dragged two lowing longhorns out of the stable and up to the flames. He threw them panting on their backs, rolled them over, bent their heads aside, and pierced their spinal cords.
Then Hermes set about his chores in turn. First he cut up the richly marbled flesh and skewered it on wooden spits; he roasted all of it—the muscle and the prized sirloin and the dark-blooded belly—and laid the spits out on the ground.
The skins he stretched over a rippling rock (still today, ages later, those hides are there, and they will be there for ages to come). Next he gladly drew the dripping chunks of meat from the spits, spread them on a stone, and divided them into twelve portions distributed by lot, making each one exactly right.[2]
And glorious Hermes longed to eat that sacrificial meat. The sweet smell weakened him, god though he was; and yet, much as his mouth watered, his proud heart[3] would not let him eat. Later he took the fat and all the flesh and stored them in that ample barn, setting them high up as a token[4] of his youthful theft. That done, he gathered dry sticks and let the fire devour, absolutely, the hooves of the cattle, and their heads.
And when the god had finished, he threw his sandals into the deep pooling Alpheus. He quenched the embers and spread sand over the black ashes. And so the night went by under the bright light of the moon.
[1] Hermes does not invent fire; he invents a method of making fire, a trick, a techne.
[2] The twelve portions are moíras or "lots," "allotments." Hermes makes one for each of the twelve Olympian gods (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hermes, Athena, Hephaestus, and Hestia).
[3] Thymos: “heart,” “soul,” “breath,” “mind”—the Homeric Greeks located intelligence in the chest and the speaking voice, not in the silent brain.
[4] Sêma or "sign."
HERMES COMES HOME AT DAWN
APOLLO SEARCHES FOR THE THIEF
THE CONFRONTATION
THE ARGUMENT BEFORE ZEUS
HERMES AND APOLLO EXCHANGE GIFTS
APOLLO GIVES HERMES HIS OFFICES
Apollo then swore a serious oath: "For mortals and immortals alike, I would have this instrument be the sure and heartfelt token of our bond.
"Moreover, I now bestow on you the marvelous wand with three gold branches. It brings good fortune and wealth, and will protect you from harm as you effect the good words and deeds that I have learned from the mind of Zeus.
"But, noble child of Zeus, as for the other thing you have asked about, the art of prophecy, neither you nor any of the deathless gods may learn it. Only the mind of Zeus knows the future. I've made a pledge, I've vowed and sworn a great oath, that only I of all the undying gods might know his intricate plans. And so, dear brother, bearer of the golden wand, don't ask me to reveal the things all-seeing Zeus intends.
"As for me, I will sorely puzzle the unenviable race of men, destroying some and helping others. If a man comes to me guided by the call and flight of ominous birds, he will profit from my words; I won't deceive him. But the man who believes in birds that chatter idly, who invokes my prophetic art against my will, who tries to know more than the deathless gods, his journey will be useless, I swear. Still, I'd be happy to receive his offerings.
"I'll tell you one more thing, however, son of glorious Maia, son of Zeus who holds the shield, luck-bringing helper of the gods. There are certain sacred sisters, three virgins lifted on swift wings; their heads have been dusted with white meal; they live beneath a cliff on Parnassus.[1] They teach their own kind of fortune telling. I practiced it as a boy traipsing after cattle; my father doesn't care. The sisters fly back and forth from their home, feeding on waxy honeycombs and making things happen. They like to tell the truth when they have eaten honey and the spirit is on them; but if they've been deprived of that divine sweetness, they buzz about and mumble lies.
"I give them to you, then. Question them well and please your heart. And if mortal men you should instruct, they may have good fortune and follow you.
"And, son of Maia, tend, as well, the ranging, twisted-homed cattle, the horses, and the hard-working mules. May glorious Hermes be the lord of fire-eyed lions and white-toothed boars, and dogs; may he be lord of all the flocks and all the sheep the wide earth feeds. And Hermes alone shall be appointed messenger to the underworld, where Hades gives the ultimate gift and takes none in return."
In this way, with the blessing of the son of Kronos, lordly Apollo showed friendship and good will toward the son of Maia. So it is that Hermes moves among the gods, who do not die, and human beings, who must. And though he serves a few, most of the time, when night has fallen, he deceives the race whose time runs out.
And so farewell, son of Zeus and Maia; I will think of you often as I go on to other songs.
[1] These are called the Bee Maidens. Apollo gives Hermes a minor prophetic art.
THE HOMERIC HYMN TO HERMES
HERMES IS BORN
Muse, sing in honor of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia, lord of Kyllene, lord of Arcadia with all its sheep, bringer of luck, messenger of the gods. His mother was Maia with the wonderful hair, a shy and shamefaced nymph who stayed in her shady cave, avoiding the company of the blessed gods. In the darkest night, when sweet sleep held white-armed Hera fast, Zeus, the son of Kronos, used to lie with the nymph with the fabulous hair. No one knew about it, neither the gods, who do not die, nor human beings, who do.
Now, when he had finished what he had in mind and when ten moons had risen in the sky, Zeus led his notorious child into the light. Maia gave birth to a wily[1] boy, flattering and cunning, a robber and cattle thief, a bringer of dreams, awake all night, waiting by the gates of the city—Hermes, who was soon to earn himself quite a reputation among the gods, who do not die.
As the sun rose on the fourth day of the month, lady Maia bore him; by noon he played the lyre and by evening he had stolen the cattle of Apollo, who shoots from afar.
[1] Or "cunning," "versatile," "much traveled," "polytropic": polútropon (literally, turning-many-ways). In all of Greek literature, three characters are polytropic: Hermes, Odysseus, and Alcibiades.
HERMES INVENTS THE LYRE
Indeed, he didn't lie around in his sacred cradle, no, the minute he slipped from his mother's immortal arms he leapt up and set out to find Apollo's herds. As he crossed the threshold of that roomy cave, he happened on a turtle and got himself an endless source of wealth. For you should know that it was Hermes who first made the turtle into something that could sing. Their paths crossed at the courtyard gate, where the turtle was waddling by, chewing the thick grass in front of the dwelling. Hermes, the bringer of luck, took a close look, laughed, and said:
"Here's a bit of luck[1] I can't ignore! Hello there, you shapely thing, dancing girl, life of the party. Lovely to see you. How'd a mountain girl with a shiny shell get so playful? Let me carry you inside! What a blessing! Do me a favor, come on, I'll respect you. It's safer inside, you could get in trouble out there. A living turtle, they say, keeps troublesome witchcraft away. And yet, if you were to die you'd sing most beautifully."
So saying, Hermes picked up the turtle with both hands and carried his lovely toy into the house. He turned her over and with a scoop of gray iron scraped the marrow from her mountain shell. And, just as a swift thought can fly through the heart of a person haunted with care, just as bright glances spin from the eyes, so, in one instant, Hermes knew what to do and did it. He cut stalks of reed to measure, fitted them through the shell, and fastened their ends across the back. Skillfully, he tightened a piece of cowhide, set the arms in place, fixed a yoke across them, and stretched seven sheep-gut strings to sound in harmony.
When he was finished, he took that lovely thing and tested each string in turn with a flat pick. It rang out wonderfully at the touch of his hand, and he sang along beautifully, improvising a few random snatches the way teenagers sing out insults at a fair. He sang the song of Zeus, the son of Kronos, and Maia with the wonderful shoes, how they used to chat in comradely love; he broadcast the story of his own famous conception. And he sang in praise of Maia's servant girls and stately rooms, of all the tripods and caldrons she had to her name.
[1] Hermaion: “a lucky find.”
HERMES STEALS APOLLO'S CATTLE
As he sang, however, his mind wandered to other matters. For Hermes longed to eat meat. So, taking the hollow lyre and tucking it in his sacred cradle, he sped from the sweet-smelling halls to a lookout point, a tricky scheme brewing in his heart, the kind that mischievous folk cook up in the middle of the night.
The chariot and horses of Helios were going down below the earth toward Ocean when Hermes came running to the shadowed mountains of Pieria. There the divine cattle of the blessed gods have their stable and graze in lovely, unmown meadows.
There and then, Maia's son, the keen-eyed slayer of Argus,[1] cut fifty loudly lowing cattle from the herd and drove them zigzag across the sandy place. He thought to drive them backward, too, another crafty trick, mixing up their footprints—the front behind and the hind before—while he himself walked straight ahead.
And right away on that sandy beach he wove himself fabulous sandals, such as no one ever thought or heard of. Tying together the newly sprouted myrtle twigs and tamarisk, he bound them, leaves and all, securely to his feet, a pair of shoes for those who travel light. (The glorious slayer of Argus had picked those shrubs in Pieria when getting ready for this trip, inventing on the spot as one will do when packing in a hurry.)
But as he was hurrying through the grassy fields of Onchestus, he was seen by an old man setting up his flowering vineyard.[2] The notorious son of Maia spoke first:
"Hey, old man stooping over the hoe, you're sure to have barrels of wine when all those vines bear fruit. If, that is, you listen to me and bear in mind that you haven't seen what you've seen, and you haven't heard what you've heard, and, in general, keep your mouth shut as long as nobody's bothering you personally."
Having said all this, Hermes gathered the excellent herd of cattle and drove them through many shadowy mountains and echoing gorges and fields in flower.
And now divine night, his dark helper, was almost over and the dawn, which forces mortals to work, was quickly coming on. Bright Selene—daughter of Pallas, lord Megamedes' son—had just climbed to her watch-post when the sturdy child of Zeus drove Apollo's wide-browed cattle to the river Alpheus. They arrived unwearied at a high-roofed barn and watering troughs standing before a remarkable meadow.
[1] Argus Panoptes (the bright one, all eyes) was a watchful giant. He had a hundred or more eyes all over his body; some of his eyes would sometimes close for sleep, but never all of them. I take him to be an image of the watchfulness of a shame society.
[2] From other versions of the story we know this man's name is Battus.
A SACRIFICE TO THE GODS
Then, having foddered the bellowing herd and packed them into the stable, chewing fresh lotus and sweet ginger, he gathered a pile of wood and set himself to seek the art of fire, for Hermes, you should know, is responsible for fire-sticks and fire.[1]
He took a stout laurel branch, trimmed it with a knife, and spun it on a block of wood held firmly in his hand until the hot smoke crept up. Then he piled thick bunches of dry sticks in a sunken trench. The flames caught and spread fiercely.
While the power of glorious Hephaestus kindled the fire, Hermes, full of his own power, dragged two lowing longhorns out of the stable and up to the flames. He threw them panting on their backs, rolled them over, bent their heads aside, and pierced their spinal cords.
Then Hermes set about his chores in turn. First he cut up the richly marbled flesh and skewered it on wooden spits; he roasted all of it—the muscle and the prized sirloin and the dark-blooded belly—and laid the spits out on the ground.
The skins he stretched over a rippling rock (still today, ages later, those hides are there, and they will be there for ages to come). Next he gladly drew the dripping chunks of meat from the spits, spread them on a stone, and divided them into twelve portions distributed by lot, making each one exactly right.[2]
And glorious Hermes longed to eat that sacrificial meat. The sweet smell weakened him, god though he was; and yet, much as his mouth watered, his proud heart[3] would not let him eat. Later he took the fat and all the flesh and stored them in that ample barn, setting them high up as a token[4] of his youthful theft. That done, he gathered dry sticks and let the fire devour, absolutely, the hooves of the cattle, and their heads.
And when the god had finished, he threw his sandals into the deep pooling Alpheus. He quenched the embers and spread sand over the black ashes. And so the night went by under the bright light of the moon.
[1] Hermes does not invent fire; he invents a method of making fire, a trick, a techne.
[2] The twelve portions are moíras or "lots," "allotments." Hermes makes one for each of the twelve Olympian gods (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hermes, Athena, Hephaestus, and Hestia).
[3] Thymos: “heart,” “soul,” “breath,” “mind”—the Homeric Greeks located intelligence in the chest and the speaking voice, not in the silent brain.
[4] Sêma or "sign."
HERMES COMES HOME AT DAWN
APOLLO SEARCHES FOR THE THIEF
THE CONFRONTATION
THE ARGUMENT BEFORE ZEUS
HERMES AND APOLLO EXCHANGE GIFTS
APOLLO GIVES HERMES HIS OFFICES
Apollo then swore a serious oath: "For mortals and immortals alike, I would have this instrument be the sure and heartfelt token of our bond.
"Moreover, I now bestow on you the marvelous wand with three gold branches. It brings good fortune and wealth, and will protect you from harm as you effect the good words and deeds that I have learned from the mind of Zeus.
"But, noble child of Zeus, as for the other thing you have asked about, the art of prophecy, neither you nor any of the deathless gods may learn it. Only the mind of Zeus knows the future. I've made a pledge, I've vowed and sworn a great oath, that only I of all the undying gods might know his intricate plans. And so, dear brother, bearer of the golden wand, don't ask me to reveal the things all-seeing Zeus intends.
"As for me, I will sorely puzzle the unenviable race of men, destroying some and helping others. If a man comes to me guided by the call and flight of ominous birds, he will profit from my words; I won't deceive him. But the man who believes in birds that chatter idly, who invokes my prophetic art against my will, who tries to know more than the deathless gods, his journey will be useless, I swear. Still, I'd be happy to receive his offerings.
"I'll tell you one more thing, however, son of glorious Maia, son of Zeus who holds the shield, luck-bringing helper of the gods. There are certain sacred sisters, three virgins lifted on swift wings; their heads have been dusted with white meal; they live beneath a cliff on Parnassus.[1] They teach their own kind of fortune telling. I practiced it as a boy traipsing after cattle; my father doesn't care. The sisters fly back and forth from their home, feeding on waxy honeycombs and making things happen. They like to tell the truth when they have eaten honey and the spirit is on them; but if they've been deprived of that divine sweetness, they buzz about and mumble lies.
"I give them to you, then. Question them well and please your heart. And if mortal men you should instruct, they may have good fortune and follow you.
"And, son of Maia, tend, as well, the ranging, twisted-homed cattle, the horses, and the hard-working mules. May glorious Hermes be the lord of fire-eyed lions and white-toothed boars, and dogs; may he be lord of all the flocks and all the sheep the wide earth feeds. And Hermes alone shall be appointed messenger to the underworld, where Hades gives the ultimate gift and takes none in return."
In this way, with the blessing of the son of Kronos, lordly Apollo showed friendship and good will toward the son of Maia. So it is that Hermes moves among the gods, who do not die, and human beings, who must. And though he serves a few, most of the time, when night has fallen, he deceives the race whose time runs out.
And so farewell, son of Zeus and Maia; I will think of you often as I go on to other songs.
[1] These are called the Bee Maidens. Apollo gives Hermes a minor prophetic art.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Vegetable Dance
For the Vegetable Dance referred to in the last pages of Transparent Things go to this site Nabokov's Golliwoggs: Lodi Reads English 1899-1909 by D. Barton Johnson
OR
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/dbjgo4.htm
OR
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/dbjgo4.htm
You'll find the words and these pictures there:
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