ellauri095.html on line 157: Usually writing Miltonic sonnets of 14 lines, he experimented with such unusual forms as a “curtal” sonnet of 10 2/5 lines (“Pied Beauty”) and a “caudal” sonnet of 24 lines (“That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire”). As an experimenter, he was a modern poet before “modern” poetry existed.
ellauri095.html on line 518: The motif of the singing bird appears again in Gerard’s “Spring” (1877): “and thrush/Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring/The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing.” The father’s attempt to represent what it is like to live in a bird’s environment, moreover, to experience daily the “fields, the open sky, /The rising sun, the moon’s pale majesty; /The leafy bower, where the airy nest is hung” was also one of the inspirations of the son’s lengthy account of a lark’s gliding beneath clouds, its aerial view of the fields below, and its proximity to a rainbow in “Il Mystico” (1862), as well as the son’s attempt to enter into a lark’s existence and express its essence mimically in “The Woodlark” (1876). A related motif, Manley’s feeling for clouds, evident in his poem “Clouds,” encouraged his son’s representation of them in “Hurrahing in Harvest’ (1877) and “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire”(1888).
ellauri112.html on line 705: The 26-year-old nanny’s name is Tully (played by Mackenzie Davis of “Halt and Catch Fire” fame), and she’s a free spirit, albeit one with a serious work ethic. Tully instantly takes over the house, manages Marlo’s baby effortlessly, and starts taking care of mom too. Not only does she give her the precious “alone time” she desperately needs and craves, but Tully ends up becoming a sort of therapist to her, along with a best friend, muse, and a regular shoulder to cry on.
xxx/ellauri127.html on line 116: There are currently five scholarly journals devoted to Nabokov studies. His allusive style and trilingual (English, French, Russian) wordplay are catnip for academics, who endlessly parse challenging texts like “Pale Fire” — a novel in verse, followed by obscurantist commentary — finding new apercus tailor-made for small-journal publication. Nabokov’s apotheosis in academe is quite ironical, because he and his close friend, the literary critic Edmund Wilson, shared an icy disdain for the ivory tower. They viewed universities as ATMs, handy because there were so many of them, and because they were flush with cash. Nabokov, who arrived in the United States penniless in 1940, had to rely on teaching assignments at Wellesley and Cornell to feed his family for 15 years. The moment “Lolita” made him financially independent, he fled Cornell for Switzerland and never set foot in a classroom again.
xxx/ellauri127.html on line 120: In his lifetime, Nabokov received many contrary and often puzzled reviews. The Hollywood producer Robert Evans famously flew to Switzerland in 1968 to read an advance copy of the novel “Ada” in one day. “It was torture,” he recalled. Dwight Macdonald hated “Pale Fire” on behalf of Partisan Review, calling it “unreadable . . . too clever by half . . . Philistine . . . false” — and he hadn’t even finished his first paragraph!
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