What the elm?

JWillard · 07 Jun 2007, 06:50 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: aldenweer at charter.net (JWillard)
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:50:32 -0600
Subject: (urth) What the elm?
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Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

>On 6/6/07, Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>The discovery of an allusion, in other words, should not spawn new
>>problems in interpretation.
>>    
>>
>
>I like that phrasing best.
>
>  
>
I think the mistake is to assume an allusion is just some sort of homage 
or a wink and a nod:  I don't know if it's that simple.  I'm starting to 
think more and more that Virgil and Dante are extremely important to 
Wolfe (Averns, anyone?).  Given their contributions to the Roman 
Catholic faith, this would not be surprising.  I'm curious if there are 
any connections to Augustine, as well.  (And someone might have pointed 
all of this out, but I have less and less time to read and confer with 
previous posts.)  Recently started reading Inferno, and Dante's choices 
of focus are striking to a Wolfean:  Charon is there, of course, and 
Nessus carries Dante across one of the rivers.  I think it's quite 
possible that the Book of the New Sun is Wolfe playing with the Divine 
Comedy.

Another influence, that I've never really seen anyone address, is 
Nabokov.  Wolfe admits the influence, and Nabokov is a tricky, tricky 
man, and I believe Wolfe learned much from him.  Here is a passage from 
the introduction to the Annotated Lolita (Which Wolfe might well have 
read) called, fittingly, Nabokov's Puppet Show, and which, when I read 
it, blared "Wolfe!" to me.  (In your mind, substitute Wolfe for Nabokov, 
and see what you think.)

"Nabokov's remarks on Gogol help to underscore this analogical 
definition of involution: "All reality is a mask," he writes (p.148), 
and Nabokov's narratives are masques, stagings of his own inventions 
rather than recreations of the naturalistic world.  But, since the 
latter is what most readers expect and demand of fiction, many still do 
not understand what Nabokov is doing.  They are not accustomed to "the 
allusions to something else behind the crudely painted screens"(p.142), 
where the "real plots behind the obvious ones are taking place."  There 
are thus at least two "plots" in all of Nabokov's fiction:  the 
characters in the book, and the consciousness of the creator above it - 
the "real plot" which is visible in the "gaps" and "holes" in the 
narrative....Although other writers have created involuted works, 
Nabokov's self-consciousness is supreme;  and the range and scale of his 
effects, his mastery and control, make him unique."

There's much more.

I know that in my own experience, the second reading of any Wolfe work 
is almost radically different from the first.  As if I were reading a 
*different* book.  Nabokov is the only other author I've had this 
reaction to.

In The White Goddess, Graves mentions the connection between the elm and 
the vine of Dionysus - which, as Borski's pointed out, is what Dennis is 
short for.

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