Notes for the long poem, continued. Please refer to previous post for clarification on this project.
RAVENNA DIAGRAM READING NOTES #3
“UP NORTH” (p.5)
Change of scene. In stanzas 1-3, description of wilderness lake (Vermilion) in northern Minnesota. “Mnemosyne Point” : poet’s mother (Mary Ravlin Gould) christened family camping area after keynote word from Nabokov.
“Time’s wooden (4th
grade) ruler. Not to break.” : obscure reference to the history-pattern of the poem (contra Pound) outlined in the “preliminaries” section of these notes. Pun on “wooden... ruler” : the metaphysical “ruler” (“King of Kings”) rules from “fleet of ragged little cedars” – or from the Cross. Establishing hegemonic chronology (B.C.-A.D.) of western culture.
Also : the simple childhood memory (mnemosyne). The wooden 4th-grade school ruler.
“Placeness of quiet places” : in this stanza the northern MN landscape is merged with the imagined landscape around Ravenna (cedar, pine swamps near ocean).
“One saturnine pedestrian” : Dante, also Mandelstam (who wrote about Dante’s “long walks”)
“snowbound wedding band” : Dante’s Commedia correlates, interrelates human and divine Love – the Orphic “wedding” with Beatrice (& divinity) in the Paradisal afterlife.
“stream’s bright ford” : the poetic “stream” is the passage between the two realms.
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