Desk Notes No.25

John Singer Sargent and Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire

Apr 28, 2024

Dear friends,

Hope you’re all well and enjoying the arrival of new and generous weather. April has been a month of recovery here in the garden. Just as it seemed the winter gales had passed, the fence builder arrived to repair three damaged posts barely holding up the border. Basking in sun one moment and bombarded by hail another, he described the prospect of working in his own garden as a ‘busman’s holiday.’ Yet his efforts here have created a warm and sheltered spot for a sad looking plum tree, a yellowing, pot-bound rhododendron and a tree peony. A little late for planting these in the ground safely, I can only keep my fingers crossed they will settle in quickly.

Meanwhile the tulips I planted last year have burst into life and, after three weeks of bloom, are beginning to turn. Pastel pinks have faded to delicate white, their once robust petals turning translucent in the sun. Red stripes are dissolving into yellow. Full, fluffy doubles, open wide are drowsy at the edges, ready to fall. This sense of an ending is made less sorrowful only because it’s the first. In the second of two raised beds, later tulips lie in wait; jewel tones of deep amber and garnets almost black, red rubies and the curious emerald of the peculiar tulip ‘green king.’ But the rain has not been kind. Brown specks of the virus ‘tulip fire’ mark the flowers, large splodges sully the leaves. Gardening is a gamble, and whether the bulbs survive to see another spring remains to be seen. But even if their lives be short, they have rallied me this year and for that I’m grateful.

Pictures — Sargent & Fashion at Tate Britain until 7 July 2024

Print — Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1962

Pictures

Sargent & Fashion at Tate Britain until 7 July 2024

John Singer Sargent’s 1884 portrait of Virginie Gautreau, known as Madame X, reveals just how important a sitter’s dress could be. Sargent’s decision to paint Virginie with the strap of her fitted velvet gown sliding off her shoulder caused a scandal so great he felt compelled to leave Paris. Virginie was pleased with the painting, but it was deemed indecent and Sargent repainted the strap.

Tate Britain’s latest exhibition explores John Singer Sargent’s use of fashion and his attraction to painting fabric. Each room contains at least one original item of clothing as seen in the pictures, allowing us to compare reality with artistic vision. Stepping inside we see how Sargent manipulates a black opera cloak to reveal its deep pink lining, “creating a sinuous diagonal streak which guides the viewer’s eye across the surface of the portrait,” dressing the sitter with pearls, bangles and feathers. A particular highlight is the crimson velvet gown worn in the simple portrait of Louise Pomeroy, wife of Charles Inches. The panels on the bodice are interchangeable, allowing it to be adapted to a body changing during pregnancy. In the portrait of Mrs Hugh Hammersley Sargent’s velvet is so soft and sumptuous you want to reach through the canvas and touch it.

As a celebration of Sargent, the exhibition is a must see, but many of the captions make only a tenuous references to the outfits. The name of the show as it appeared last year in Boston — Fashioned by Sargent — seems more fitting, implying there is much more going on here than the clothes. Many of the pictures have the look of a glossy magazine shoot, complete with their emphasis on styling not just the garments, but the moment. Lady Agnew could come from a luxury perfume ad. She leans back in her chair, her arm dangling loosely, caressing its wooden detailing. Translucent organza sleeves reveal pale flesh beneath. Her gaze is unwavering; seductive and transfixing.

Sargent’s pictures of youthful female beauty are among the most powerful here. The suggestiveness of Madame X derives not just from her slipping strap, but also her pose. Turning away from us, her face in profile, she invites us to gaze upon the alluring line of her neck and exposed décolleté. Inspired by classical sculpture, this pose appears to empower its subject while simultaneously offering her up to the male gaze.

The sensuality of Sargent’s pictures extends to the intimate realm of the family. The portraits of Mrs Fiske Warren and her Daughter (1903) and Mrs Carl Meyer and her Children (1896) could similarly come from a celebrity profile in Vogue or Vanity Fair. The opulence of the fabrics — soft, draped, gathered — creates intimacy with the subjects and evoke physical touch. Faces are pressed together, children shelter behind furniture, cheeks are flushed. These two pictures are painted quite differently; the clothes in Mrs Fiske are much more impressionistic demonstrating Sargent’s talent for that alluring contrast between light reflective satin and sumptuous fur. Both pictures have the spontaneity of photography.

The penultimate room shifts away from portraiture to explore Sargent’s attraction to fabrics more generally, as he experimented in outdoor scenes. My personal favourites, Group With Parasols (1904-5) and Two Girls in White Dresses (1911) reveal bodies and fabric tumbled together on the grass. They are fluid, natural, unrestrained and curiously erotic. In Group With Parasols, four figures — two men and two women — nap together in dappled shade. The head of Leonard Harrison is cushioned in the lap of Lillian Mellor, his knees rest against those of his brother, their trousers bathed in warm light. You can almost hear the faint rustle of fabric and soft breathing, almost feel the warmth of the sun.

Two Girls in White Dresses (1911) is a stranger picture, once it’s discovered that both are the same model reclining in different poses. Squeezed into the top third of the picture, her face cast away reading, Sargent’s niece Rose-Marie Ormond lies horizontally across the canvas. The rest of the frame is consumed by her positioned vertically, lying uphill, looking down towards us at her feet. Her expression is ambiguous, she’s both vulnerable and enticing. Her white satin dress fills the bottom of the frame, voluminous and undulating, as if inviting us to dive in. The caption tells us “critics compared the image to ‘a flowing mountain stream’, and a ‘liquefaction of clothes’.” There can be no doubt about its hypnotic power.

Print

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1962

Pale Fire is a novel like no other. It purports to be the final poem of a recently murdered poet, John Shade. This poem in four cantos, Pale Fire, is sandwiched between a foreword and lengthy commentary by critic Charles Kinbote in which he explains how the poem should be interpreted. It quickly becomes clear that Kinbote is obsessive about Shade and has, at best, obtained the rights to publish his poem by underhand means. Nabokov is the master of unreliable narrators and first person anti-heroes — look no further than Lolita’s Humbert Humbert — and, reading between the lines, Kinbote is not well liked or respected. A true narcissist, Kinbote attributes his unpopularity not to his lack of academic credentials or affability, but to petty jealousy.

“A thick venom of envy began squirting at me as soon as academic suburbia realised that John Shade valued my society of all other people.”

Pre-dating Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author by five years, the novel exposes the risks of blindly reading too much of ourselves in the text. Kinbote uses the foreword to assert control over Shade’s work; claiming only his knowledge can fill the gaps. He resurrects Shade’s drafts — drafts the author himself would almost certainly have burned in his incinerator — drafts that suit Kinbote’s own purpose.

“Although [the commentary notes], in conformity of custom, come after the poem, the reader is advised to consult them first and then study the poem with their help, re-reading them of course as he goes through its text, and perhaps, after having done with the poem, consulting them a third time so as to complete the picture… Let me state that without my notes Shade’s text simply has no human reality at all since the human reality of such a poem as his (being too skittish and reticent for an autobiographical work), with the omission of many pithy lines carelessly rejected by him, has to depend entirely on the reality of its author and his surroundings, attachments and so forth, a reality that only my notes can provide. To this statement my dear poet would probably not have subscribed, but, for better or worse it is the commentator who has the last word.”

Absolutely chilling. And every writer’s worst nightmare.

Whether the reader follows his advice is entirely a matter of choice, and part of the novel’s allure. Nonetheless, Kinbote gets everything wrong. Many of the references in Shade’s autobiographical poem go right over Kinbote’s head. Others Kinbote lazily misunderstands and, when envy enters the mix, he deliberately ignores. Kinbote reserves extra resentment for Shade’s beloved wife Sybil and misogyny is rife. Nabokov’s writing is a dark delight; everything buried in the subtext and there’s intense pleasure to be had in Kinbote’s unravelling.

Despite his claim to special knowledge of the author, Kinbote has known Shade just a few months, orchestrating their meeting by renting the house next door. In this time, he feeds Shade a story about revolution and regicide in his home country of Zembla, imploring Shade to preserve it in poetry. Convinced Pale Fire is this masterwork, the commentary becomes a vehicle for Kinbote’s own tale. Tenuous link after tenuous link, it becomes clear Kinbote is a fantasist grappling with disappointment. Much of his story has been lost. Pale Fire is evidently very personal to Shade, exploring his daughter’s suicide and his relationship with death. Bitterness begins to inflect Kinbote’s infatuation and awe as he criticises the direction of the poem and the deletion of his preferred lines. It’s easy to imagine Shade as a put-upon neighbour, using his wife to screen Kinbote’s calls, rolling his eyes at repeated stories, acquiescing with nods and smiles, attempting to change the subject.

“One would imagine that a poet, in the course of composing a long and difficult piece, would simply jump at the opportunity of talking about his triumphs and tribulations. But nothing of the sort! All I got in reply to my infinitely gentle and cautious interrogations were such phrases as: “Yep. It’s coming along nicely,’ or ‘Nope, I’m not talkin’,’ and finally he brushed me off with a rather offensive anecdote about King Alfred who, it was said, liked the stories of a Norwegian attendant he had, but drove him away when engaged in other business.”

Of course, the poet’s imminent death lurks in the distance. While Kinbote criticises the stale and overdone dual timeline of Shade’s second canto, he employs the same device, fusing Shade’s timeline with that of his murderer. Alone, the Zemblan storyline is nothing special, but the novel is made riveting by the rich language Nabokov employs to describe it; the particular register that conveys a deep sense of Kinbote’s warped reality and cold feeling.

“I find nothing more conducive to the blunting of one’s appetite than to have none but elderly persons sitting around one at table, fouling their napkins with the disintegration of their make-up.”

The originality of Nabokov’s expression, in his second language, never fails to surprise me.

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