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/lit/ - Literature

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18124338 No.18124338 [Reply] [Original]

Do I read the poem first commentary after, or do I read the poem with the commentary together?

>> No.18124342

>>18124338

Read the poem first, then again with the commentary, then the poem again.

>> No.18124344

>>18124342
Thanks, anon

>> No.18124368

>>18124338
Honestly, I just read the poem. I don't think you need to worry that much about the endnotes.

>> No.18124382
File: 66 KB, 625x626, thisisbait.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
18124382

>>18124368

>> No.18124628

>>18124338
Unironically you can just read the endnotes

>> No.18125017

>>18124338
The book can be read in multiple ways and none of them are incorrect. It's one of those books that gain a lot when reread. For your first reading, you can follow this anon's advice >>18124342, but you can also read the poem with the commentary, or the commentary and then the poem and it would be a different but still valid experience.

>> No.18125023

>>18124368
This, if you let commentaries influence how you interpret a poem you're a cuck

>> No.18125703

buy a second copy so that you can read the poem alongside the commentary at the same time

>> No.18125750

>>18124338
Part of the joke is that the poem is terrible and unreadable. Just skim it and focus on the endnotes.

>> No.18125757

>>18124338
Read the commentary and reference the poem

>> No.18125790
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18125790

>>18125750
>Part of the joke is that the poem is terrible and unreadable
I thought it was good

>> No.18125860

>>18125790
he's trolling you

>> No.18125899

>>18125790
>>18125860
/lit/ continually proves that their only metrics for evaluating poetry are whether it rhymes and whether it has allusions

>> No.18125990

>>18125899
it rhymes and has allusions, but it still sucks

>> No.18125993

>>18125990
That's my point

>> No.18126454

>>18125993
???????
What do you mean?

>> No.18126643

>>18124338
I never even read the poem but still understood it. You can say that Kinbote had his true revenge in readers like me.

>> No.18126670

>>18125790
>>18125860
It's genuinely terrible. That's part of the joke. Kinbote simps for him because it gives him association with a published avante garde writer (and he admitted his poetic understanding is fubar). Shade is one of Nabokov's "mediocrities".

>> No.18127314

the way i read it was preface -> poem in entirety -> footnotes flipping back to poem and reading entire areas of poem that felt important. i truly don't think there's a "wrong" way to do it as long as you put the appropriate focus on the footnotes which is the majority of what the book is about. really the poem is almost entirely unrelated from the footnotes which is part of the joke