8. STARNBERGERSEE, a lake southwest of Munich, was where Bavarian King Ludwig II was found dead in June of 1886, having drowned in shallow waters in much the same way as Hamlet’s Ophelia (see note 172). Ludwig, known as the Mad King or the Swan King, was a dedicated patron of Richard Wagner and even decorated the walls of his palace, Neuschwanstein, with scenes from the operas of Richard Wagner.
WAGNER’S OPERAS, often inspired by Grail** legend themes, appear several times in this poem: see Richard Wagner, Tristan und Isolde 1.1.5-8 (1865; tr. Richard le Gallienne 1909) at notes 34, 42, 92 and 137 and lines 31-34 and 42; Götterdammerung (The Twilight of the Gods, 1876, tr. Frederick Jameson, ca. 1916) at lines 266-295 and note 266; and Parsifal (1882, tr. Henry Edward Krehbiel, 1920), at line 201.
WALLS THAT TALK, beyond the Wagnerian murals and tapestries at Neuschwanstein, will make several more appearances in this poem, through its allusions if not directly. See the painted walls of Cymbeline’s daughter Imogen (notes 77 and 80); the walls in Cleopatra’s chambers, retelling the story of Philomela’s tapestries (lines 99 and 105); the ceiling panoramas of Cleopatra (line 93) and John Day’s Plush Bee (note 197), depicting the hunter Acteon coming across the goddess Diana bathing in the woods (see notes 77 and 197); and, at line 98, the painted sylvan scene of the Golden Bough**. See also Virgil*, Aeneid 1.456-493 and 6.14-31, where Aeneas finds his Trojan War retold “in sequent picture” (1.461) in Juno’s shrine, then later finds other stories told on the doors of the Sybil’s temple. Finally, see Whitman†, Memories 11:
“O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?”
10. HOFGARTEN is a Munich park with a central pavilion dedicated to Diana, the same wood goddess with whom Acteon and the Plush Bee and Imogene were infatuated (see note 8 above).
12. ORIGINS: “I am not Russian, I come from Lithuania, I am really a German.” This statement, effectively an intertwining knot of dried up roots, appears to be an overheard fragment, contextually from someone other than the poet or his companion. Compare Virgil’s introduction in Dante*, Inferno 1.66-69:
“Not man; man once I was,
And both my parents were of Lombardy,
...Sub Julio' was I born...”
See also Adrian, in Shakespeare*, The Tempest: 2.1.82-83:
“Widow Dido, said you? You make me study of that.
She was of Carthage, not of Tunis.”
This refers to Queen Dido of Carthage; see Virgil*, Aeneid 1.342-343, where Dido is introduced by her origins:
“Upon the throne is Dido, exiled there
from Tyre.”
Tyre, now in Lebanon, was a seaport of ancient Phoenicia; see lines 47 and 312 and note 312 for other Phoenician references. For other Dido and Carthage allusions, see notes 92 and 307.
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* see note 0.1 **see note 0.2 †see note 2
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