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Re: Fw: [NABOKV-L] scientists, Beauharnais and maniambulators...
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Sergei Soloviev [on Kim Beauharnais]:"the name is 'parlant' also: literally "Beau + harnais" is "beautiful harness" but it sounds almost like "Bearnais", and "le Bearnais" was one of the nicknames of French king Henri IV, famous for his love affairs (he was from Bearn, small kingdom between Spain and France).
JM :Kim (sometimes only his flashes) is quite an important character in "ADA".
Do you know if there are articles dealing more specifically with his influence and his fate?
I wonder where this link with womanizer king Henri IV will lead us to?
J.A: "Of course Nabokov was a very accomplished scientist and naturalist, I was mostly referring to his complete lack of physics.[...] The ideal specimen he discusses never, in my opinion, exists as an original one, but acrues over time through recorded comparison[...]
JM: VN's character wrote:"the original of a being, nonexistent in our reality but unique and definite in concept": we know that he believed in another kind of "reality" but I always understood that VN's belief in an otherworld did not interfere with his work as a "naturalist" - one who reached his conclusions after applying original (and consistent) criteria to his recorded comparisons.
J.A: Van Veen's walking on his hands seems to obtain a curious extra-textual meaning when we recall that Ganin in Nabokov's first novel also walked on his hands. Seperate though interesting details, together they form some discrete ideal action having more meaning than anything the specific characters do.
JM: VN made a couple of such meanings clear when he said that Van's Mascodagama stunt used maniambulation to "perform organically what his figures of speech were to perform later in life" (A,185) and that his bodily inversions would later become a visual rendering for "the standing of a metaphor on its head not for the sake of the trick's difficulty, but in order to perceive an ascending waterfall or a sunrise in reverse: a triumph, in a sense, over the ardis of time. Thus the rapture young Mascodagama derived from overcoming gravity was akin to that of artistic revelation". (A,184/5)
It seems to me that his vertical "vertebrate thoughts" (A,421) were probably informed by Nabokov´s own experience while bending over to look at the sky: "This constant shift of the viewpoint conveys a more varied knowledge, fresh vivid glimpses from this or that side. If you have ever tried to stand and bend your head so as to look back between your knees, with your face turned upside down, you will see the world in a totally different light" (LEL,228).
There is also a verbal inversion B.Boyd pointed out (note to part I, chapter 13) noted:" 'King Wing says that the great Vekchelo turned back into an ordinary chelovek at the age I'm now.' 'Vekchelo' stands on its head the Russian for 'person,' chelovek.".
I hadn't remembered Ganin's brachiambulation, though. Thanks, again, this clue might shed more light about what an activity that the author also considered to be "demoniacal".
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JM :Kim (sometimes only his flashes) is quite an important character in "ADA".
Do you know if there are articles dealing more specifically with his influence and his fate?
I wonder where this link with womanizer king Henri IV will lead us to?
J.A: "Of course Nabokov was a very accomplished scientist and naturalist, I was mostly referring to his complete lack of physics.[...] The ideal specimen he discusses never, in my opinion, exists as an original one, but acrues over time through recorded comparison[...]
JM: VN's character wrote:"the original of a being, nonexistent in our reality but unique and definite in concept": we know that he believed in another kind of "reality" but I always understood that VN's belief in an otherworld did not interfere with his work as a "naturalist" - one who reached his conclusions after applying original (and consistent) criteria to his recorded comparisons.
J.A: Van Veen's walking on his hands seems to obtain a curious extra-textual meaning when we recall that Ganin in Nabokov's first novel also walked on his hands. Seperate though interesting details, together they form some discrete ideal action having more meaning than anything the specific characters do.
JM: VN made a couple of such meanings clear when he said that Van's Mascodagama stunt used maniambulation to "perform organically what his figures of speech were to perform later in life" (A,185) and that his bodily inversions would later become a visual rendering for "the standing of a metaphor on its head not for the sake of the trick's difficulty, but in order to perceive an ascending waterfall or a sunrise in reverse: a triumph, in a sense, over the ardis of time. Thus the rapture young Mascodagama derived from overcoming gravity was akin to that of artistic revelation". (A,184/5)
It seems to me that his vertical "vertebrate thoughts" (A,421) were probably informed by Nabokov´s own experience while bending over to look at the sky: "This constant shift of the viewpoint conveys a more varied knowledge, fresh vivid glimpses from this or that side. If you have ever tried to stand and bend your head so as to look back between your knees, with your face turned upside down, you will see the world in a totally different light" (LEL,228).
There is also a verbal inversion B.Boyd pointed out (note to part I, chapter 13) noted:" 'King Wing says that the great Vekchelo turned back into an ordinary chelovek at the age I'm now.' 'Vekchelo' stands on its head the Russian for 'person,' chelovek.".
I hadn't remembered Ganin's brachiambulation, though. Thanks, again, this clue might shed more light about what an activity that the author also considered to be "demoniacal".
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/