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Re: THOUGHTS: Nabokov, Plato, and extratextual characters
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J. Aisenberg: 1.The "he" in that quotation is Fyodor's dead father[...] 2. I've been slightly misunderstood on the handwalking issue[...] I was being ironic about the handwalking comparison[...] I merely wanted to use an example from Ada to demonstrate my point that ideal butterfly specimens are created by memory's use of language to perceive things[...]As for the quote from Transparent Things and Hochard's re: "Human life can be compared to a person dancing in a variety of forms around his own self: thus the vegetable of our first picture book encircled a boy in his dream - green cucumber, blue eggplant [...]their spinning ronde going faster and faster and gradually forming a transparent ring of banded colours around a dead person or planet." The nucleus (concept) is dead, there is no ultimate "reality". The funny thing is the dead planet or person of this quote winds up, I think, seeming more concrete than transparent ring of banded colors, rather like those colored panes from the veranda of Speak, memory through which N. liked to look as a child. Surely the concept of death and the irrecoverable is the point here. Memory and perception are the colored panes through which one can recall ultimate reality, but because it is lost to our fingertips the transparent colors are all we've got."
JM: Dmitri once posted a sentence from the "Second Addendum to The Gift" (pages 198-234) in "Nabokov's Butterflies" on "A crawling root, the extremity of a tropical creeper..."(Cf.VN-List,23 Oct.2006). In this same passage, Fyodor mentions "the idea of rotation acting upon the ferment of life, and provoked by that ferment itself, is what gave rise in nature to the lawlike regularity of repetition, of recognition, and of logical responsibility, to which the apparatus of human ratiocination, the fruit of the same agitated woodlands, is subordinate... ". So, even though VN distinguishes a reality engendered by memory and perception (individual details), from a reality achieved thru reasoning (abstract thought), he also stresses that both "realities" are constituted by the same "agitated woodlands" and "reflected in that selfsame glass and acquiring its reality solely within it" ( i.e. no Plato, here, no "recollection of ultimate reality" ie. no "fantasy"!)
L.H: "Natasha" : "How I dream, Natasha, how I dream [...] My God! The music of geographical names." [...]
JM: There are no recollections of anything perceived or experienced. Although the "music of geographical names" refers to a poetical dimension, it is still childish in its abuse of language, employed in a kind of verbal-firework display. I can see no relation bt the Baron's enthussing and Fyodor's.
BTW: I remembered a very different, humorous, use of geographical names in "ADA", through the young girl's exploiting fingertrips along Van's body. "
... would it help if I'd touch, are you sure?'
'You bet,' said Van, 'on n'est pas bête à ce point' ('there are limits to stupidity,' colloquial and rude).
'Relief map,' said the primrose prig, 'the rivers of Africa.' Her index traced the blue Nile down into its jungle and traveled up again. 'Now what's this? The cap of the Red Bolete is not half as plushy. In fact' ..
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JM: Dmitri once posted a sentence from the "Second Addendum to The Gift" (pages 198-234) in "Nabokov's Butterflies" on "A crawling root, the extremity of a tropical creeper..."(Cf.VN-List,23 Oct.2006). In this same passage, Fyodor mentions "the idea of rotation acting upon the ferment of life, and provoked by that ferment itself, is what gave rise in nature to the lawlike regularity of repetition, of recognition, and of logical responsibility, to which the apparatus of human ratiocination, the fruit of the same agitated woodlands, is subordinate... ". So, even though VN distinguishes a reality engendered by memory and perception (individual details), from a reality achieved thru reasoning (abstract thought), he also stresses that both "realities" are constituted by the same "agitated woodlands" and "reflected in that selfsame glass and acquiring its reality solely within it" ( i.e. no Plato, here, no "recollection of ultimate reality" ie. no "fantasy"!)
L.H: "Natasha" : "How I dream, Natasha, how I dream [...] My God! The music of geographical names." [...]
JM: There are no recollections of anything perceived or experienced. Although the "music of geographical names" refers to a poetical dimension, it is still childish in its abuse of language, employed in a kind of verbal-firework display. I can see no relation bt the Baron's enthussing and Fyodor's.
BTW: I remembered a very different, humorous, use of geographical names in "ADA", through the young girl's exploiting fingertrips along Van's body. "
... would it help if I'd touch, are you sure?'
'You bet,' said Van, 'on n'est pas bête à ce point' ('there are limits to stupidity,' colloquial and rude).
'Relief map,' said the primrose prig, 'the rivers of Africa.' Her index traced the blue Nile down into its jungle and traveled up again. 'Now what's this? The cap of the Red Bolete is not half as plushy. In fact' ..
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/