Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0016783, Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:42:25 -0300

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Re: great novelist (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin) ...
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Re: [NABOKV-L] great novelist (Lolita, Pale Fire, Pnin) ...Stan K-B: This debate is increasingly confusing! Let's note once again that the PREY deceives while the PREDATOR strives to avoid being deceived. Getting things wrong is bad for both sides. Note, predators are often also prey as you move up the food chain. Learning to eat without being eaten is a constant force in Natural Selection [...] Speaking of Man as predator, the counter-productive irony is that the water-blobbed wing might prove irresistible to VN's net..

JM: I was reminded of another cute exchange, from St. Exupery's 1943 "The Little Prince":
The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.
"Are there hunters on that planet?"
"No"
"Ah, that's interesting! Are there chickens?"
"No"
"Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox.

I bet VN netted more butterflies and moths than a swarm of sharp-sighted birds or lonely toads. Besides, VN was not hunting familiar beauties while engaged in registering recurrent patterns or demarcating differences... It would nice to find, in the history of science's recent developments, a text like the one J A seemed to inquire about, titled: "The idea of God and the proofs of his existence in Nabokov", along the lines of François Picavet's "The idea of God in the philosophy of St. Anselm" or Koyré's "The idea of God and the proofs of his existence in Descartes".

I bring up again Stephen Blackwells indications: On Nabokov's physics, see also Robert Grossmith, "Shaking the Kaleidoscope: Physics and Metaphysics in Nabokov's Bend Sinister". Russian Literature TriQuarterly (Ann Arbor, MI), 24, 1991, pp. 151-162.
See also S.Blackwell , "The Poetics of Science in, and around, Nabokov's The Gift", The Russian Review, Russian Review. 62 (2003): 243-61[...] and Marina Grishakova's The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov's Fiction: Narrative Strategies and Cultural Frames. Tartu: Tartu UP, 2006.


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