Subject
[NABOKOV-L] Nina: TRLSK,Spring in Fialta,
That in Aleppo Once & serial souls
That in Aleppo Once & serial souls
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Kryptomnesically induced, or not, Virginia Knight reminded me of Nina in Spring in Fialta.
After returning to TRLSK, I re-discovered a Nina in the novel, now SK's dark love. Her names change, though: she is Nina Toorovetz, later married to Pahl Pahlich Rechnoy. She is Helene von Graun and, perhaps, Mme Lecerf (deer).
Pahlich informs V. about his ex-wife: "your German friends have sent you upon a wild goose-chase because you'll never find her[...] She may be here, and she may be in hell[...] As a matter of fact, I often catch myself thinking that she has never existed." *
Still in TRLSK, we read: "He is said to have been three times to see the same film - a perfectly insipid one called The Enchanted Garden. A couple of months after his death, and a few days after I had learnt who Madame Lecerf really was, I discovered that film in a French cinema where I sat through the performance, with the sole intent of learning why it had attracted him so. Somewhere in the middle the story shifted to the Riviera, and there was a glimpse of bathers basking in the sun. Was Nina among them? Was it her naked shoulder?"
We have then: HH's "Riviera love", various Ninas and SK, like Van, trying to catch sight of his beloved on a flickering screen.
Not only Sebastian's father and mother, not only Sebastian himself, almost all his lovers move incessantly from darkness into a lighted scene, to disappear again in darkness, again and again **.
............................................................................................................
* Following Alexander Drescher's information[ A Reading of Nabokov's "That in Aleppo Once..."by Alexander N. Drescher] the poet in "Aleppo" andV., in that story, "in some way share an identity, are twin-like doubles", as it also happens with SK and his half-brother, also a V., who writes "I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows".
Sandy links "That in Aleppo Once" to "Spring in Fialta" and quotes "three 'poetic' images that point specifically to "Spring in Fialta," preparing for the confusing disclosure of the poet's marriage": "Although I can produce documentary proofs of matrimony, I am positive now that my wife never existed. You may know her name from some other source, but that does not matter: it is the name of an illusion."[...] By allusion, the wife also has a shared identity, is an alternative incarnation of Fialta's Nina, the unavailable, idealized love of that story's narrator." Now we may tentatively add TRLSK to these two.
** The image of the bird traversing a lighted room is a Christian simile for eternity and immortality (Cf. The Venerable Bede) - it only happens once.
Nabokov wrote about these sudden appearances and disappearances quite differently.
In "The Art of Literature and Commonsense" (1951): "human life is but a first instalment of a serial soul and that one's individual secret is not lost in the process of earthly dissolution, becomes something more than an optimistic conjecture, and even more than a matter of religious faith, when we remember that only commonsense rules immortality out"
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After returning to TRLSK, I re-discovered a Nina in the novel, now SK's dark love. Her names change, though: she is Nina Toorovetz, later married to Pahl Pahlich Rechnoy. She is Helene von Graun and, perhaps, Mme Lecerf (deer).
Pahlich informs V. about his ex-wife: "your German friends have sent you upon a wild goose-chase because you'll never find her[...] She may be here, and she may be in hell[...] As a matter of fact, I often catch myself thinking that she has never existed." *
Still in TRLSK, we read: "He is said to have been three times to see the same film - a perfectly insipid one called The Enchanted Garden. A couple of months after his death, and a few days after I had learnt who Madame Lecerf really was, I discovered that film in a French cinema where I sat through the performance, with the sole intent of learning why it had attracted him so. Somewhere in the middle the story shifted to the Riviera, and there was a glimpse of bathers basking in the sun. Was Nina among them? Was it her naked shoulder?"
We have then: HH's "Riviera love", various Ninas and SK, like Van, trying to catch sight of his beloved on a flickering screen.
Not only Sebastian's father and mother, not only Sebastian himself, almost all his lovers move incessantly from darkness into a lighted scene, to disappear again in darkness, again and again **.
............................................................................................................
* Following Alexander Drescher's information[ A Reading of Nabokov's "That in Aleppo Once..."by Alexander N. Drescher] the poet in "Aleppo" andV., in that story, "in some way share an identity, are twin-like doubles", as it also happens with SK and his half-brother, also a V., who writes "I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows".
Sandy links "That in Aleppo Once" to "Spring in Fialta" and quotes "three 'poetic' images that point specifically to "Spring in Fialta," preparing for the confusing disclosure of the poet's marriage": "Although I can produce documentary proofs of matrimony, I am positive now that my wife never existed. You may know her name from some other source, but that does not matter: it is the name of an illusion."[...] By allusion, the wife also has a shared identity, is an alternative incarnation of Fialta's Nina, the unavailable, idealized love of that story's narrator." Now we may tentatively add TRLSK to these two.
** The image of the bird traversing a lighted room is a Christian simile for eternity and immortality (Cf. The Venerable Bede) - it only happens once.
Nabokov wrote about these sudden appearances and disappearances quite differently.
In "The Art of Literature and Commonsense" (1951): "human life is but a first instalment of a serial soul and that one's individual secret is not lost in the process of earthly dissolution, becomes something more than an optimistic conjecture, and even more than a matter of religious faith, when we remember that only commonsense rules immortality out"
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/