Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0015854, Fri, 4 Jan 2008 16:36:48 +0000

Subject
Re: "unpublished poem version of Lolita"?
Date
Body
On 29/12/07 23:27, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:

> When you laugh, I want to transform the entire world so it will mirror
> you...aren't you and I gods? . . . I sense in my blood the rotation of
> unexplorable universes. . .(VN,"Gods")
>
> Happy 2008 to you all...
> JM
>
> Jansy & Fellow Nabokovistas: I reciprocate, being too old and ungodlike to
> rotate. The quotation is new to me and especially exciting with its
> mathematical implications: the contrasts between reflective and rotational
> symmetries (which have deep influences in cosmology).
>
> Had I stumbled across this verse unattributed, I think (or dare to think) that
> I would have identified our master¹s voice?
>
> My 2008 has been happy SO FAR! Urly daze [early days], as we Scousers say. I
> received as a prezzie the Pocket Penguin 34, CLOUD, CASTLE, LAKE (2005) which
> offers five of VN¹s finest short stories at the improbable price of 30 Brit
> pence per masterpiece! There¹s no explicit acknowledgement to translators, but
> since the stories are taken from earlier collections (out of reach as I type),
> I assume we are enjoying the fruits of Dmitri¹s labours, many with his
> father¹s collaboration.
>
> DN: Lang mae yer lum reek! (Long may your chimney smoke)
>
> There are 70 Pocket Penguins in the series, celebrating Penguin¹s 70 years. I
> shudder un peu at some of the non-writers selected, but, what the hell ...
>
> For Jansy and others on dis staff, I offer VN¹s tease from The Admiralty
> Spire:
>
> Œ ... how easy it is to guess that the author¹s name is a pseudonym, that the
> author is not a man! Every sentence of yours buttons to the left.¹
>
> (Coincidentally, last night I was watching as Siegfried made a similar
> discovery in Act 3. Bru:nhilde¹s shield must have buckled to the left! That¹s
> no man, he screams ripping off his Auntie¹s bra. Real naughty, that Ring
> Cycle.)
>
> This brings us back to VN¹s Gods:
>
> When you laugh, I want to transform the entire world so it will mirror
> you...aren't you and I gods? . . . I sense in my blood the rotation of
> unexplorable universes. . .(VN,"Gods")
>
>
> The poet-god (did the original have God upper-case?) seems to have real blood
> to sway his senses, the sign of a Greek demi-god or hints of the (related?)
> Christian Man-God reincarnation. Either way, VN gives us prophetic
> signs¹n¹wonders: serious cosmologists do posit multiverses which are forever
> unexplorable -- beyond direct spatio-temporal relations with our local cosmos.
> (Eddington in the late 1920s was exploring whether a 3+1-dimensional world
> could coexist with a 2+2-dimensional world. His answer: yes, but neither could
> ever know about the other¹s existence. This was at Cambridge during VN¹s very
> residence! Do we have a date for the Gods poem?)
>
> Nearer to earth, in the poposed mirror-image transformation, the loved-one¹s
> vestments will button to the right. But, of course, male coats will now button
> to the left. Note that this chirality is directly related to the two
> directions of rotational spin (male coats wrap clockise; female counter- or
> anti-clockwise. These and other spins play a key role in particle physics. Our
> universe may well FAVOUR male over female spin, or vice versa!) Is this just
> the chiral reversal of purely arbitrary dress-codes, or will the Viennese
> Witchdoctors who love to probe VN¹s ID and ID-EST, seek some fanciful
> homoerotic deviations.
>
> My spin [sic], which I hope Nabokovians will support at this festive point in
> space-time, is that we all unbutton in the appropriate direction and cavort
> naked with Ada and ardour, Hum and Lol, Shades and Grades of Kinny and Pninny
> and all, in VN¹s transformed universe.
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle


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