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Re: Query: interesting association
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Re: [NABOKV-L] Query: interesting associationS K-B on VN's Bend Sinister:The square root of I is I. : "another sweet tease to add to my growing folder "VN and Mathematics. ... VN's little joke seems to play on i-the-imaginary-number and I-the-possibly-unreal-EGO, as posited by the Viennese Delegation!" ...
"The first thing that would attract a mathematician's attention is the leading definite article THE, implying only ONE SQUARE ROOT for I. Taking a square root normally gives TWO solutions... So, if we take VN's "THE square root of I is I" 'literally' (or rather, mathematically!), it reduces to the POSSIBLY INTENDED proposition that "I is zero." At least, it's a very arcane way of 'eliminating the authorial I.'
JM: Unfortunately, since my math is too feeble, I won't even try to think about (a) "Supposing VN meant..." ; (b) "If VN had in mind..."
After S K-B emphasized the leading definite article "The", instead of an "A", I' decided to take his word and find in that VN's contradictory indication of THE "eliminated authorial I".
Unless S K-B meant "AN authorial I" - which would suggest the multiplicity, if not of voices, of imaginary "ego"s. After all, for the Viennese Delegation the "ego" is not unreal, it's an "imaginary" construction ( cf. Lacan's "mirror-stage") whereas, as I suppose, no authorial voice comes from the author's "I" ( as in "ego", "moi", "Ich" ), but it is the unique expression of ... "S" ( "subject").
George Shimanovich: "On the other hand, Red Admiral in the end of PF is indeed Hazel."
JM: At the end of PF we find Gradus wearing a "red admirable" tie (its dark underside wing and its red bend sinister stripe), besides the actual butterfly. Multiple butterflies: real, unreal, imaginary, allegorical? Why would Gradus be wearing such a tie? What is his relation to Kinbote and...Hazel? I ask this because, while I was virtually metamorphosing a book into a button ( like VN's porter replaced by a...switch(?), and checking digital items, I found part of Kinbote's note on line 802 with the strange words I shall underline below:
"the very earth seemed to be sighing after our Lord Jesus Christ. On such sunny, sad mornings I always feel in my bones that there is a chance yet of my not being excluded from Heaven, and that salvation may be granted to me despite the frozen mud and horror in my heart. As I was ascending with bowed head the gravel path to my poor rented house, I heard with absolute distinction, as if he were standing at my shoulder and speaking loudly, as to a slightly deaf man, Shade's voice say: "Come tonight, Charlie."..
Frozen mud and horror: does this conjure up any kind of guilt feeling towards Hazel's death in a frozen swamp? Impossible ( unless we follow Kunin's line of argumentation, which might explain Gradus and butterfly too).
Sandy Klein's link to Don R. Lewis's review of the film "Little Children and parts of his text: "Yet he was right! "Lolita," for as sad, disturbing, sexually offensive and difficult as it is to read, the book is also a fairly black comedy that only a person able to set aside their disgust at a pedophile can really get.... I found myself chuckling aloud many times. Is that wrong? Maybe, if you're too uptight to react honestly to an honest movie..."
JM: What curious wording ( for example, he raises not an ethical question, but a moralistic & group controlled : "Is that wrong?"). Most books written by VN have a strong strain of "black comedy", Baudelairian humor and other kinds of "comicity".
In my opinion it is not necessary to "set aside one's disgust at a pedophile", nor abandon our repudiation of "totalitarian regimes and death penalties" ( as in "Bend Sinister") to honestly enjoy every word, sentence and images placed before our eyes by VN.
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"The first thing that would attract a mathematician's attention is the leading definite article THE, implying only ONE SQUARE ROOT for I. Taking a square root normally gives TWO solutions... So, if we take VN's "THE square root of I is I" 'literally' (or rather, mathematically!), it reduces to the POSSIBLY INTENDED proposition that "I is zero." At least, it's a very arcane way of 'eliminating the authorial I.'
JM: Unfortunately, since my math is too feeble, I won't even try to think about (a) "Supposing VN meant..." ; (b) "If VN had in mind..."
After S K-B emphasized the leading definite article "The", instead of an "A", I' decided to take his word and find in that VN's contradictory indication of THE "eliminated authorial I".
Unless S K-B meant "AN authorial I" - which would suggest the multiplicity, if not of voices, of imaginary "ego"s. After all, for the Viennese Delegation the "ego" is not unreal, it's an "imaginary" construction ( cf. Lacan's "mirror-stage") whereas, as I suppose, no authorial voice comes from the author's "I" ( as in "ego", "moi", "Ich" ), but it is the unique expression of ... "S" ( "subject").
George Shimanovich: "On the other hand, Red Admiral in the end of PF is indeed Hazel."
JM: At the end of PF we find Gradus wearing a "red admirable" tie (its dark underside wing and its red bend sinister stripe), besides the actual butterfly. Multiple butterflies: real, unreal, imaginary, allegorical? Why would Gradus be wearing such a tie? What is his relation to Kinbote and...Hazel? I ask this because, while I was virtually metamorphosing a book into a button ( like VN's porter replaced by a...switch(?), and checking digital items, I found part of Kinbote's note on line 802 with the strange words I shall underline below:
"the very earth seemed to be sighing after our Lord Jesus Christ. On such sunny, sad mornings I always feel in my bones that there is a chance yet of my not being excluded from Heaven, and that salvation may be granted to me despite the frozen mud and horror in my heart. As I was ascending with bowed head the gravel path to my poor rented house, I heard with absolute distinction, as if he were standing at my shoulder and speaking loudly, as to a slightly deaf man, Shade's voice say: "Come tonight, Charlie."..
Frozen mud and horror: does this conjure up any kind of guilt feeling towards Hazel's death in a frozen swamp? Impossible ( unless we follow Kunin's line of argumentation, which might explain Gradus and butterfly too).
Sandy Klein's link to Don R. Lewis's review of the film "Little Children and parts of his text: "Yet he was right! "Lolita," for as sad, disturbing, sexually offensive and difficult as it is to read, the book is also a fairly black comedy that only a person able to set aside their disgust at a pedophile can really get.... I found myself chuckling aloud many times. Is that wrong? Maybe, if you're too uptight to react honestly to an honest movie..."
JM: What curious wording ( for example, he raises not an ethical question, but a moralistic & group controlled : "Is that wrong?"). Most books written by VN have a strong strain of "black comedy", Baudelairian humor and other kinds of "comicity".
In my opinion it is not necessary to "set aside one's disgust at a pedophile", nor abandon our repudiation of "totalitarian regimes and death penalties" ( as in "Bend Sinister") to honestly enjoy every word, sentence and images placed before our eyes by VN.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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