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Re: ck to JM re: tesselation and parapet.
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ck to JM re: tesselation and parapet.
Jansy: My intention is to invite you to help me explore these "tactile" issues ( mouth, eyes, fingers), not intrude any deffinite or fully explored conclusion.
Carolyn Kunin: "I too have noticed the sectile/mosaic/tesselated constellation....Unlike you however I can't think why it would be useful to explore something without the intention of coming to any conclusion.... It seems to me that VN likes to leave these little repeated word droppings that don't in themselves add up to anything. But one day, with luck or an inspired guess, you will pick up a book and find that the same word droppings are there.
Jansy: Dear Carolyn, I didn't mean there are no conclusions to be found, although many of them may be so subjective that they will not make sense when shared with others. Those that add up to something have to be demonstrated and I have nothing to show, except "word droppings" I think are worth to bring up. Perhaps if we could mount the mosaics to see them from the moon a pattern might be discerned. Or, who knows, when we find the precise concave or convex mirror surface to read them there.
Word Droppings and Tesselation
(1) ( S.O.Ch.3,1964, pages 29/30) Asked to read a few random notes from a work in progress, VN replied:
" This box contains index cards with some notes I made at various time...and discarded when writing Pale Fire. It's a little batch of rejects. Help yourself... "Time without consciousness -lower animal world; time with consciousness-man; consciousness without time- some still higher state"...
Kinbote's Foreword: As a rule, Shade destroyed drafts the moment he ceased to need them...But he saved those twelve cards because of the unused felicities shining among the dross of used draftings...
Shade's poem Pale Fire, lines 507-510: "You and I,/ And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye/ To Yewshade, in another, higher state"
(2)(SM, 1947, Ch.3, page 77)
" A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die."
(Bend Sinister, preface, 1963)
"Krug, in a sudden moonburst of madness, understands that he is in good hands: nothing on earth really matters, there is nothing to fear, and death is but a question of style, a mere literary device, a musical resolution. And as Olga's rosy soul...bombinates in the damp dark at the bright window of my room..."
(Bend Sinister,1947, last sentence)
Twang. A good night for mothing.
(3) On "terminal initials"
Pale Fire: Comments on line 502, IPH: " Its terminal initials, HP, provide its students with the abbreviation Hi-Phi, and Shade neatly parodies this in his IPH, or If, combinations"
Transparent Things: Ch.1: "Hullo, person!", Ch. 2: " As the person, Hugh Person...extricated his angular bulk from the taxi..." .... (IF???? IPH??? Peut-être/potato?)
LATH: It has taken him time--even if only a few moments--to cover distance HP in thought. By the time he reaches P he has accumulated duration, he is saddled with it! Why then is it so extraordinary that he cannot imagine himself turning on his heel? Nobody can imagine in physical terms the act of reversing the order of time. Time is not reversible. (252)
Jansy: quotations about art and science ( that I should have posted yesterday):
SO, ch.1,1962: " "the passion of science and the patience of poetry...the specific detail to the generalization, images to ideas, obscure facts to clear symbols".
SO, Ch2, 1962: " a kind of merging between two things, between the precision of poetry and the excitement of pure science"..." a good combination should always contain a certain element of deception"..."I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions".
SO, Ch 6,1967 : "There is no science without fancy, and no art without facts."
SO,ch3, 1964: Lolita... "composition of a beautiful puzzle - its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look"...."imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art...Art is never simple."
CK: p.s. I think that the reticulation of the veil may be part of the sectile/tesselated word group. But it does seem separate. Interesting.
JM: I agree with you but in my opinion this is more a matter of cumulative effects of sound and meaning than an etymological question. Texture, textile, reticulation, veil, muslin, tesselation, topology, mosaic...chips of a new block?
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Jansy: My intention is to invite you to help me explore these "tactile" issues ( mouth, eyes, fingers), not intrude any deffinite or fully explored conclusion.
Carolyn Kunin: "I too have noticed the sectile/mosaic/tesselated constellation....Unlike you however I can't think why it would be useful to explore something without the intention of coming to any conclusion.... It seems to me that VN likes to leave these little repeated word droppings that don't in themselves add up to anything. But one day, with luck or an inspired guess, you will pick up a book and find that the same word droppings are there.
Jansy: Dear Carolyn, I didn't mean there are no conclusions to be found, although many of them may be so subjective that they will not make sense when shared with others. Those that add up to something have to be demonstrated and I have nothing to show, except "word droppings" I think are worth to bring up. Perhaps if we could mount the mosaics to see them from the moon a pattern might be discerned. Or, who knows, when we find the precise concave or convex mirror surface to read them there.
Word Droppings and Tesselation
(1) ( S.O.Ch.3,1964, pages 29/30) Asked to read a few random notes from a work in progress, VN replied:
" This box contains index cards with some notes I made at various time...and discarded when writing Pale Fire. It's a little batch of rejects. Help yourself... "Time without consciousness -lower animal world; time with consciousness-man; consciousness without time- some still higher state"...
Kinbote's Foreword: As a rule, Shade destroyed drafts the moment he ceased to need them...But he saved those twelve cards because of the unused felicities shining among the dross of used draftings...
Shade's poem Pale Fire, lines 507-510: "You and I,/ And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye/ To Yewshade, in another, higher state"
(2)(SM, 1947, Ch.3, page 77)
" A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die."
(Bend Sinister, preface, 1963)
"Krug, in a sudden moonburst of madness, understands that he is in good hands: nothing on earth really matters, there is nothing to fear, and death is but a question of style, a mere literary device, a musical resolution. And as Olga's rosy soul...bombinates in the damp dark at the bright window of my room..."
(Bend Sinister,1947, last sentence)
Twang. A good night for mothing.
(3) On "terminal initials"
Pale Fire: Comments on line 502, IPH: " Its terminal initials, HP, provide its students with the abbreviation Hi-Phi, and Shade neatly parodies this in his IPH, or If, combinations"
Transparent Things: Ch.1: "Hullo, person!", Ch. 2: " As the person, Hugh Person...extricated his angular bulk from the taxi..." .... (IF???? IPH??? Peut-être/potato?)
LATH: It has taken him time--even if only a few moments--to cover distance HP in thought. By the time he reaches P he has accumulated duration, he is saddled with it! Why then is it so extraordinary that he cannot imagine himself turning on his heel? Nobody can imagine in physical terms the act of reversing the order of time. Time is not reversible. (252)
Jansy: quotations about art and science ( that I should have posted yesterday):
SO, ch.1,1962: " "the passion of science and the patience of poetry...the specific detail to the generalization, images to ideas, obscure facts to clear symbols".
SO, Ch2, 1962: " a kind of merging between two things, between the precision of poetry and the excitement of pure science"..." a good combination should always contain a certain element of deception"..."I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions".
SO, Ch 6,1967 : "There is no science without fancy, and no art without facts."
SO,ch3, 1964: Lolita... "composition of a beautiful puzzle - its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look"...."imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the back yard of primitive art...Art is never simple."
CK: p.s. I think that the reticulation of the veil may be part of the sectile/tesselated word group. But it does seem separate. Interesting.
JM: I agree with you but in my opinion this is more a matter of cumulative effects of sound and meaning than an etymological question. Texture, textile, reticulation, veil, muslin, tesselation, topology, mosaic...chips of a new block?
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