Subject
Re: pruning dates
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Date
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Jansy,
It always seemed to me that the "Oh sure," with which Shade accompanies his remark about having words perform like trained fleas was meant to be deflating, pointing out the irony with which he comments on a writer's supposed ability to rule absolutely over language. Maybe I am mistaken about this, but it seemed to me that the old poet, speaking from experience that includes the IPH and the fountain/mountain debacles, realizes that words cannot be used like trained fleas to drive other fleas, such as ideas that won't fly.
Andrew Brown
----- Original Message -----
From: jansymello
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 12:56 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] pruning dates
Hi, Alexey.
Thank you for your message about coincidental dates.
I heard that Dr. Pekka Tammi wrote about these - but his text is in Russian, so it's of no avail to me now.
Actually I was only trying to get all the numbers off my chest while reading Kinbote to mark the orthography for his "cancellations" and searching for more apparitions of Pnin ( I don't have a digital copy of PF).
I did find another "cancel" with only one "L", in notes to lines 433-434 (page 211):
"She would be canceling an illumination or discussing hospital cots with the head nurse"
Also a new reference to Pnin ( note to line 579, page 229):
"Upon referring to my little diary...I dined at their house with the following people: Nattochdag (...); Professor Gordon of the Music Department ( who completely dominated the conversation); the Head of the Russian Department ( a farcical pedant of whom the less said the better); and three or four interchangeable women..."
I wondered if "fustian jokes" ( note to line 286) had any link with a strange quotation I could not place that ends with "fusts in us unused" since it sound so Kinbotean, and I cannot remember his writing it ...
But here is something that I can still ask you concerning PF and ADA:
Following note 334 ( page 193 EL) where Kinbote discusses the Hunted Barn - later dismantled "to avoid its catching fire", we find that " Science tells us, by the way, that the Earth would not merely fall apart, but vanish like a ghost, if Electricity were suddenly removed from the world".
Although I agree with John Shade that "one can harness words like performing fleas and make them drive other fleas" ( page 214), I could not keep from wondering if Kinbote was not announcing that, besides Gradus ( a creature living by words and trains of thought), the misterious "Lettrocalamity" which made Terra and Antiterra emerge, would indicate that the entire edifice of ADA is the "fiction of a fiction inside a fiction" ( following Appel's description of "involution" in Lolita).
In this case then there will be no "real" rose among the artificial ones to surprise one's touch, neither any brass or wood accretions to a painting to hide a "concrete" walnut...
If for our author, "relationships" dominate over "facts" and "notation" then it also makes sense to find it is Kinbote who is arguing in favor of St.Augustine, the Zemblan High Church and promising "to divulge...an ultimate truth, an extraordinary secret..." to John Shade.
Jansy
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It always seemed to me that the "Oh sure," with which Shade accompanies his remark about having words perform like trained fleas was meant to be deflating, pointing out the irony with which he comments on a writer's supposed ability to rule absolutely over language. Maybe I am mistaken about this, but it seemed to me that the old poet, speaking from experience that includes the IPH and the fountain/mountain debacles, realizes that words cannot be used like trained fleas to drive other fleas, such as ideas that won't fly.
Andrew Brown
----- Original Message -----
From: jansymello
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 12:56 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] pruning dates
Hi, Alexey.
Thank you for your message about coincidental dates.
I heard that Dr. Pekka Tammi wrote about these - but his text is in Russian, so it's of no avail to me now.
Actually I was only trying to get all the numbers off my chest while reading Kinbote to mark the orthography for his "cancellations" and searching for more apparitions of Pnin ( I don't have a digital copy of PF).
I did find another "cancel" with only one "L", in notes to lines 433-434 (page 211):
"She would be canceling an illumination or discussing hospital cots with the head nurse"
Also a new reference to Pnin ( note to line 579, page 229):
"Upon referring to my little diary...I dined at their house with the following people: Nattochdag (...); Professor Gordon of the Music Department ( who completely dominated the conversation); the Head of the Russian Department ( a farcical pedant of whom the less said the better); and three or four interchangeable women..."
I wondered if "fustian jokes" ( note to line 286) had any link with a strange quotation I could not place that ends with "fusts in us unused" since it sound so Kinbotean, and I cannot remember his writing it ...
But here is something that I can still ask you concerning PF and ADA:
Following note 334 ( page 193 EL) where Kinbote discusses the Hunted Barn - later dismantled "to avoid its catching fire", we find that " Science tells us, by the way, that the Earth would not merely fall apart, but vanish like a ghost, if Electricity were suddenly removed from the world".
Although I agree with John Shade that "one can harness words like performing fleas and make them drive other fleas" ( page 214), I could not keep from wondering if Kinbote was not announcing that, besides Gradus ( a creature living by words and trains of thought), the misterious "Lettrocalamity" which made Terra and Antiterra emerge, would indicate that the entire edifice of ADA is the "fiction of a fiction inside a fiction" ( following Appel's description of "involution" in Lolita).
In this case then there will be no "real" rose among the artificial ones to surprise one's touch, neither any brass or wood accretions to a painting to hide a "concrete" walnut...
If for our author, "relationships" dominate over "facts" and "notation" then it also makes sense to find it is Kinbote who is arguing in favor of St.Augustine, the Zemblan High Church and promising "to divulge...an ultimate truth, an extraordinary secret..." to John Shade.
Jansy
Search the Nabokv-L archive at UCSB
Contact the Editors
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
Visit Zembla
View Nabokv-L Policies
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