Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0010803, Wed, 15 Dec 2004 10:09:54 -0800

Subject
Fwd: Re:Transparent Things/ More on Moore andWitt´s rains
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 22:33:35 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>


Moore's paradox
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
G. E. Moore remarked once in a lecture on the peculiar inconsistency involved in
saying something like "It's raining outside but I don't believe that it is." By
contrast, "It's raining outside but he doesn't believe that it is," is a
perfectly consistent statement. This paradox, sometimes known as Moore's
paradox, might well have been forgotten if not for the fact that, supposedly,
when Ludwig Wittgenstein first heard of the paradox he went to Moore's house in
the middle of the night to insist Moore immediately repeat the lecture. In any
case, it probably offers a decent entrance to Wittgenstein's later philosophy.

Ch23, TT: " 'Raining in Wittenberg, but not in Wittgenstein' An obscure joke in
Tralatitions".



----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 6:21 PM
Subject: Fw: Transparent Things calculations



----- Original Message -----
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
To: don barton johnson
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 2:12 PM
Subject: Fw: Transparent Things calculations


Berndt de Souza Mello
To: don barton johnson
Cc: nabOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 8:41 AM
Subject: Transparent Things

After several piece-meal workings on TT, I tried to sum up some
conclusions. I had Akiko´s chronological table with her plea for a
mathematician to aid her with calculations and I think one needs to be both
math and chess expert to follow some clues in TT ( which I´m not! And sometimes
I get the uncomfortable feeling that VN is laughing at us, just as A.Appel
suggested in one of his prefaces ).

Events tend to run into a full circle several times ( same hotel room,
same old dog, same flying cockschuttle, same Transatlantic magazine ). We
have the Burning Barn episode and the various burning windows and hotels and
doll-houses in TT that echo ADA.
Often "flames", "fires", "l´aiguillon rouge" or "bûcher" in TT refer to
the itchings and ardors of sex. The word "bûcher" in French has various
entries: Guy de Maupassant´s " Le bûcher" ( an experience in India) and
Maupassant is often quoted in ADA. There is also Tom Wolffe´s " Bonfire of
Vanities". The "l´ aiguillon rouge", beside the flaming itch of sexual desire,
is also a reference for a moth-butterfly that bears such a mark on her back (
"le shpinx du liseron" ) .
What about chess moves? We could have a Michelin tour guide with various
hotels and moves from one to another ( Ascot, Locquet, etc and various cities,
as Trux, Geneva, Witt, Versex ) with reference to "turrets".
Concerning the "red songbird" , would a "Canadian Cardinal" redbird be
an equivalent to a Bishop figure in chess?
And what about math? There are formulaic indications of one fifth of 40
years ( 8 years, recurrently mentioned together with ages 22 for Hugh). We have
also to subtract 10 and 18 years at various points to try and match Hugh´s four
visits to Switzerland. He must have been there twice while he was 32. There is
an "x" date missing. There are indications of ages ( Julia Moore, 16 and her
mother, Marion, or Mrs.Robert, 38 ) that invite some sort of calculation. What
kind, though?
We have various "stranglers": (1) Armand Rave and his triangle ( his
lover and his incestuous sister ) who sculpted the green figurine of a skier (
it appears in Hugh´s first and last visit. In bt. we have him watching Armande
in green skiing apparel ); (2) The strangler in "Translatlantic" magazine who
choked his wife ( the magazine had been left behind by Hugh eight years ago);
(3) Hugh as a strangler ( eight years later than the strangling news in the
transatlantic ).(4) Hugh comes from Mass. and there was a famous Boston
strangler also referred by an insistence of Hugh´s "strong hands".

My favorite sentence in TT was: " The bare wood of its tapered end has
darkened to plumbeous plum, thus merging in tint with the blunt tip of graphite
whose blind gloss alone distinguishes it from the wood" .

----- End forwarded message -----
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