Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0025236, Sat, 29 Mar 2014 13:04:23 -0300

Subject
Intriguing statements
Date
Body
Keeping in mind our recent discussions about games, problems and fairy
chess, here is a sentence I extracted from VN's "Strong Opinions."



"Games mean the participation of other persons; I'm interested in the lone
performance - chess problems, for example, which I compose in glacial
solitude." (SO,117)



It intrigued me because V. Nabokov here emphasizes solitude whereas, in his
other commentaries and, specially, in his novels, the author-reader-solver
relationship is a permanent feature, i.e., when he is composing games and
riddles V.N's mind must be then considering "someone else," even if the
imagined other bears his traits.



In "Pale Fire," though, the independent loner is the (apparently) sociable
John Shade, not Kinbote. The figures with whom John Shade engages with in
his long poem belong to his imagined past, even his "beloved" Sybil.



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