Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022412, Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:23:41 -0500

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Re: Of bumblebees, moths and flies
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In a message dated 2/16/2012 8:20:08 PM Central Standard Time,
jansy@AETERN.US writes:
>
>
> Vladimir Nabokov mentions Robert Browning in Lolita and Pale Fire. One of
> the references, to "Pippa passes," is made at least twice. Today I was
> examining some of its verses before I reached the widely quoted last lines
> about "God's in his Heaven -- All's right with the world! ".*
> There are two other works by Nabokov, probably unrelated to anything
> Browningian, in which there is a reference to a similar atmosphere of intimacy,
> serenity and peace that evolves into an epiphanic quality.
> The paragraphs in question, in these two books (Bend Sinister and Speak,
> Memory) are connected by the small turmoil caused by an insect ( a
> bumblebee, a moth).
> “I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the
> open window. Its reflection fills the oval mirror above the leathern couch
> where my uncle sits, gloating over a tattered book. 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.” (Speak,Memory)
> ..........................................
> "The various parts of my comparative paradise — the bedside lamp, the
> sleeping tablets, the glass of milk — looked with perfect submission into my
> eyes[...] Some tower clock which I could never exactly locate, which, in
> fact, I never heard in the daytime, struck twice...Across the lane, two windows
> only were still alive...The shredded ray of a streetlamp brought out a
> bright green section of wet boxhedge. I could also distinguish the glint of a
> special puddle (the one Krug had somehow perceived through the layer of his
> own life), an oblong puddle invariably acquiring the same form
> ...Possibly, something of the kind may be said to occur in regard to the imprint we
> leave in the intimate texture of space. Twang. A good night for mothing
> ."(Bend Sinister, closing lines).
>
> While trying to get the VN quotes from the internet to check any possible
> and tangible link to R.Browning, I reached a site [actually this should be
> termed a "Sighting"] that included a new insect, a fly buzzing through
> memories and Marcel Proust:
> "when a bumblebee, in a nearly perfect iteration of Proust's flies,
> enters the adult Nabokov's room, the recovery is complete: "nothing will ever
> change, nobody will ever die"** Although this is something I'm unable to
> pursue any further, I suppose that the relevant aspects of the "mothing
> optimism" it reveals, is still worth bringing up to the attention of the VN-List.
>
I've always wondered about Frost's "one luminary clock against the sky" in
"Acquainted with the Night," and wondered about VN's own clock, obviously
heard when he was in residence in Cambridge 20 or so years later than RF. I
can''t imagine that VN would have disliked the RF poem.

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