Subject
The "56 days" conundrum in "Lolita" II
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Date
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A.Stadlen [to B. Stone's "I'm not sure that "56 days ago' has a "'ormal' meaning...'] "If in the year 1950 a newspaper had an archive column "25 years ago", "50 years ago", "100 years ago", these columns would contain excerpts from 1925, 1900, 1850 respectively. There would not be any dispute about what was the normal meaning of these terms...We will not make sense of this if we cling to what I insist is an abnormal, indeed simply wrong, interpretation of what "56 days ago" means, just because Nabokov scholars have copied each other in speaking of "3 days discrepancy". They are simply compounding the original mistake, and making it more difficult to decide whether the original mistake was Nabokov's or Humbert's...Even if you want to insist (perversely, as I see it) that "56 days ago" might mean what I, and newspapers, and (I think) most English speakers would call "55 days ago", you must surely acknowledge that what we mean by "56 days ago" is one possible meaning. But this at least possible (and in my view unique and correct) meaning has been neglected by Nabokov scholars, as far as I know, until now."
JM: A.Stadlen's point about the danger of scholars "compounding an original mistake" is quite pertinent but, if we admit that Nabokov aimed at creating particular ambiguities and "undecidability."in "Lolita," then the discrepant three or four days must have been intended by him.
There are various statements by Nabokov that refer to dates and to counting which may corroborate his relation with birthdays, degrees and intervals in time.. For example, in Strong Opinions, perhaps in Speak,Memory, too (concerning his turn-of-the century and his brother Sergey's birth dates) and in Pale Fire (concerning the age-difference between Kinbote and Shade after Kinbote desists to correct an imprecision he spotted in one of his commentaries. The chronology that establishes when John Shade was shot hasn't been satisfactorily determined yet, either). In the opposite direction, we find that a lot of space is given by VN for the importance of correct dating, as in his lecture on Tolstoy's Anna Karenin.
Everyone can remember the debates about when did the new "Century" and the "Millenium" begin (not in Jan. 1st 2000, but in January 1st 2001...) and how the clocks of computers had to be re-programmed at the occasion of the passage from the 20th to the 21st. century. Something of the kind may have affected Humbert Humbert, for his mind sometimes runs like a computer. Besides, he was not a native American. Wasn't he a Swiss?*
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* It would take me hours to locate al the copious examples in Nabokov about counting by natural numbers (& not by whole numbers)
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JM: A.Stadlen's point about the danger of scholars "compounding an original mistake" is quite pertinent but, if we admit that Nabokov aimed at creating particular ambiguities and "undecidability."in "Lolita," then the discrepant three or four days must have been intended by him.
There are various statements by Nabokov that refer to dates and to counting which may corroborate his relation with birthdays, degrees and intervals in time.. For example, in Strong Opinions, perhaps in Speak,Memory, too (concerning his turn-of-the century and his brother Sergey's birth dates) and in Pale Fire (concerning the age-difference between Kinbote and Shade after Kinbote desists to correct an imprecision he spotted in one of his commentaries. The chronology that establishes when John Shade was shot hasn't been satisfactorily determined yet, either). In the opposite direction, we find that a lot of space is given by VN for the importance of correct dating, as in his lecture on Tolstoy's Anna Karenin.
Everyone can remember the debates about when did the new "Century" and the "Millenium" begin (not in Jan. 1st 2000, but in January 1st 2001...) and how the clocks of computers had to be re-programmed at the occasion of the passage from the 20th to the 21st. century. Something of the kind may have affected Humbert Humbert, for his mind sometimes runs like a computer. Besides, he was not a native American. Wasn't he a Swiss?*
.
.................................................................................................................................................................
* It would take me hours to locate al the copious examples in Nabokov about counting by natural numbers (& not by whole numbers)
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
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
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/