[[Apologies for the garbled version of this that went out yesterday--an
e-hiccup, I guess/SB]]
Marina Grishakov is the author of The Models of Space, Time and
Vision in V. Nabokov’s Fiction: Narrative Strategies and Cultural Frames.
Tartu: Tartu UP, 2006. ~SB
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May I very humbly add a quotation from my recently published book on
Nabokov's scientific and artistic models
(www.kriso.ee/cgi-bin/shop/9949113067.html) to the discussion.
Marina Grishakova
(p. 53, "Nabokov as a writer and a scientist")
"Nabokov incorporates the elements of scholarly commentary,
geographical
description or entomological and botanical classification into his
fiction. Robert Michael Pyle draws attention to the artistic quality of
Nabokov’s scientific style (Boyd & Pyle 2000: 69–70). Likewise,
there is
every reason to speak of the “theoretical” quality — exactness,
self-reflexive and experimental character of his fiction. Nevertheless,
while admitting a similarity, Nabokov repudiated a possibility of
amalgamation of literary and scientific languages: “... whenever I
allude to butterflies in my novels, no matter how diligently I rework
the stuff, it remains pale and false and does not really express what I
want to express — what, indeed, it can only express in the special
scientific terms of my entomological papers” (/Strong Opinions/,136).