J.Aisenberg: you have concretely shown precise
examples of his use of the Cinderella fairytale taking on strange and ironic
meanings and connotations over the course Ada [...] which relates to
specific context (what else is Ada but a kind of anti-fairytale
fairytale) and the demonstrable thinking of the artist...
JM: Thanks! I've become interested in the possibility
of "concretely showing" and, perhaps, about the "demonstrable
thinking of the artist" only recently. This is why I keep wondering
about Stan K-B's notes on the "Theory of
General Relativity [...], in fact, the first practical and stunning
application of B-L geometries to the real world, but unknown to
Bolyai or Lobachevsky at the time. The impact of B-L on the history of science
has been compared to that of Darwin!" added to his interest in
VN's descriptions of "reality" (perceptual and conceptual).
Pygmalion was more successful with Galathea than
Michelangelo's apparently real hammer-blow on the knee of his sculpture of
Moses while exclaiming: "Parla!". I wonder if VN, reaching towards some
ineffable paradaisal truth managed to hear his work "speak
back" like HH (just once) heard Lolita...he was never the same after
that...
Isn't truth what "responds", provokes
"effects" or is, at least, monstrable?
Here is VN's poem "In Paradise" (
long before he wrote "Lolita"):
My soul, beyond distant death
your image I see
is like this;
a provincial naturalist,
an eccentric lost in
paradise.
There, in a glade, a wild angel
slumbers,
a semi-pavonian creature.
Poke at ir
curiously
with your green umbrella,
speculating how, first of
all,
you will write a paper on
it,
then - But there are no learned
journals,
nor any readers in paradise!
And there you stand, not yet
believing
your wordless woe.
About that blue somnolent
animal
whom will you tell, whom?
Where is the world and the labeled
roses,
the museums and the stuffed
birds?
And you look and look through your
tears
at those unnamable wings.
(Berlin, 1927)