Stan K-B (interrogating Artistic
Consistency) : Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be
violent and original in your work.- - Flaubert //// Sorry if this
quote (by one of VN's favourites) has been posted
previously.
JM: A curious reply. Oscar Wilde ( I
posted this quote previously) wrote that he put all his genius in life and
his talent in his writing. Wilde saw himself as endowed with
both (talent and genius), but most geniuses cannot choose like
him: their neurotic afflictions hinder their pursuit to lead a free
aimless and adventurous life. I'm not contradicting Stan's implied indication,
here, that VN's choice favored another pairing so as to keep
consistent, both as a citizen and as an author (adventures were
inflicted on him, anyway). My intention is to bring up these items (consistency
and freedom) in the light of the determinism of the "unconscious". It
speaks through every author, crows and flaps its wings. Only "enchantment"
provides the escape.
Jerry Friedman: I'm very interested in Laurence Hochard's pointing
out the "doubling" of Kinbote's growing a beard and Shade's persistently shaving
his. This seems to be related to the werewolf theme that Matt has seen in that
passage...
JM: Must we choose one
among multiple possible interpretations as representing a
single authorial intention?
The werewolf/versipel theme, as Matt consistently
demonstrates, has come to stay, but LH's vision of a "doubling" is
styllistically more sophisticated.
It finds echoes in Marat's psoriatic baths ( mentioned
in ADA thru Cora Day and in various psoriatic characters, for example, a
librarian...) and in Shade's emphasis on "paring nails" (hair and nails
are belong to transient "phanero", dead "scarf-tissues" in
medical terminology or "manifestations"). The "doubling" arises also in
Shade's opening lines with the three "I" (waxwing slain, ashen fluff, live
bird).
A.Bouazza: As Brian Boyd (yes, him!) showed in his book on ADA, VN did not mock
Einstein as a few early critics of ADA thought, but Langevin (=Engelwein), who
was the first to come up with the twin paradox.
JM: Wikipedia was not informative about a "twin
paradox" by Langevin. Could you explain what it means?A wonderful connection, though (Engelwein and Langevin).
I'll check Boyd's comments for, inspite of the
lines chosen from ADA ["One
especially grotesque inference, drawn (I think by Engelwein) from Relativity
Theory—and destroying it, if drawn correctly—is that the galactonaut and his domestic animals, after
touring the speed spas of Space, would return younger than if they had stayed at
home all the time."]I remember Van ( not VN, though) complaining about
spacetime or... was it only space? I may have surmised, incorrectly,
that Van derided Einstein.
Btw, I'm aware that there might be no
real connection bt. "the milky way" and "galaxies", but I thought
VN's choice of "galactonaut" very amusing if it was intended to introduce "milk"
( galact) and us,
lapping "mammals".