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Re: [Fwd: The Original of Laura and Pale Fire]
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Rene ALLADAYE:"Going to press is all it takes to realize that you have not seen all there was too see. Hardly one month after publishing (in collaboration with Yannicke Chupin) a detailed
study of The Original of Laura" (Aux Origines de Laura, Le Dernier Manuscrit de Vladimir Nabokov, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne...) it dawns on me that its already rich and extensively researched chapter about intertextual networks may be lacking one or two connections between Vladimir Nabokov’s last, unfinished novel and one of his former works, Pale Fire....My point, writing this note, was only to come to terms with the simple fact that aiming at exhaustivity in textual analysis, however hard you try (and try hard we certainly did!), is probably fighting a lost battle, and the best you can do is lose gracefully and keep rereading."
JM: ...or else, after rereading, get ready to write a sequel to the initial book? The examples about Gradus and Wild's bowel troubles reminded me of an extremely long letter about intestinal distress written by Nabokov to his friend Edmund Wilson. In the published book (Dear Bunny,dear Volodya, ed. S.Karlinski) it covers two entire pages and a little more, having been written by its author totally unaided by Vera - who was in N.Y, with their son Dmitri, for an appendixectomy. It is dated june,1944, letter 100,pg.146.I was hoping to find a previous link, a shared word in his extensive and detailed report about his own experience with "food poisoning" (which caused him a hemorraging colitis)*... I didn't!
The only item that might interest you came almost at the end of the letter: "I feel very much like Verlaine these days - "Mes Hôpitaux." and that kind of stuff." (Dmitri, in his foreword to TOOL gave us a whiff of his father's predicaments in Swiss clinics...)
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* He must have been feverish, still, while writing the letter, it is so unusually detailed and literal, and oft repeated ("I threw up, or rather down, i.e.,right on the steps, such sundry items as pieces of ham, some spinach, a little mashed potatoes, a squirt of beer - in all 80 cents worth of food. Excruciating cramps racked me and I had just the strength to reach the toilet where a flow of brown blood rushed out of me from the opposite part of my miserable body..."). There are disgustingly funny elements (calculating the worth of lost food, for example), or the lost Dobuzhinsky couple wandering about town after finding his host's house empty) lurking in the three literary sources.And cold, almost cruel parts (how he describes the death of an old man who shared a room with him).
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study of The Original of Laura" (Aux Origines de Laura, Le Dernier Manuscrit de Vladimir Nabokov, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne...) it dawns on me that its already rich and extensively researched chapter about intertextual networks may be lacking one or two connections between Vladimir Nabokov’s last, unfinished novel and one of his former works, Pale Fire....My point, writing this note, was only to come to terms with the simple fact that aiming at exhaustivity in textual analysis, however hard you try (and try hard we certainly did!), is probably fighting a lost battle, and the best you can do is lose gracefully and keep rereading."
JM: ...or else, after rereading, get ready to write a sequel to the initial book? The examples about Gradus and Wild's bowel troubles reminded me of an extremely long letter about intestinal distress written by Nabokov to his friend Edmund Wilson. In the published book (Dear Bunny,dear Volodya, ed. S.Karlinski) it covers two entire pages and a little more, having been written by its author totally unaided by Vera - who was in N.Y, with their son Dmitri, for an appendixectomy. It is dated june,1944, letter 100,pg.146.I was hoping to find a previous link, a shared word in his extensive and detailed report about his own experience with "food poisoning" (which caused him a hemorraging colitis)*... I didn't!
The only item that might interest you came almost at the end of the letter: "I feel very much like Verlaine these days - "Mes Hôpitaux." and that kind of stuff." (Dmitri, in his foreword to TOOL gave us a whiff of his father's predicaments in Swiss clinics...)
.........................................................................................................................................
* He must have been feverish, still, while writing the letter, it is so unusually detailed and literal, and oft repeated ("I threw up, or rather down, i.e.,right on the steps, such sundry items as pieces of ham, some spinach, a little mashed potatoes, a squirt of beer - in all 80 cents worth of food. Excruciating cramps racked me and I had just the strength to reach the toilet where a flow of brown blood rushed out of me from the opposite part of my miserable body..."). There are disgustingly funny elements (calculating the worth of lost food, for example), or the lost Dobuzhinsky couple wandering about town after finding his host's house empty) lurking in the three literary sources.And cold, almost cruel parts (how he describes the death of an old man who shared a room with him).
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/