Subject
The Green Door
From
Date
Body
James Twiggs: A curiosity, if nothing else: Brief encounters: THE TRUTH BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR. Brian Boyd
The Guardian, Friday 8 September 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/sep/08/popandrock1 . For those who are tired of guessing, Wikipedia contains a good article under "Green Door."
Andrea Pitzer: The Wilson baize door information is strange and interesting. Perhaps Jansy said this somewhere in her posts, but there are in fact two green doors in Pale Fire. The first is labeled as such twice--once during the advanture with Oleg (p.127) and later during the king's escape (p. 133). The second is a side door that Gradus sees on the villa before he is shown the main entrance (p. 199).
JM: Following Andrea's indications:
"Pale Fire":
1.Oleg and Charles enter a burrow ( measuring 1,888 yards, ie, a mile-long corridor), holding the "magic key of the lumber room closet" which eased itself into "the keyhole of a green door." They were stopped by "a burst of strange sounds coming from behind the door," the sounds of a quarrelling couple screaming in "Gutnish as spoken by the fisher-folk of Western Zembla." (King Thurgus and Iris?)
Thirty years later Charles pursues the remembered corridors, finding "a headless statue of Mercury, conductor of souls to the Lower World, and a cracked krater with two black figures shown dicing under a black palm." This time the King pushes the green door open to face a curtain of heavy black drapery, smelling of chocolate. Finally he reached the " lumbarkamer which had once been Iris Acht's dressing room in the Royal Theater," and her meeting place with King Thurgus.
2. Gradus is greeted by an elderly footman in green who comes out from "a green side door" and leads him away into the music room of Lavender's Villa Libitina.
In "Ada": When Van and Ada begin to explore the attic in Ardis, they feel spurred on by an obscure premonition of a hidden pattern that joins them (physically). After a synesthetic visitation, when Ada hears Van say "Far enough, fair enough" and sees the uttered words as a verse in violet letters changing into orange, we reach an intriguing reference, inside brackets, almost like an after-thought: "(Van was already unlocking the door - the green door against which they were to bang so often with boneless fists in their later separate dreams.)"
In "Lolita," after Lo's hospitalization which had separated her and HH for the first time in two years, HH begins to muse about "the development of a theme - that it had the same taste and tone as the series of linked impressions which had puzzled and tormented me during our journey." In his case, scents and colors yielded an intuition about a secret lover who might have been prowling around them. In the early morning hours ( an a reference to goddess Aurora and to lavender!) HH returns to the hospital ( a dungeon where a mysterious "serum" (sparrow's sperm or dugong's dung) is administered to Lolita. He starts "knocking upon its green doors."
In one of VN's short-stories (not those I ennumerated before, but "The Assistant Producer", ch.5), an even more promising "green door" is mentioned in relation to General Fedchenko's abduction (he was frisked through it and was never seen again) We learn that this report was untrue: "... an optical trick. There is no green door, but only a gray one, which no human strength can burst open."
Not one of these examples suggest any opening into another world or a lost paradise glimpsed in childhood (except, perhaps, in the sentence from "Ada"). Events in "A Visit to the Museum" are equally nightmarish. The link with a theatrical scene, gender issues and a violent death is often clear (confirming the elements found in B.Boyd's article and in Jim Twiggs excellent connections). Another important element seems to be color (synesthesia: lavender,violet, orange, green, gray), distance ("far far away") and guilt feelings.
There's a whole avenue of half-revealed elements to explore, should they be novel (it seldom is!). I haven't really stopped to examine the items, and I may not find the time for it in the future. Having brought up H.G.Wells' "green door" was an accidental find,a whimsical association to an emotional climate of loss and longing, which I thought would be interesting to share with the efficient List.
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The Guardian, Friday 8 September 2006 http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/sep/08/popandrock1 . For those who are tired of guessing, Wikipedia contains a good article under "Green Door."
Andrea Pitzer: The Wilson baize door information is strange and interesting. Perhaps Jansy said this somewhere in her posts, but there are in fact two green doors in Pale Fire. The first is labeled as such twice--once during the advanture with Oleg (p.127) and later during the king's escape (p. 133). The second is a side door that Gradus sees on the villa before he is shown the main entrance (p. 199).
JM: Following Andrea's indications:
"Pale Fire":
1.Oleg and Charles enter a burrow ( measuring 1,888 yards, ie, a mile-long corridor), holding the "magic key of the lumber room closet" which eased itself into "the keyhole of a green door." They were stopped by "a burst of strange sounds coming from behind the door," the sounds of a quarrelling couple screaming in "Gutnish as spoken by the fisher-folk of Western Zembla." (King Thurgus and Iris?)
Thirty years later Charles pursues the remembered corridors, finding "a headless statue of Mercury, conductor of souls to the Lower World, and a cracked krater with two black figures shown dicing under a black palm." This time the King pushes the green door open to face a curtain of heavy black drapery, smelling of chocolate. Finally he reached the " lumbarkamer which had once been Iris Acht's dressing room in the Royal Theater," and her meeting place with King Thurgus.
2. Gradus is greeted by an elderly footman in green who comes out from "a green side door" and leads him away into the music room of Lavender's Villa Libitina.
In "Ada": When Van and Ada begin to explore the attic in Ardis, they feel spurred on by an obscure premonition of a hidden pattern that joins them (physically). After a synesthetic visitation, when Ada hears Van say "Far enough, fair enough" and sees the uttered words as a verse in violet letters changing into orange, we reach an intriguing reference, inside brackets, almost like an after-thought: "(Van was already unlocking the door - the green door against which they were to bang so often with boneless fists in their later separate dreams.)"
In "Lolita," after Lo's hospitalization which had separated her and HH for the first time in two years, HH begins to muse about "the development of a theme - that it had the same taste and tone as the series of linked impressions which had puzzled and tormented me during our journey." In his case, scents and colors yielded an intuition about a secret lover who might have been prowling around them. In the early morning hours ( an a reference to goddess Aurora and to lavender!) HH returns to the hospital ( a dungeon where a mysterious "serum" (sparrow's sperm or dugong's dung) is administered to Lolita. He starts "knocking upon its green doors."
In one of VN's short-stories (not those I ennumerated before, but "The Assistant Producer", ch.5), an even more promising "green door" is mentioned in relation to General Fedchenko's abduction (he was frisked through it and was never seen again) We learn that this report was untrue: "... an optical trick. There is no green door, but only a gray one, which no human strength can burst open."
Not one of these examples suggest any opening into another world or a lost paradise glimpsed in childhood (except, perhaps, in the sentence from "Ada"). Events in "A Visit to the Museum" are equally nightmarish. The link with a theatrical scene, gender issues and a violent death is often clear (confirming the elements found in B.Boyd's article and in Jim Twiggs excellent connections). Another important element seems to be color (synesthesia: lavender,violet, orange, green, gray), distance ("far far away") and guilt feelings.
There's a whole avenue of half-revealed elements to explore, should they be novel (it seldom is!). I haven't really stopped to examine the items, and I may not find the time for it in the future. Having brought up H.G.Wells' "green door" was an accidental find,a whimsical association to an emotional climate of loss and longing, which I thought would be interesting to share with the efficient List.
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/