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Re: THOUGHTS, Wick
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JM [to Matt's " Who knows? At what point should we stop imagining possibilities?"].I'm all in favor of irradiating words, endless imaginative possibilities...Could a. good soul help me to find "rain-sparkling crystograms" in Russian ...
JM (monologue?) I only found one indication about "rain-sparkling crystograms" ( I'd been informed this image is recurrently used by Nabokov! Is it a mistaken lead?).
From Nabokov's preface to "The Eye": "A serious psychologist, on the other hand, may distinguish through my rain-sparkling crystograms a world of soul dissolution where poor Smurov only exists as he is reflected in other brains, which in their turn are placed in the same strange, specular predicament as his."
A writer and a reader in fact inhabit a world of mutually reflecting surfaces, unstable like colored glass-shards in a caleidoscope or fixed by a shared point of reference or a metaphor. I hope to learn what words Nabokov has employed for this conception in Russian, one which he might have left behind him or transformed into Shade's plexed web.
Such a lot depends on how we understand the meaning of what's a "metaphor." Some consider it as being synonimous to "simile" ( and heaven knows often analogies are used in poetical equations and correlations). I have the impression that Matt values the metaphorical promise that lies in etymology and in a word's ever-expanded meanings (even if not applying the theory about words as 'signifiers').
Sometimes I set my heart on Nabokov's intention of having a metaphor create a third, ineffable, meaning which is only possible if it flies independently of the its two sustaining images, as in Emily Dickinson's verses.*
I'm almost sure Nabokov has read Samuel Beckett's fascinating study of "Proust," where metaphors suceed each other like the iridal foam crowning the waves (very unfashionable Kitsch to modern ears!).
........................................................................................
* - Faith -- is the Pierless Bridge/ Supporting what We see/ Unto the Scene that We do not --/ Too slender for the eye//It bears the Soul as bold/As it were rocked in Steel/With Arms of Steel at either side --/
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JM (monologue?) I only found one indication about "rain-sparkling crystograms" ( I'd been informed this image is recurrently used by Nabokov! Is it a mistaken lead?).
From Nabokov's preface to "The Eye": "A serious psychologist, on the other hand, may distinguish through my rain-sparkling crystograms a world of soul dissolution where poor Smurov only exists as he is reflected in other brains, which in their turn are placed in the same strange, specular predicament as his."
A writer and a reader in fact inhabit a world of mutually reflecting surfaces, unstable like colored glass-shards in a caleidoscope or fixed by a shared point of reference or a metaphor. I hope to learn what words Nabokov has employed for this conception in Russian, one which he might have left behind him or transformed into Shade's plexed web.
Such a lot depends on how we understand the meaning of what's a "metaphor." Some consider it as being synonimous to "simile" ( and heaven knows often analogies are used in poetical equations and correlations). I have the impression that Matt values the metaphorical promise that lies in etymology and in a word's ever-expanded meanings (even if not applying the theory about words as 'signifiers').
Sometimes I set my heart on Nabokov's intention of having a metaphor create a third, ineffable, meaning which is only possible if it flies independently of the its two sustaining images, as in Emily Dickinson's verses.*
I'm almost sure Nabokov has read Samuel Beckett's fascinating study of "Proust," where metaphors suceed each other like the iridal foam crowning the waves (very unfashionable Kitsch to modern ears!).
........................................................................................
* - Faith -- is the Pierless Bridge/ Supporting what We see/ Unto the Scene that We do not --/ Too slender for the eye//It bears the Soul as bold/As it were rocked in Steel/With Arms of Steel at either side --/
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/