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Re: Ada and Lucette
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Brian Boyd: "I must say I hadn't thought of ADA in the terms Joseph Aisenberg mentions (in his previous post) about the stereotyped bad girl (with Gothic pallor) / good girl (with healthy glow) structure of romantic and melodramatic fiction. But it seems entirely plausible..."
J.Aisenberg: ... Do you mean that you don't understand how my way of reading the book fits with the notion that "Lucette was the only taboo he [Van] could respect in his dissolute life"? Let me put what I meant a different way. First remove the fact Ada, Van and Lucette are siblings ...
JM: I had originally disagreed with Aisenberg's "remove the fact that they are siblings," but I found there is an interpretation that might allow the reader to forget those genetic bonds. It derives from a statement once made by VN ( and explored by Don B. Johnson in one of his chapters of "Worlds in Regression") indicating that the sound of "bl" ( in "siblings") was agreeable to his ears, conjuring away blood-bonds into gaping phonemes.
Perhaps Ada-Lucette-Van constituted a verbal family sired by VN's fiery loins, so there would be no taboo for any traditional mating scheme.
btw: in a former posting I quoted V in RLSK ( "I cannot even copy his manner because the manner of his prose was the manner of his thinking and that was a dazzling succession of gaps") and the iteration of "manner" sugested to me, soundwise, the German plural for "Man" ( ie, "Männer"), but this idiosyncratic reading most probably was not intended by VN.
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J.Aisenberg: ... Do you mean that you don't understand how my way of reading the book fits with the notion that "Lucette was the only taboo he [Van] could respect in his dissolute life"? Let me put what I meant a different way. First remove the fact Ada, Van and Lucette are siblings ...
JM: I had originally disagreed with Aisenberg's "remove the fact that they are siblings," but I found there is an interpretation that might allow the reader to forget those genetic bonds. It derives from a statement once made by VN ( and explored by Don B. Johnson in one of his chapters of "Worlds in Regression") indicating that the sound of "bl" ( in "siblings") was agreeable to his ears, conjuring away blood-bonds into gaping phonemes.
Perhaps Ada-Lucette-Van constituted a verbal family sired by VN's fiery loins, so there would be no taboo for any traditional mating scheme.
btw: in a former posting I quoted V in RLSK ( "I cannot even copy his manner because the manner of his prose was the manner of his thinking and that was a dazzling succession of gaps") and the iteration of "manner" sugested to me, soundwise, the German plural for "Man" ( ie, "Männer"), but this idiosyncratic reading most probably was not intended by VN.
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/