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top 10 ghost stories ...
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S.Klein: "top 10 ghost stories" [Complete story at following URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/31/best-ghost-stories] among which Vladimir Nabokov's The Visit to the Museum. The excerpt describes: "This is a piece of autobiography - an extraordinary tale in which the narrator is haunted by the ghost of an entire country. Even admirers of Nabokov may not know this one, which has only rarely been reprinted - surprisingly, given its extraordinary vision of pre-Revolutionary Russia."
JM: Checking "The Visit to the Museum" seemed to be a good idea after conjecturing about a "fourth wall" in "La Veneziana"( the story, the painting, the jalousie). Inspite of my effort, I cannot understand why this "ghost story" has been considered "a piece of autobiography" and "an extraordinary vision of pre-Revolutionary Russia." My original intention had been to check a new reference to a fourth wall - but I found none. Only a curious reference just before the narrator is catapulted into "hopelessly slavish" forbidden Russia:
"Finally I ran into a room of some sort with coatracks monstrously loaded down with black coats and astrakhan furs; from beyond a door came a burst of applause, but when I flung the door open, there was no theater, but only a soft opacity and indistinct streelights." (p279/280)
There is an incomplete "sign - ..."inka sapog ("...oe repair") which reminded me of similar eery transitions in "Lik" and by "TT' 's recurrent shoe-boxes. The other aspect, the one related to a door opening onto a stage, leads us to King Charles' escape from Zembla...
Matt Roth: Gerard de Vries puts to good use both Hofstadter and Bach's "signed" fugue in his article. I think Gerard's notion is that Nabokov is similarly inscribing his own name in PF via the three main characters. I hope he will correct me if I'm mistaken.
JM: Do you think the inscribed name would be Nabokov's, not Kinbote's? How would this be effected?
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JM: Checking "The Visit to the Museum" seemed to be a good idea after conjecturing about a "fourth wall" in "La Veneziana"( the story, the painting, the jalousie). Inspite of my effort, I cannot understand why this "ghost story" has been considered "a piece of autobiography" and "an extraordinary vision of pre-Revolutionary Russia." My original intention had been to check a new reference to a fourth wall - but I found none. Only a curious reference just before the narrator is catapulted into "hopelessly slavish" forbidden Russia:
"Finally I ran into a room of some sort with coatracks monstrously loaded down with black coats and astrakhan furs; from beyond a door came a burst of applause, but when I flung the door open, there was no theater, but only a soft opacity and indistinct streelights." (p279/280)
There is an incomplete "sign - ..."inka sapog ("...oe repair") which reminded me of similar eery transitions in "Lik" and by "TT' 's recurrent shoe-boxes. The other aspect, the one related to a door opening onto a stage, leads us to King Charles' escape from Zembla...
Matt Roth: Gerard de Vries puts to good use both Hofstadter and Bach's "signed" fugue in his article. I think Gerard's notion is that Nabokov is similarly inscribing his own name in PF via the three main characters. I hope he will correct me if I'm mistaken.
JM: Do you think the inscribed name would be Nabokov's, not Kinbote's? How would this be effected?
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/