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Re: P...F proof?
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On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 11:24 AM, Carolyn Kunin
<chaiselongue@earthlink.net>wrote:
> Yesterday Alexey wrote me: "There are really three personalities in the
> tale: Jekyll, Hyde and somebody third - what remains from Jekyll when Hyde
> appears" (from VN's lecture on RLS, I translate back from a Russian
> translation). According to your theory, this third personality corresponds
> to Gradus in PF. In fact, you told me that S = K = G. I was surprised not to
> see this in your response to Stan.
>
> Dear Alexey,
>
> I should probably go back and re-read the lecture on J & H. So the third
> personality according to Nabokov would be J minus H?
>
> My theory of PF indeed is S = K = G, and what underlies that is S = C, K =
> C and G = C minus (C-ˆ').
>
> Intriguing. Could this be the P. . . F proof?
>
> Carolyn
>
> p.s. It may not be a fire-proof proof - - let's see who casts the first
> shot.
>
What about the fourth person posited by William Dowling (full disclosure: my
professor at the University of New Mexico many years ago, so I have a bias).
The short story is that there's no other explanation for this passage, which
has parenthetical injections from many characters and research that Kinbote
claims he was unable to do.
He began with the day's copy of The New York Times. His lips moving like
wrestling worms, he read about all kinds of things. . . . The United States
was about to launch its first atom-driven merchant ship (just to annoy the
Ruskers, of course, J.G.) Last night in Newark, an apartment house at 555
South Street was hit by a thunderbolt that smashed a TV set and injured two
people watching an actress lost in a violent studio storm (those tormented
spirits are terrible! C.X.K. teste J.S.). The Rachel Jewelry Company in
Brooklyn advertised in agate type for a jewelry polisher who "must have
experience in costume jewelry" (oh, Degre had!). The Helman brothers said
they had assisted in the negotiations for the placement of a sizable note:
$11,000,000, Decker Glass Manufacturing Company, Inc., note due July 1,
1979, and Gradus, grown young again, reread this twice, with the background
gray thought, perhaps, that he would be sixty-four four days after that (no
comment). . . . A pro-Red revolt had erupted in Iraq. Asked about the Soviet
exhibition at the New York Coliseum, Carl Sandburg, a poet, replied, and I
quote, "They make their appeal on the highest of intellectual levels." A
hack reviewer of new books for tourists, reviewing his own tour through
Norway, said that the fjords were too famous to need (his) description, and
that all Scandinavians loved flowers. And at a picnic for international
children a Zemblan moppet cried to her Japanese friend: Ufgut, ufgut, velkam
ut Semberland!" (Adieu, adieu, till we meet in Zembla!) I confess it has
been a wonderful game--this looking up in the WUL of various ephemerides
over the shadow of a padded shoulder.
The full screed: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/palenarr.htm
To me this suggests, convincingly, that an author-character has deliberately
invaded his own creation at this point, much as one did at the end of Bend
Sinister, and so there's hardly any point in imagining any of the characters
as anything but a figment of HIS imagination. Though of course we can
continue to argue about what that author-character constructed before the
intrusion, but I think there's a clearer and more literal interpretation --
K=K, S=S, G = figment of K's imagination.
--Tim Henderson
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<chaiselongue@earthlink.net>wrote:
> Yesterday Alexey wrote me: "There are really three personalities in the
> tale: Jekyll, Hyde and somebody third - what remains from Jekyll when Hyde
> appears" (from VN's lecture on RLS, I translate back from a Russian
> translation). According to your theory, this third personality corresponds
> to Gradus in PF. In fact, you told me that S = K = G. I was surprised not to
> see this in your response to Stan.
>
> Dear Alexey,
>
> I should probably go back and re-read the lecture on J & H. So the third
> personality according to Nabokov would be J minus H?
>
> My theory of PF indeed is S = K = G, and what underlies that is S = C, K =
> C and G = C minus (C-ˆ').
>
> Intriguing. Could this be the P. . . F proof?
>
> Carolyn
>
> p.s. It may not be a fire-proof proof - - let's see who casts the first
> shot.
>
What about the fourth person posited by William Dowling (full disclosure: my
professor at the University of New Mexico many years ago, so I have a bias).
The short story is that there's no other explanation for this passage, which
has parenthetical injections from many characters and research that Kinbote
claims he was unable to do.
He began with the day's copy of The New York Times. His lips moving like
wrestling worms, he read about all kinds of things. . . . The United States
was about to launch its first atom-driven merchant ship (just to annoy the
Ruskers, of course, J.G.) Last night in Newark, an apartment house at 555
South Street was hit by a thunderbolt that smashed a TV set and injured two
people watching an actress lost in a violent studio storm (those tormented
spirits are terrible! C.X.K. teste J.S.). The Rachel Jewelry Company in
Brooklyn advertised in agate type for a jewelry polisher who "must have
experience in costume jewelry" (oh, Degre had!). The Helman brothers said
they had assisted in the negotiations for the placement of a sizable note:
$11,000,000, Decker Glass Manufacturing Company, Inc., note due July 1,
1979, and Gradus, grown young again, reread this twice, with the background
gray thought, perhaps, that he would be sixty-four four days after that (no
comment). . . . A pro-Red revolt had erupted in Iraq. Asked about the Soviet
exhibition at the New York Coliseum, Carl Sandburg, a poet, replied, and I
quote, "They make their appeal on the highest of intellectual levels." A
hack reviewer of new books for tourists, reviewing his own tour through
Norway, said that the fjords were too famous to need (his) description, and
that all Scandinavians loved flowers. And at a picnic for international
children a Zemblan moppet cried to her Japanese friend: Ufgut, ufgut, velkam
ut Semberland!" (Adieu, adieu, till we meet in Zembla!) I confess it has
been a wonderful game--this looking up in the WUL of various ephemerides
over the shadow of a padded shoulder.
The full screed: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/palenarr.htm
To me this suggests, convincingly, that an author-character has deliberately
invaded his own creation at this point, much as one did at the end of Bend
Sinister, and so there's hardly any point in imagining any of the characters
as anything but a figment of HIS imagination. Though of course we can
continue to argue about what that author-character constructed before the
intrusion, but I think there's a clearer and more literal interpretation --
K=K, S=S, G = figment of K's imagination.
--Tim Henderson
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/