Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017836, Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:19:33 -0300

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Re: VN on Dickens, Jekyll & Hyde
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Re: [NABOKV-L] VN on Dickens, Jekyll & HydeStan K-Bootle: "I suppose one could argue from this that the "number of personalities" exhibited by J&H depends on the definition of "personalities" and in what sense they can be "counted." I don't really mind, pace VN, if we just take J's as the starting personality, with H's as the final extreme, giving a count two as, I think, the average layperson digs the plot![...](CK: this agreement on two J&H personalities bodes well for our future marital bliss?) [...]but, again, we don't admit to an infinite number, X%-J + (100 - X)%-H, of personalities with X ranging from 99 to 1[ ...] My next ACM Queue col. (due out soon) is titled One Peut-Être, Two Peut-Être, Three Peut-Être, More. ."

JM: How does this saying go in English: "um é pouco, dois é bom, tres é demais"(one is insufficient, two is efficient, three is difícil sorte)?
It might combine with VN's importance given to One*, in relation to puzzled references to sacred couples and a "holy ghost" ( but I cannot imagine Gradus as the paraclete, but Kinbote/VN mentioned a "more efficient Gradus," meaning Death)

Should I'd been blessed with a talent to write short-stories I'd develop a web of plots, following the myriad discoveries about Pale Fire (each and everyone already copyrighted recquiring their maneuvring into "readymades"), using quantum-literature to hyperlink them into parallel worlds and simultaneous contradicting realities. Perhaps as a starting personality I'll choose Gerald Emerald: he feels green and putatively respectueux enough.

*, for example, as Kinbote prefaces: "Nay, I shall even assert (as our shadows still walk without us) that there remained to be written only one line of the poem (namely verse 1000) which would have been identical to line 1[...] and damn that music. Knowing Shade's combinational turn of mind...I cannot imagine that he intended to deform the faces of his crystal by meddling with its predictable growth." (PF,Forward)
Here we get a self-contained whole ("predicatable growth"), every number exceeding One as either undesirable or repetitious, perhaps comprising a symmetrical balance when it's Art ( 1000=1)**, and a mysterious "our shadows still walk with us," since John Shade is dead ( is he indeed, Carolyn?) - who comprises Kinbote's OUR?

**Query: As it happens when we write about "alternatives" (only two can be cited), using "either" in a sentence is equally limiting? No threesomes?


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