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Re: [Fwd: Re: THOUGHTS: on extra-textual character]]
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Thanks for the quote; I make a note of it "for further use", as I haven't re-read Pale Fire recently; but it seems to fit in my "idea" of extra-textual character.
Laurence Hochard
JM:What quote you'll note for further use: is it from Pale Fire? TT? Pnin?
The one from SO, after I reread it when isolated from its wider context, helped me realize something that had escaped me before (Yes, again! It took me months to realize Van's rudeness to ADA, in his words "You bet", even when they came close to an explanation! He'd said: You, bête... ):
So: "they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral façade - demons placed there merely to show that they have been booted out." when, after all, gargoyles and monsters sculpted on a cathedral's external walls remains as a constituent part of that same cathedral, they belong to its stones as intimately as their equals stand inside in the carvings of benches in a great choir.
But VN's "demons placed there to show" are merely blocks of sculpture that serve to "show"! And they signal that the "real" demons are no longer there by their material presence.It should have been soooo obvious, but to me it was not. (Can we read VN without a world within and a world...without?)
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Laurence Hochard
JM:What quote you'll note for further use: is it from Pale Fire? TT? Pnin?
The one from SO, after I reread it when isolated from its wider context, helped me realize something that had escaped me before (Yes, again! It took me months to realize Van's rudeness to ADA, in his words "You bet", even when they came close to an explanation! He'd said: You, bête... ):
So: "they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral façade - demons placed there merely to show that they have been booted out." when, after all, gargoyles and monsters sculpted on a cathedral's external walls remains as a constituent part of that same cathedral, they belong to its stones as intimately as their equals stand inside in the carvings of benches in a great choir.
But VN's "demons placed there to show" are merely blocks of sculpture that serve to "show"! And they signal that the "real" demons are no longer there by their material presence.It should have been soooo obvious, but to me it was not. (Can we read VN without a world within and a world...without?)
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/