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Re: THOUGHTS: Consistency, ID, Religion
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jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
JM: Where does Nabokov describe the "spherical shape of life"?
JA re: You got me, I'm not sure where I got that description. The spiral is from Speak Memory, but somewhere else he says that life is not a circle but a sphere--was it in the gift? When describing the structural technique used for the Chernishevski bio? Don't remember now. Besides, I was mostly being ironic, you know, because the shape of a book's life is pretty literally a rectangular shaped block.
JM: hy transform "ID" into an anthropoid "Designer"?
JA re: I antropomorphized the concept because I'm collapsing the difference between whatever force or forces N may have thought (mentally italicize the "may") sparked life with that of an author who writes a book; I have been arguing the none too original idea over the course of several notes that Nabokov's books were meant to be models of how a universe might be made by cosmic designer.
JM says: It is still unclear to me if Fyodor's father believed that concepts, in fact, express "the original of a being". If he did... how could he then accept "evolution"
JA re: Did Fyodor's father believe in evolution? I thought he in fact did not.
Would VN's spiraling and evolving world be encased, indeed, inside a crystal sphere that is observed by its Designer? I don't think that answers to such questions shall clarify anything important on what concerns VN's fiction:. even arguments, such as those voiced by Fyodor, must belong to VN's fictional ploys.
JA re: You may be right, but isn't the idea that his evolving fictive worlds (their metamorphosing or books with surprises and twists and details which constantly make the reader redifine their relation to the material, such as the poignant story of Lolita's enforced loss and loneliness which Humbert refuses to acknowlege but whose evidence creates a picture within the one of crude youthful philistinism he thinks he's painting) are encased in a crystal sphere to be observed by readers, a pretty close approximation of what he said he wanted his fiction to do? I'm thinking of an interview he gave where he said that at the end of one of his books he wanted the book's little world to recede into the distance and stay there for contemplation (there's more to this quote but I can't recall it). Oddly, I think I agree with you that this probably won't answer an specific questions about why this or that plot point occurs, but it does get us close to the meaning of his post-modern
devices, other than their being funny.
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