Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0015033, Sun, 11 Mar 2007 15:43:45 -0300

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Re: THOUGHTS: A few Jewish foot notes on Ada & PF by J. Mello
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Carolyn: ..." a few things in my Jewish reading have made me think either of VN or the List. There is a new edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia... the original edition that was left incomplete due to the disasters in Europe left off at the letter "L". I don't suggest that VN knew that, but it did make me think of "Ada"...
The main narration follows the five books of the Chumash (Genesis, Exodus, etc) and is followed by five "glosses"(aleph, bet, etc.) which include not only poetry, but a play and an analysis of Michelangelo's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. There are, I believe, two authors at work, and of course the novel predates PF by decades."

M.Roth: "In note to line 71, Kinbote mentions that Lukin shares the same root as Locock, Luxon and Lukashevich. Some years back Don Johnson noted that while these names do not allude to writers, they do derive from a writer (the gospel writer). I am still unsure of any connections for Lukashevich and Luxon..."

JM: Only after Jerry Friedman returned to "acanthus" and "architrave", in his discussion with MR, did I perceive a new Biblical link. The Greek word used in the Gospels for what in other languages is "a crown of thorns" is acanthus.
Through the acanthus we get to Conmal's "slave and Master" ( Jesus is often named "Master") and the idea of " to see a part and then the whole ( here, the acanthus as a part of a Corinthian column). I suggest we link this "acanthus crown" and "corynthian column" to another versicle in the New Testament. It is to be found in St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians (1Cor. 13:12), in a line by Charles Kinbote: "None can say how long John Shade had planned his poem to be, but it is not impossible that what he left represents only a small fraction of the composition he saw in a glass, darkly."
There are various possible angles to view this issue.

I would like to remind MR that it is only in the book of St. Luke that we encounter the Three Magi, the Nativity and the early life of Christ. It is absent from St.Matthews,St. Mark's and St. John's, but I haven't checked this information I first glimpsed ages ago in Bernard Shaw's preface to "Saint Joan". There is a Balthazar, a Melchior... one has only to google the List to find discussion about these Magi and even about Twelfth Night.

CK, a beautiful example about "two authors at work", thank you


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