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Re: QUERY: VN on time in Tolstoy
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In a message dated 05/05/2007 21:54:48 GMT Standard Time,
NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU writes:
I have suggested [Zembla, "Arbitrary Signs and Symbols"] that
Nabokov wished his readers to discover the exact historical date of
the pointedly unspecified fictional Friday on which the story
unfolds, and that this discovery is central to the story.
=============================
Sandy Drescher makes use of my observation that the story is divided into
three sections of 7, 4, 19 paragraphs, thus, according to a certain "referential
mania" or "logic", suggesting the year 1947. He then states that the
fictional Friday is the fourth of April 1947, which in historical reality happened
to be both Good Friday and Erev Pesach (Eve of Passover) that year. But he
gives no "evidence" for the day or the month. Surely, the very first two
numbers in the story, by the same "referential mania" or "logic", provide it: "For
the fourth time in as many years..."
Anthony Stadlen
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