Subject
Re: A syllogism and an epitaph
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SKB and A.Stadlen discuss logic and syllogisms such as:
God is love
Love is blind
Therefore, God is blind.
Independently of that, Shade's lines about "the others who die" are still a quote, probably from Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych", as already mentioned?
They are distortions that, instead of a neutral statement, bring out VN's sense of humor ( not Shade's).
In Rainier M. Rilke"s stories about God he describes how a very enthusiastic angel circled around God praising him and singing about an "All-seeing God". And yet, for a few nanosecond God turned his head and a small dog escaped the Earth to smash against a star. Having uttered a false statement, the angel became mute. Rilke concludes: "If our angel had sung to "God Omniscient" and not to an "All-seeing God", he would not have been reduced to circling around Him in silence" (I changed the story a bit).
SKB, perhaps wisely, sang about VN's "omniscient precision"...
But there is a small question of dates and ages whose doubtless precision I haven't yet figured out.
In "Speak Memory", chapter Five ("Mademoiselle O", 1942), Nabokov mentions twice his age as sixty. Although the chapter had been published in 1943, in the January issue of The Atlantic Monthly (i.e, around the 1942/43 Winter), it was included in "Speak Memory" in 1967 ( judging from the date of its Copyright). On page 97 (Vintage International) "that particular return to Russia, my first conscious return, seems to me now, sixty years later, a rehearsal..." and, in a marvellous shift of perspective, on pages 99/100:
"But what am I doing in this stereoscopic dreamland? How did I get there? Somehow, the two sleighs [ bearing Mademoiselle and her luggage with Zahar in his versipel cover driving one of the carriages] have slipped away, leaving behind a passportless spy standing on the blue-white road in his New England snowboots and stormcoat. ...All is still, spellbound,enthralled by the moon, fancy's rearvision mirror. The snow is real, though, and as I bend to it and scoop up a handful, sixty years crumble to a glittering frost-dust between my fingers."
Mademoiselle arrived in Vyra in the Winter of 1905/06. Was VN 60 or 61 years old at the time when this recollection was included in the Autobiography?
( we have the same problem when calculating Shade's age following Kinbote's notes, something already debated exaustively in the List).
It all depends on what month, in 1967, should be used for checking VN's age and to learn when were the alterations made.
VN had already explained why he sometimes miscalculated his age in "a series of remarkably consistent chronological blunders in the first version of this book" (page 13) -for he was born at the turn of the century & not a year later, as was his brother Sergey...( making him almost into a twin brother)
The "sixty-years" dating must already be the result of a corrected addition to the second version of the book. Still ...the very fact that the age was altered from 44 or 45 to 60 is, in my eyes, rather interesting!
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God is love
Love is blind
Therefore, God is blind.
Independently of that, Shade's lines about "the others who die" are still a quote, probably from Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych", as already mentioned?
They are distortions that, instead of a neutral statement, bring out VN's sense of humor ( not Shade's).
In Rainier M. Rilke"s stories about God he describes how a very enthusiastic angel circled around God praising him and singing about an "All-seeing God". And yet, for a few nanosecond God turned his head and a small dog escaped the Earth to smash against a star. Having uttered a false statement, the angel became mute. Rilke concludes: "If our angel had sung to "God Omniscient" and not to an "All-seeing God", he would not have been reduced to circling around Him in silence" (I changed the story a bit).
SKB, perhaps wisely, sang about VN's "omniscient precision"...
But there is a small question of dates and ages whose doubtless precision I haven't yet figured out.
In "Speak Memory", chapter Five ("Mademoiselle O", 1942), Nabokov mentions twice his age as sixty. Although the chapter had been published in 1943, in the January issue of The Atlantic Monthly (i.e, around the 1942/43 Winter), it was included in "Speak Memory" in 1967 ( judging from the date of its Copyright). On page 97 (Vintage International) "that particular return to Russia, my first conscious return, seems to me now, sixty years later, a rehearsal..." and, in a marvellous shift of perspective, on pages 99/100:
"But what am I doing in this stereoscopic dreamland? How did I get there? Somehow, the two sleighs [ bearing Mademoiselle and her luggage with Zahar in his versipel cover driving one of the carriages] have slipped away, leaving behind a passportless spy standing on the blue-white road in his New England snowboots and stormcoat. ...All is still, spellbound,enthralled by the moon, fancy's rearvision mirror. The snow is real, though, and as I bend to it and scoop up a handful, sixty years crumble to a glittering frost-dust between my fingers."
Mademoiselle arrived in Vyra in the Winter of 1905/06. Was VN 60 or 61 years old at the time when this recollection was included in the Autobiography?
( we have the same problem when calculating Shade's age following Kinbote's notes, something already debated exaustively in the List).
It all depends on what month, in 1967, should be used for checking VN's age and to learn when were the alterations made.
VN had already explained why he sometimes miscalculated his age in "a series of remarkably consistent chronological blunders in the first version of this book" (page 13) -for he was born at the turn of the century & not a year later, as was his brother Sergey...( making him almost into a twin brother)
The "sixty-years" dating must already be the result of a corrected addition to the second version of the book. Still ...the very fact that the age was altered from 44 or 45 to 60 is, in my eyes, rather interesting!
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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