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Jansy Mello on symmetry II
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Dear Anthony Stadlen and Penny McC,
A.Stadlen answered my comment on symmetry and narcissistic characters: "
I never said this. Of course there are beautiful symmetries in nature
and art and mathematics, and real circularities as in Finnegans Wake and
VN's circular short story. But there are also unreliable ones proposed
by unreliable people, such as some of VN's narrators, who try to reduce
otherness to sameness.
I misread your statements and generalized what had been limited to a
special context. Sorry.
I had the impression you ascribed symmetry (and "obsessive patterning")
mainly to VN's unreliable narrators and not to VN himself.
Stadlen wrote: " VN did (in Strong Opinions, or was it Lectures on
Literature, or Speak Memory, or perhaps all three?) praise the
Hegelian-dialectical spiral as something that meant much to him. That is
something different from either symmetry or circularity."
I'm a bit confused with what the term "symmetry" means: If someone with
mathematical abilities could correct me here: I don't think Symmetry
only applies to mirror-like reflections or doublings. Wouldn't the
regularities of, say, a spiral shell or caracole or any helicoidals
represent one kind of "symmetry"?
Stephen, I think the philosopher Epicurus was a monist and an "atomist"
( I suppose VN read Lucrecius and "De Rerum Natura"?) and this is why I
mentioned VN's sentence on Van as "an epicure of duration" in the
context of "monism", while hoping someone would take up this matter and
add more information to my scant notions.
After all "a-tomism" could mean something related to what was suggested
by VN's description of himself as an "undivided monist".
Jansy
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A.Stadlen answered my comment on symmetry and narcissistic characters: "
I never said this. Of course there are beautiful symmetries in nature
and art and mathematics, and real circularities as in Finnegans Wake and
VN's circular short story. But there are also unreliable ones proposed
by unreliable people, such as some of VN's narrators, who try to reduce
otherness to sameness.
I misread your statements and generalized what had been limited to a
special context. Sorry.
I had the impression you ascribed symmetry (and "obsessive patterning")
mainly to VN's unreliable narrators and not to VN himself.
Stadlen wrote: " VN did (in Strong Opinions, or was it Lectures on
Literature, or Speak Memory, or perhaps all three?) praise the
Hegelian-dialectical spiral as something that meant much to him. That is
something different from either symmetry or circularity."
I'm a bit confused with what the term "symmetry" means: If someone with
mathematical abilities could correct me here: I don't think Symmetry
only applies to mirror-like reflections or doublings. Wouldn't the
regularities of, say, a spiral shell or caracole or any helicoidals
represent one kind of "symmetry"?
Stephen, I think the philosopher Epicurus was a monist and an "atomist"
( I suppose VN read Lucrecius and "De Rerum Natura"?) and this is why I
mentioned VN's sentence on Van as "an epicure of duration" in the
context of "monism", while hoping someone would take up this matter and
add more information to my scant notions.
After all "a-tomism" could mean something related to what was suggested
by VN's description of himself as an "undivided monist".
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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