Subject
TT-4 (fwd) 1) HP & his father 2) otherwordl?
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---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 4:09 PM -0400
From: Alexander Drescher <bunsan@direcway.com>
To: nabokv-l@listserv.ucsb.edu
Subject: TT-4
Perhaps an experienced List member might enlighten an amateur on the
following questions. Thanks in advance. -Sandy Drescher
1] HP appears to lack any empathy for his father; his irritation is
unambivalent. This contrasts with VN's total, but equally unambivalent,
admiration for his own father.
2] Does the emotionally moving depiction of father-Person struggling - in
dream and awake - with the horrors of physical decay and loss of spouse,
suggest that the author is working over similarly worrisome themes from his
own life? [HP's shame/disgust with the "foresmell" of his father's clothing
points to contrasting sensitivities of the author, narrator and character.
Foresmell, would be one dictionary entry away from its likely source].
3] Can the idea - or is it a wish? - that consciousness survives death be
understood psychologically as well a metaphysically? Has the theme of
past-beings surviving in living memory and in art been lost in TT? May
Nabokov have used the idea of extended consciousness as a metaphor,
characterizing as "immortal" the ongoing dialogues between a mortal author
and descendant, living readers?
4] How is the reader to understand characters who seem to be entirely
certain of what they think and feel? How believable is a human free of
ambivalence? Is that not the rub? Is there a character in TT who seems
human enough for the reader to like?
Sandy Drescher
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
Date: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 4:09 PM -0400
From: Alexander Drescher <bunsan@direcway.com>
To: nabokv-l@listserv.ucsb.edu
Subject: TT-4
Perhaps an experienced List member might enlighten an amateur on the
following questions. Thanks in advance. -Sandy Drescher
1] HP appears to lack any empathy for his father; his irritation is
unambivalent. This contrasts with VN's total, but equally unambivalent,
admiration for his own father.
2] Does the emotionally moving depiction of father-Person struggling - in
dream and awake - with the horrors of physical decay and loss of spouse,
suggest that the author is working over similarly worrisome themes from his
own life? [HP's shame/disgust with the "foresmell" of his father's clothing
points to contrasting sensitivities of the author, narrator and character.
Foresmell, would be one dictionary entry away from its likely source].
3] Can the idea - or is it a wish? - that consciousness survives death be
understood psychologically as well a metaphysically? Has the theme of
past-beings surviving in living memory and in art been lost in TT? May
Nabokov have used the idea of extended consciousness as a metaphor,
characterizing as "immortal" the ongoing dialogues between a mortal author
and descendant, living readers?
4] How is the reader to understand characters who seem to be entirely
certain of what they think and feel? How believable is a human free of
ambivalence? Is that not the rub? Is there a character in TT who seems
human enough for the reader to like?
Sandy Drescher
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L