Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0010116, Sun, 25 Jul 2004 08:46:00 -0700

Subject
Re: TT-5 Misc. notes (fwd)
Date
Body
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Date: Sunday, July 25, 2004 4:00 PM +1000
From: nitrogen14@australia.edu
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Before we leave TT-5, I have a few misc. notes
of my own.

Person Sr's 'fear of electric storms' put me in mind
of Joyce, who also feared them; though I suspect Dr Person's
fear is more a precognition of his own death, than a
Joycean allusion.

That the day is Thursday is surely an allusion to
Thor, the norse god of thunder.
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EDNOTE. Yes. Note also how the lightning is echoed by the magnesium
photoflash and the thunder by the train. Electricity is linked with the
otherworld from VN's very early work onward. NB "The Return of Chorb"
(1925).
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'imitation aragonite'
aragonite is a real-enough mineral, but I still can't
help seeing Louis Aragon's name here. Has anyone any
thoughts as to why he should be alluded to at this point?
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EDNOTE. I too have pondered the Louis Aragon possibility. VN disliked
Aragon at least in part for his Communist leanings but con't see how that
might fit in here. If there is an Aragon connection it might refer to
something he wrote.-
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'Hugh, too, was twenty-two'
another Joycean allusion? Stephen Dedalus was twenty-two
in Ulysses.

'an impending event' (the lowering of the rail-crossing barrier)
a pun on the two meanings of 'impending': to be hanging
from above, and to be about to happen

--Peter Hayes




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D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L