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Re: Sybils Vane - - reply to Jansy (fwd) (fwd)
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------------------ Hello, Carolyn
Your comments concerning Wilde and VN are quite stimulating. You also
mentioned Stevenson´s "Jekyll and Hyde"...Sometimes similarities do not
arise from litteral comparisons or from analogical fittings, but arise fromn
"the spirit of the letter" which creates not only illusions of
"gemelarity", as in "Despair", but subtle "Jekyll and Hyde" affinities in PF
and ADA.
I was reminded of photographer, lythographist and painter Hans Bellmer with
his palindromes and correspondences, his Lolipop Lolitas and broken dolls
because his love for Wilde´s Dorian Gray was so peculiar that he named one
of his twin daughters "Doriana", and he forgot all about the other!
For your list of muder-suicides, I add Lucette´s drowning and dreamy
reappearances as a mermaid swimming in a wine goblet.
----- Original Message -----
From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2004 2:51 PM
Subject: Sybils Vane - - reply to Jansy (fwd)
> ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
> Date: Friday, August 13, 2004 11:12 AM -0800
> From: Carolyn <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
> To: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> Subject: Sybils Vane - - reply to Jansy
>
> Dear Jansy,
>
> Has this been discusses before? Indeed it has. Perhaps "discussed"
> overstates. I only managed to engage one or two interlocutors regarding
> Jekyll & Hyde & Pale Fire, no one commented on my remarks regarding The
> Picture of Dorian Gray and Sybil Vane.
>
> In both Dorian & P.F. SV is an actress who commits suicide. In PF the
> suicide, it is hinted, is a cover-up for murder, in Dorian SV is a victim
> of Dorian's cruelty which leads to her suicide - - another form of murder,
> Nabokov seems to hint.
>
> In Pale Fire there are several of these ambiguous murder-suicides.
Besides
> Sybil Vane, there are (in my reading of the novel) the student "in
> ballerina black" who haunts english lit 101, and Hazel. Charlotte Haze
in
> Lolita is another example, Aqua in Ada. And the Vane sister.
>
> I would guess there are others - - any nominees?
>
> Carolyn
>
> ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
>
>
>
> D. Barton Johnson
> NABOKV-L
>
>
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
Your comments concerning Wilde and VN are quite stimulating. You also
mentioned Stevenson´s "Jekyll and Hyde"...Sometimes similarities do not
arise from litteral comparisons or from analogical fittings, but arise fromn
"the spirit of the letter" which creates not only illusions of
"gemelarity", as in "Despair", but subtle "Jekyll and Hyde" affinities in PF
and ADA.
I was reminded of photographer, lythographist and painter Hans Bellmer with
his palindromes and correspondences, his Lolipop Lolitas and broken dolls
because his love for Wilde´s Dorian Gray was so peculiar that he named one
of his twin daughters "Doriana", and he forgot all about the other!
For your list of muder-suicides, I add Lucette´s drowning and dreamy
reappearances as a mermaid swimming in a wine goblet.
----- Original Message -----
From: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2004 2:51 PM
Subject: Sybils Vane - - reply to Jansy (fwd)
> ---------- Forwarded Message ----------
> Date: Friday, August 13, 2004 11:12 AM -0800
> From: Carolyn <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
> To: "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> Subject: Sybils Vane - - reply to Jansy
>
> Dear Jansy,
>
> Has this been discusses before? Indeed it has. Perhaps "discussed"
> overstates. I only managed to engage one or two interlocutors regarding
> Jekyll & Hyde & Pale Fire, no one commented on my remarks regarding The
> Picture of Dorian Gray and Sybil Vane.
>
> In both Dorian & P.F. SV is an actress who commits suicide. In PF the
> suicide, it is hinted, is a cover-up for murder, in Dorian SV is a victim
> of Dorian's cruelty which leads to her suicide - - another form of murder,
> Nabokov seems to hint.
>
> In Pale Fire there are several of these ambiguous murder-suicides.
Besides
> Sybil Vane, there are (in my reading of the novel) the student "in
> ballerina black" who haunts english lit 101, and Hazel. Charlotte Haze
in
> Lolita is another example, Aqua in Ada. And the Vane sister.
>
> I would guess there are others - - any nominees?
>
> Carolyn
>
> ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
>
>
>
> D. Barton Johnson
> NABOKV-L
>
>
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L