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Fw: Joyce´s Stephen and Nabokov´s Dedalus Veen
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----- Original Message -----
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
To: don barton johnson
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 7:38 PM
Subject: Joyce´s Stephen and Nabokov´s Dedalus Veen
There is a clear reference of Nabokov to Joyce´s Ulysses in the novel Ada, linking Stephen Dedalus and Joyce´s style, to Dedalus Veen´s mentioned close to Van´s maniambulation that enabled him to look at the world upside down.
I´ll begin quoting from Ada ( Penguin edition, pag 68/9 ):
" The pleasure of suddenly discovering the right knack of topsy turvy locomotion was rather like learning to man, after many a painful and ignominious fall, those delightful gliders called Magicarpets ( ...) while Grandfather Dedalus Veen, running with upturned face, flourished a flag and fell into the horsepond.
Van peeled off his polo shirt and took off his shoes and socks (...)
His reversed body gracefully curved, his brown legs hoisted like a Tarentine sail, his joined ankles tacking, Van gripped with splayed hands the brow of gravity, and moved to and fro, veering and sidestepping, opening his mouth the wrong way (...); but that summer afternoon, on the silky ground of the pineglade, in the magical heart of Ardis, under Lady Erminin´s blue eye, fourteen-year- old Van treated us to the greatest performance we have ever seen a brachiambulant give. Not the faintest flush showed on his face or neck! Now and then, when he detached his organs of locomotion from the lenient ground,(...) one wondered if this dreamy indolence of levitation was not a result of the earth´s canceling its pull in a fit of absentminded benevolence. Incidentally, one curious consequence of certain muscular changes and osteal "reclick' caused by the special training with which Wing had racked him was Van´s inability in later years to shrug his shoulders ( etc).
Nabokov´s lecture on James Joyce ( hard-cover,HBJ ed.page 285/9) :
"Stephen Dedalus, whose surname is that of the mythical maker of the labyrinth at Knossos, the royal city of ancient Crete; other fabulous gadgets; wings for himself and Icarus, his son (...)
"There is nothing more tedious than a protracted and sustained allegory based on a well-worn myth (...)
"Each chapter is written in a different style, or rather with a different style predominating. There is no special reason why this should be - why one chapter should be told straight, another through a stream-of-consciousness gurgle, a third through the prism of a parody. There is no special reason but it may be argued that this constant shift of the viewpoint conveys a more varied knowledge, fresh vivid glimpses from this or that side. If you have ever tried to stand and bend your head so as to look back between your knees, with your face turned upside down, you will see the world in a totally different light. Try it on the beach: it is very funny to see people walking when you look at them upside down. They seem to be, with each step, disengaging their feet from the glue of gravitation, without losing their dignity. Well, this trick of changing the vista, of changing the prism and the viewpoint, can be compared to Joyce´s new literary technique, to the kind of new twist through which you see a greener grass, a fresher world (...)
The whole of Ulysses, as we shall gradually realize, is a deliberate pattern of recurrent themes and synchronization of trivial events(...)
At any other moment, however, Joyce can turn to all sorts of verbal tricks, to puns, transposition of words, verbal echoes, monstrous twinning of verbs, or the imitation of sounds. In these, as in the overweight of local allusions and foreign expressions, a needless obscurity can be produced by details not brought out with sufficient clarity but only suggested for the knowledgeable" .
Jansy