Subject
Re: Browning's door (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITOR'S NOTE: Galya Diment's posting is in response to the query from
Allan McWilliams reproduced following her comment. DBJ
----------
Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 10:09:29 -0800 (PST)
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
Does anyone know if the door really exists and which Browning owned it?
It could not possibly be Robert Browning since at the time he was not
even twenty years old. Elizabeth who was older did not become a Browning
till later. But I do think Nabokov, playing yet another hoax and trick,
wants his reader to associate it with Robert Browning even though it may
have been a name of one of Wellesley's presidents, for all I know. He
does not provide one with Mr. Browning's first name in the index either.
Nabokov did not believe in indexes or chronology (that is why he starts
Gogol's book with the writer's death), did them reluctantly when asked
(as was the case in the Gogol book) and poked fun of them while at it. I
think the significance of the Browning's door entry was not Browning but
Wellesley College where he taught at the time of finishing the book. He is
most likely making fun of Wellesley's -- and America's (especially when
compared to Europe) -- lack of "real" history by commemorating a trivial
event of this kind. By making his readers assume that the door belonged
to the most famous of all Brownings, who happens to be English, not
American, Nabokov may be also underscoring the lack of American literary
history as well. And then, of course, he also liked Robert Browning.
Galya Diment
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: ALLAN@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
>
> Would anyone care to offer elucidating comment on a sentence in the
> chronology at the end of _Nikolai Gogol_? It's in the entry for "Winter
> 1836-1837:"
>
> "Browning's door is preserved in the library of Wellesley College."
> (p. 159 of my ND paperback)
>
> An apparent non-sequitur which yet nets Browning a spot in the index.
> And, while we're at it: is it?
>
> Allan McWilliams
> U. of Arizona
>
Allan McWilliams reproduced following her comment. DBJ
----------
Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 10:09:29 -0800 (PST)
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
Does anyone know if the door really exists and which Browning owned it?
It could not possibly be Robert Browning since at the time he was not
even twenty years old. Elizabeth who was older did not become a Browning
till later. But I do think Nabokov, playing yet another hoax and trick,
wants his reader to associate it with Robert Browning even though it may
have been a name of one of Wellesley's presidents, for all I know. He
does not provide one with Mr. Browning's first name in the index either.
Nabokov did not believe in indexes or chronology (that is why he starts
Gogol's book with the writer's death), did them reluctantly when asked
(as was the case in the Gogol book) and poked fun of them while at it. I
think the significance of the Browning's door entry was not Browning but
Wellesley College where he taught at the time of finishing the book. He is
most likely making fun of Wellesley's -- and America's (especially when
compared to Europe) -- lack of "real" history by commemorating a trivial
event of this kind. By making his readers assume that the door belonged
to the most famous of all Brownings, who happens to be English, not
American, Nabokov may be also underscoring the lack of American literary
history as well. And then, of course, he also liked Robert Browning.
Galya Diment
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: ALLAN@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
>
> Would anyone care to offer elucidating comment on a sentence in the
> chronology at the end of _Nikolai Gogol_? It's in the entry for "Winter
> 1836-1837:"
>
> "Browning's door is preserved in the library of Wellesley College."
> (p. 159 of my ND paperback)
>
> An apparent non-sequitur which yet nets Browning a spot in the index.
> And, while we're at it: is it?
>
> Allan McWilliams
> U. of Arizona
>