Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0000469, Thu, 9 Feb 1995 10:16:02 -0800

Subject
Re: Browning's door (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following seems to be moving from Browning's door
(Elizabeth's, it now seems) to Hawthorne's. For those who are interested
in VN and Hawthorne--a seemingly unlikely conjunction, I might mention
Leona Toker's article"Nabokov and the the Hawthorne Tradition," in
_Scripta Hierosolmitana_, 32 (1987), 323-49, and more generally her
_Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures_ passim. DBJ

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While we're brainstorming (a word I hope VN would have hated, by the way),
everytime I read notes about this subject I cannot help associating it
with Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown(ing) (a story I can imagine VN
disliking if not wildly hating) and the door out of which this character
ventures out into the world to eventually become a sour, dour misanthropist.
I can still see his wife's ribbons fluttering in the breeze in my mind's
fuzzy eye.
This all may be totally out of left field as I do not know whether VN ever read
Hawthorne (but I bet he did).


James McShane *DON'T PANIC*
Queens Borough Public Library
Jamesmc@queens.lib.ny.us