Subject
Hans Christian Anderson's "Ole Lufoie"
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Date
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Don Johnson. ... “Ole Lukoie” by Mr. H. C. Anderson..involves a sleeping boy entering a nursery wall picture: Martyn, the young hero of the VN novel Glory (Podvig) who seems to enter the picture hanging above his bed, thus launching the fatal peregrinations of his future himself in a mysterious dark kingdom suggesting woodsy Zoorland, a.k.a, Soviet Russia.
Any thoughts pro or con? Other possible sources? ...There are doubtless scads of fairy tales that conform to the schema but VN’s mother read such tales to her predormitory son.
JM: In Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" we find Alice entering a mirror instead of a painting. Nabokov was familiar enough with Carroll's mirror-worlds to be able to work them over in his fantasies.
Google taught me that the idea of entering into a painting is a fairly common one, particularly now with cybergame challenges. " Paintings are sometimes described as a 'window into another world'. ...A magic painting will contain an entire world or dungeon which the heroes must enter to defeat the enemies within. In some cases, the art style will shift to match that of the painting, emphasizing the otherness of the painting world...In rare cases, some nefarious ill-doer or oblivious Muggle may attempt to destroy a Portal Picture while another character is inside the painting world. The results vary: if the painting was literally a portal to another world, then destroying the portal will leave the characters Trapped in Another World. The more common metaphysical position, though, is that the painting world is actually formed out of the paint and brushstrokes on the canvas, and by wiping away the painting, the world itself disintegrates...Either way, the painting may be used as a prison." (extracted from the internet)
Two stories turned into children's movies came immediately to my mind (Mary Poppins, 1964 and The Chronicles of Narnia, 1950 "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader") but Nabokov's original "Glory" was written long before, in the early thirties.
Another plot that fits the pattern of entering into another dimension or of reaching the "the Other World," (as it is figured in Greek Mythology and in other cultures), equally related to Nabokov's childhood stories, is "La Veneziana."*
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*- Dmitri Nabokov, in a 1995 preface writes about his father's collected short-stories: "It would take much more than a brief preface to trace themes, methods, and images as they weave and develop in these stories, or the echoes of Nabokov's youth in Russia, his university years in England, the emigre period in Germany and France, and the America he was inventing, as he put it, after having invented Europe. To choose at random from the thirteen newly collected stories, "La Veneziana," with its astonishing twist, echoes Nabokov's love for painting (to which he intended, as a boy, to dedicate his life) against a backdrop that includes tennis, which he played and described with a special flair."
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Any thoughts pro or con? Other possible sources? ...There are doubtless scads of fairy tales that conform to the schema but VN’s mother read such tales to her predormitory son.
JM: In Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" we find Alice entering a mirror instead of a painting. Nabokov was familiar enough with Carroll's mirror-worlds to be able to work them over in his fantasies.
Google taught me that the idea of entering into a painting is a fairly common one, particularly now with cybergame challenges. " Paintings are sometimes described as a 'window into another world'. ...A magic painting will contain an entire world or dungeon which the heroes must enter to defeat the enemies within. In some cases, the art style will shift to match that of the painting, emphasizing the otherness of the painting world...In rare cases, some nefarious ill-doer or oblivious Muggle may attempt to destroy a Portal Picture while another character is inside the painting world. The results vary: if the painting was literally a portal to another world, then destroying the portal will leave the characters Trapped in Another World. The more common metaphysical position, though, is that the painting world is actually formed out of the paint and brushstrokes on the canvas, and by wiping away the painting, the world itself disintegrates...Either way, the painting may be used as a prison." (extracted from the internet)
Two stories turned into children's movies came immediately to my mind (Mary Poppins, 1964 and The Chronicles of Narnia, 1950 "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader") but Nabokov's original "Glory" was written long before, in the early thirties.
Another plot that fits the pattern of entering into another dimension or of reaching the "the Other World," (as it is figured in Greek Mythology and in other cultures), equally related to Nabokov's childhood stories, is "La Veneziana."*
......................................................................................................................................................................................
*- Dmitri Nabokov, in a 1995 preface writes about his father's collected short-stories: "It would take much more than a brief preface to trace themes, methods, and images as they weave and develop in these stories, or the echoes of Nabokov's youth in Russia, his university years in England, the emigre period in Germany and France, and the America he was inventing, as he put it, after having invented Europe. To choose at random from the thirteen newly collected stories, "La Veneziana," with its astonishing twist, echoes Nabokov's love for painting (to which he intended, as a boy, to dedicate his life) against a backdrop that includes tennis, which he played and described with a special flair."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/