J. Aisenberg: 1.The "he" in
that quotation is Fyodor's dead father[...] 2. I've been slightly
misunderstood on the handwalking issue[...] I was being ironic about the
handwalking comparison[...] I merely wanted to use an example from Ada
to demonstrate my point that ideal butterfly specimens are created by
memory's use of language to perceive things[...]As for the quote from
Transparent Things and Hochard's re: "Human life can be
compared to a person dancing in a variety of forms around his own self: thus the
vegetable of our first picture book encircled a boy in his dream - green
cucumber, blue eggplant [...]their spinning ronde going faster and faster and
gradually forming a transparent ring of banded colours around a dead person or
planet." The nucleus (concept) is dead, there is no ultimate
"reality". The funny thing is the dead planet or person of
this quote winds up, I think, seeming more concrete than transparent ring
of banded colors, rather like those colored panes from the veranda
of Speak, memory through which N. liked to look as a child. Surely the
concept of death and the irrecoverable is the point here. Memory and
perception are the colored panes through which one can recall ultimate reality,
but because it is lost to our fingertips the transparent colors are all
we've got."
JM: Dmitri once posted a sentence from the "Second
Addendum to The Gift" (pages 198-234) in "Nabokov's
Butterflies" on "A crawling root, the extremity of
a tropical creeper..."(Cf.VN-List,23 Oct.2006). In this same passage, Fyodor mentions "the idea of rotation acting upon the ferment of life, and provoked
by that ferment itself, is what gave rise in nature to the lawlike regularity of
repetition, of recognition, and of logical responsibility, to which the
apparatus of human ratiocination, the fruit of the same agitated woodlands, is
subordinate... ". So, even though VN distinguishes a reality engendered by
memory and perception (individual details), from a reality achieved
thru reasoning (abstract thought),
he also stresses that both "realities" are
constituted by the same "agitated woodlands"
and "reflected in that selfsame glass and acquiring its
reality solely within it" ( i.e. no Plato,
here, no "recollection of ultimate reality" ie. no
"fantasy"!)
L.H: "Natasha" : "How I
dream, Natasha, how I dream [...] My God! The music of geographical
names." [...]
JM: There are no recollections of
anything perceived or experienced. Although the "music of geographical
names" refers to a poetical dimension, it is still childish in its abuse of
language, employed in a kind of verbal-firework display. I can see no
relation bt the Baron's enthussing and Fyodor's.
BTW: I remembered a very different, humorous,
use of geographical names in "ADA", through the young girl's exploiting fingertrips along Van's body. "
... would it help if I’d
touch, are you sure?’
‘You bet,’ said Van, ‘on n’est pas bête à ce point’ (‘there are limits to stupidity,’ colloquial and
rude).
‘Relief map,’ said the primrose prig,
‘the rivers of Africa.’ Her index traced the blue Nile down into its
jungle and traveled up again. ‘Now what’s this? The cap of the Red Bolete is not
half as plushy. In fact’ ..