-------- Original Message --------
Carolyn: I share your doubts about Alexey's (and occasionally JM's)
"anagrammatic extensions" when used to interpret VN's novels. VN
scatters his own playful anagrams and puns quite freely and teasingly,
providing us with ample scope for guessing his real intentions. To
introduce extra-textual anagrams of our own seems an unnecessary
distraction! Lots of laughs, of course, and dazzling ingenuity, but
nevertheless a distraction. Here's the problem: if a _perfect_ anagram
in, say, English, doesn't "work," Alexey can always (i) add or
subtract the odd letter! or (ii) switch to other languages, such as
Russian, where "ambiguities" such as C<=>S and B<=>V can be
cunningly
co-opted!
When VN invents the author Vivian Darkbloom, we smile and deduce the
fact that this is VN himself lurking behind an anagrammatic pseudonym.
Similarly, we are led to see some connection between Kinbote and
Botkin, even though it's not a perfect anagram and it's not clear
whether that connection means _one_ person, as in the case of
VN/Darkbloom. When Alexey introduces his own anagrams (perfect or
near-perfect) we have moved away from the text itself. Did VN intend
us to devise these extra-textual anagrams? As they say at the end of
the X-files: We may never know!
Essential reading is Brian Boyd's VN-TAY, Chapter 20: "Ada Stirs:
Montreux, 1964-1966." Here we see VN starting to "assemble ideas for a
fictive meditation on TIME" (my caps). Remarkable diversions (Lolita
po ruskii; Edmund Wilson altercations, more) delayed the final
assembly of VN's "longest and most ambitious novel" which "sets us
down in his strangest and most contradictory world, his most colorful
and comic, his most lyrical and discordant, his most unsettling and
profound." (op cit p. 536)
That breath-taking summary (which I'm gradually beginning to accept,
after the same initial reservations voiced by Carolyn!) should, at
least, warn us against simplistic readings of Ada.
I've often queried the naive LitCrit obsessions with "symmetry" and
"mirror" images. For mathematicians, "symmetry" is a wondrous
group-theoretic property (deeply connected via Emma Noether's Theorem
with Nature's Conservation Laws*) and not at all to be confused with,
WOW, line 1000 of Pale Fire may be the same as Line 1. Similarly,
"reflection" works in frustratingly different ways when you move from
space to time (google "entropy" _now_). We badly need fresh
terminology in order to discuss the patterns and structures of
art/literature without confused borrowing from the mathematical lexis
(and, no doubt, vice-versa). Consider Claudia Papka's question:
"Does Ada herself really exist, or is she but a creation of Van's
mirroring mind?"
We can accept the use of "really exist" in the context of fictional
characters. This is part of the tacit "contract" between author and
reader: sorting out the "textual reality levels" of events, landscapes
and inhabitants. But it becomes problematical when a
"fictionally-real" character like Van is conjectured as "creating"
another "less real" character with the use of a "mirroring mind." The
idiom "smoke and mirrors" comes to mind! Chirality is not the way to
create a shaggable sibling (God knows, I've tried!) Re-inviting dear
Popper to our pages, we have another "unfalsifiable" hypothesis. Are
there any reported actions or words from "Sister Ada," however
independent they may appear from Van's, that cannot be construed as
the solipsistic inventions of the brother?
* http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/6648.shtml
Quoting Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET>:
skb
Quick correction to my just-sent response.
It was Emmy Noether, not Emma (I had Jane Austen on my mind)
Better link to her magnificent mathematics is the obvious wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
skb