SUBJECT: Arctic Exploration
Since both the subject of
Arctic Exploration and Melville have come up recently on the list, I can’t
help but mention that I discuss the connection between Melville, Nabokov,
Arctic Exploration and the pursuit of “truth” in my article “The
Weed Exiles the Flower, Melville and Nabokov”. Melville too was interested
in the theme of Arctic Exploration. Lest I rewrite the whole paper here, I’ll
just cite a relevant paragraph.
In Lolita, Humbert
Humbert joins an arctic expedition which Humbert guesses may be to the North
Magnetic Pole. A group from this expedition break away to establish a weather
station on Pierre Point in Melville Sound. The delightful
coincidence—there actually is a Pierre Point in Melville Sound- is
happily recorded. Further investigation suggests, however, a deeper connection.
The history of the exploration to the North Pole is peopled with Melvilles; not
only Melville Sound, but Melville Island and Melville Peninsula are named after
early explorers to the region. Another Viscount Melville, first Lord of the
British Admiralty helped discover the Northwest Passage in the early 1800s.
Rear Admiral George W. Melville was a survivor of three arctic expeditions, the
most famous being the failed voyage of the Jeannette. Although not
related to these Melvilles genealogically, Herman Melville did have an uncle
whose stories of adventure in the Polar Regions helped to launch his literary
imaginings. Nabokov too had family ties to arctic exploration and in an early
play entitled “The Pole” he depicts the heroic Captain Scott and
the expedition of explorers to Antarctica who perished in 1919. Humbert’s
expedition to the north magnetic pole was doomed from the start; the magnetic pole
is not stable and its constant shifting makes it a nearly impossible final
destination. In both Nabokov and Melville the theme of polar exploration and
its associations with the exploration in literature for inner truth is
portrayed as a noble quest. For both authors this quest is doomed to fail. [1]
---Suellen
From: Vladimir Nabokov
Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of jansymello
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 5:16 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] NEWS: Dr. John Rae's Arctic Explorations
A. Pitzer:There has been a good deal of talk in
the past about the various inspirations for the name of Dr. John Ray, Jr. The
well-known naturalist seems a good candidate, though others on the list in 2004
mentioned the explorer Dr. John Rae, Jr. What may be new to the Rae/Ray
connection is a letter to the editor catalogued variously as "Arctic
Explorations" or "Dr. John Rae's Arctic Explorations" from the
Bulletin of the American Geographical Society of New York. What interests me
particularly is that the "Arctic Explorations" title is the same as
one of the journals in which Humbert says his research appears (p. 34).[...] If
there are any intentional connections (if it is not too embarrassing to
consider the idea of intention) between Rae and Ray, it's interesting to peruse
the overt "madeness" signaled by VN, since Humbert's account predates
details of the foreword that would be written after his death[...]
JM: An interesting array of
observations, matching circumstances and historical registers. Doesn't it
deserve to be turned into a published note, like those in
the "The Nabokovian"?
Nabokov mentioned
the Pole Star as the center of his novel (or something in its
"compass", but I have not his afterword to quote it now).I
wonder if this reference is in anyway related to Humbert's "artic"
experiences, or if it adds a new twist to John Ray's
"manuscript".
[QUERY]
England's King
Charles II's minister's initials formed the word "CABAL"
(Clifford,Arlington, Buckingham,Ashley, Lauderdale).
They were a small
group withing the Privy Council, a precursor to the modern Cabinet. Macaulay
("History of England") commented: "These ministers where
emphatically called the Cabal, and they soon made the appellation so infamous
that it has never since... been used except as a term of reproach"
(Penguin book of Exotic Wrods, J.Whitcut,p.17)
In Pale Fire
we find Jugde Goldsworth's "alphabetical family".
Besides, VN stressed the initials of S,K and G., reversed Odon and Nodo,
among other examples that I cannot recall at present.
Would VN have
been cognizant with Charles II's "Cabal" cabinet and, if so,
could we encounter any wordplay indicating this in PF?
..................................................
[off-List
exchanges]
Theme: what is an insect's "true
face" from options pupa/nymph, caterpillar, butterfly? Victor
Fet: In holometabolous insects (with true metamorphosis), juvenile
stages...are 'philosophically' understood as an embryonic stage coming out
of an egg for a while to feed, and going back to dormant stage to metamorphose
into the adult.An adult in biology is defined as one capable for
reproduction[...] Still, the quasi-embryos of holometabolous insects have an
important identity on their own -- including adaptive features since they feed,
move, fight their enemies, and often live much longer than adults.
Theme: Do biologists take "kinetic
art" into consideration? VF: "All life exists in three
dimensions...; wing beating by insects is adaptive (much of it is mating song);
aquatic creatures live in 3-D patterns and so do birds in the air,
communicating in their flocks much better than our airplanes... At molecular
level, all our life IS kinetic art...For all I know, C.P. Snow's "two
cultures" division is simplistic and artificial, and never really existed."
JM: Thank you,
Victor. In a way these apparently tangential issues are important to
understand Nabokov's metaphors and some of his puzzles. You
showed how we may often attribute to the insect world
aspects of our own (ie: when we distinguish embryos, nymphs
and adults; what is "identity", when we proceed towards
a classification of plants and animals...)
Nabokov, as an artist,
rendered the "overall picture" of life, change, deceit and
"reality", 3D motions in time, etc., by his writing - and
he often considered, even his fiction, as having achieved a
particular degree of "scientific" precision and enchanting
"mimetism." When I asked about "kinetic art" I had planned
to inquire into this Nabokovian blend bt. art and natural-science, but I didn't
formulate my question correctly and, even now, I don't know how to express it.
Thanks for the
observation on C.P.Snow's "simplistic and artificial division".
Working both as an artist and as a scientist you are among those
lucky few who can speak from
experience.
All
private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
co-editors.
[1].
For information about Lord Melville see M.J.Ross
Polar Pioneers, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
(1994) and Laurie Robertson-Lorant, Melville a Biography, New York:
Clarkson Potter (1996), p. 40. Melville’s aunt Mary was the wife of John
D’Wolf, an old sea captain who had crossed Siberia by dogsled with Georg
H. von Langsdorff, the naturalist who accompanied the Russian Admiral J.
Krusenstern on his arctic expedition.
In Herman Melville, Pierre or the Ambiguities, Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, ([1852], 1971), Melville as the narrator posits,
“In those Hyperborian Regions, to which enthusiastic Truth and
Earnestness, and Independence, will invariably lead a mind fitted by nature for
profound and fearless thought, all objects are seen in a dubious, uncertain,
and refracting light. Viewed through the rarified atmosphere the most immemorially
admitted maxims of men begin to slide and fluctuate...But the example of many
minds forever lost, like undiscoverable Arctic explorers, amid those
treacherous regions, warns us entirely away from them; and we learn that it is
not for man to follow the trail of truth too far, since by doing so he entirely
loses the directing compass of his mind...” (p.165).
Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years, Princeton, N.J.
: Princeton University Press, (1991), p.17. Boyd relates that
Nabokov’s cousin told him that their great-grandfather had apparently
participated in a cartographic expedition to Russia’s arctic islands of
Nova Zembla and that a river there bore the Nabokov family name. Although later
proven untrue, Nabokov vested this information with an “...almost
mystical significance”, even though the timing of the receipt of this
information postdates the publication of Lolita.