Tom Rymour:
There are other forms of floating light besides St. Elmo's Fire.
Earthlights, aka Anomalous Luminous Phenomena (ALP) seem to have a connection
with highly faulted geology [...]I wove both these outings into my second novel
"The X-Crystals". Some people say that ALPs are plasmoid.[...] Therese Humbert,
the Bernie Madoff of the Belle Epoque. She had a huge strongbox, which reputedly
contained a vast fortune. When it was finally opened[...] was found to
contain a single fly button. My speculation is that VN heard about the scandal
during his time in France and doubled the name to suit the duplicity of Dolly's
debaucher.
JM: A good read, with Nabokov
whiffs, "The X-Crystals". Brasília
is held, by a group of mystics and logosophers, to be the stronghold of the
future, because of mysterious electromagnetic qualities in its
vicinity.
A recent production on Einstein and "string
theory" made me realize that Nabokov must have moved
away from modern "unification" theories (and a definite
classification of living
things), towards an ever mounting "differentiation" and "openness". A
kind of "black-hole in reverse." I
can only vaguely apprehend his intuitions (or wishful thinking), but
he bothered to encourage Van
Veen to split once more Einstein's "time-space", and expressed
intriguing ideas about electro-magnetism and gravity*. Contrary to
Swift's Sci-fi magnet in Gulliver's Travels, for example, and inspite
of VN's play with "counterstones," I have the impression that his
intent was serious.
What
a delicious connection bt. HH and Therese Humbert's "fly button" as a reward for
treasure hunting. It reminded me of an explanation, circulating in the internet
these days, about Neil Armstrong's words, after the more famous ones when he set
foot on the moon (ie: "Good luck, Mr.Gorsk!"). Private and public secrets
and games...
...............................................................................................
* -
The all important "lettrocalamity" in Ada: p.118. Lettrocalamity: a play on Ital. elettrocalamita,
electromagnet... for
the employment of magnetic power was prohibited in Anti-terra
but "used on Terra as freely as water and air, as bibles and
brooms."
In
relation to space-time, avoiding the extensive developments by VV
in Ch. 4, the issue of space-time arises in connection to
mortality:"...problems of space and time, space versus time,
time-twisted space, space as time,
time as space — and space breaking away
from time, in the final tragic triumph of human cogitation: I am because
I die [...] and
gravity, to art and revelation. "the
rapture young Mascodagama derived from overcoming gravity was akin to that of
artistic revelation."
Pale
Fire: Shade's short poem
"The Nature of Electricity," somehow relates electricity and hellish guilt:
"The
dead, the gentle dead — who knows? — / In tungsten filaments abide,...[...]And
maybe Shakespeare floods a whole/Town with innumerable lights...[...]And when above the livid plain/ Forked
lightning plays, therein may dwell/ The torments of a Tamerlane,/ The roar of
tyrants torn in hell."
(Kinbote cooly adds: "Science tells us, by the way, that the Earth would not merely fall
apart, but vanish like a ghost, if Electricity were suddenly removed from the
world.")