----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 2:17 PM
Subject: [NABOKOV-L] TOOL and the Advance PW Review,PS
Ridiculous spelling mistakes are more annoying than most, such as
"onlime," in my latest message! Besides, there was one missing item to
the list about "definite,definition, definitive,"(and infinity) which leads
us from "finis" and "terminus" towards the doctrine of "determinism," and
the kind of established causal chain never espoused
by lepidopterologist and fictionist* VN. Here it is:
determinate: c.1374, "to come to an end," also
"to settle, decide," from O.Fr. determiner
(12c.), from L. determinare "set limits to,"
from de- "off" + terminare "to mark the end or boundary," from
terminus "end, limit." Sense of "coming to a
firm decision" (to do something) is from 1450. Determination "quality of being resolute"
is from 1822.
determinism is 1846 in theology
(lack of free will); 1876 in general sense of "the doctrine that everything that
happens is determined by a necessary chain of causation."
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* The first example I chose derives from a kind
of "rethorical synaesthesia" (?), in RLSK: "not the painting of a landscape, but the
painting of different ways of painting a certain landscape...their harmonious
fusion will disclose the landscape". The thunder is not "caused" by
the lightning that is associated with it, but only one of the multiple
representations of a distinct "landscape" ? The second example, also from RLSK's Success, has
SK investigating "the methods of human
fate," using fictional "scientific precision
in the classification, examination, and rejection of an immense amount of
data," to determine the exact way in which two lines of life
converge and touch in "a glorious gamble on causalities or,
if you prefer, the probing of the aetiological secret of aleatory
occurrences." His reader and commentator, V, is "forced to assume that the outward circumstances of meeting are not
samples of fate's activity in regard to two, subjects but a given entity, a
fixed point, of no causal import."