Matthew Roth [ to Jansy's: A follower of
Robert Frost? So that's what "an oozy footstep behind Frost" means? One
must find the context for this quote to get the feel of Nabokov's
tease.] ... my impression is that the author of the article
interviewed VN himself, so this is probably all the context available. Here's an
entertaining VN quip I hadn't seen
before:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Av4xAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IOUFAAAAIBAJ&dq=lolita
nabokov&pg=6705,2034481
JM: An amusing item [ "...waiting reporters who questioned him about
"Lolita" ... "I'm sorry," Nabokov told
them, "but there is a mistake here. I didn't write the book. It was
written by my father, and he's been put away in a
mad-house."]. It suggests that Nabokov,
when informally interviewed, would answer with humor -
and lie (deceive) accordingly.
Like in Wordsworth's
conclusion, after seeing a rainbow in the sky, this must be another case
of "The Child is Father to the Man"
Gary Lipon [ to Jansy's "Why a
pastiche of Hazel's tragedy, along with other sad tales? Why Hazel, in
particular..."] I'm honestly quite surprised, if I understand you
correctly, that you don't see allusions to Hazel's story in this sequence? ...
The writing here is I think quite remarkable, impressionistic, one vignette
eliding into another, dreamlike. Not all of the mappings can be said to fit
well, namely 1 & 5, but that's what makes the passage so
enchanting.
JM: No! At least, not from this
sequence. No.... But, perhaps, through Matt's association to
the plot and lines from Mary Shelley's "Matilda," I'll be able to
get your point in the future (see, only just now did
I notice that "timelessness" should not be interpreted as a
synonim of "eternal, atemporal" but, quite simply, as "in disregard of
a schedule").