While reading Roberto Bolaño's thick novel "2666" I found a series of
lines about coincidences, narrated while three scholars (working on a
physically elusive German writer named Benno von Archimboldo) visit a Swiss
mental-asylum to meet Edwin Johns, a British painter. Johns had cut-off
one of his hands and had it treated by a taxidermist to turn it into the
spiralling center of his most successful painting. At a certain point of their
interview, Johns notes that the pains which accumulate from the
daily routine of fighting for survival
are the opposite of coincidence. He sees coincidences as an
expression of liberty and contrary to law and order. For
him, they are another face of human destiny. “Coincidence, if
you’ll permit me the simile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on
our planet. A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless
creatures. In that hurricane, in that osseous implosion, we find communion. The
communion of coincidence and effect and the communion of effect with us.”
In her article about "Neutral Evolution and Aesthetics: Vladimir
Nabokov and Insect Mimicry" (fendersen.com/Nabokov.htm ) we read: "Though most of the
following is concerned with recent advances in evolutionary biology... and how
they are related to Nabokov's interests in accidental functionality,
coincidental patterns, and mimicry, I would like to begin by offering a brief
introduction to the literary complement of these same interests. One of the
hallmarks of Nabokov's style is his use of coincidences to structure narrative
events in such a way as to suggest intentionality, i.e., teleological
organization...Science is only interested in meaningful patterns (why do a
number of galaxies form spiral shapes?) not meaningless coincidences (why is
there a "big dipper" and a "little dipper" in the stars?). If one insists on
seeing coincidences as meaningful, then one is forced to look for a hidden
cause, some inherent guiding principle, purpose, or an intentional being behind
the events.//In Nabokov's novel Pale Fire, the protagonist, John
Shade...declares..."It dawned on me that this Was the real
point, the contrapuntal theme; Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But topsy-turvical coincidence, Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense."
Some thing or someone seemed to be making "plexed artistry" or "ornaments/of
accidents and possibilities." Apparently, whether or not there truly is a God or
an afterlife is not as interesting to Nabokov as the fact that it is suggestive
coincidences that give the impression life is like a novel with an omniscient
and somewhat playful author."
I'm intrigued by Victoria Alexander's conclusion that Nabokov's use of
coincidences constitutes one of the hallmarks of his style, or their
relation to the novel's apparent teleological organization ( "narrative
teleology")*. In "Strong Opinions" Nabokov considers how coincidences
appear forced when they take place in a novel and how
natural their visitation to the living seems to be whereas, some time
later, in the novel "Ada" (p.283), he introduces what I see as a
paradox: "Some law of logic should fix the number of
coincidences, in a given domain, after which they cease to be coincidences, and
form, instead, the living organism of a new truth",
unless we understand that any new truth must remain limited
to mankind's apprehension of the natural world and man's place in
the universe.
Alexander's point is more explicitly presented when she
writes that Nabokov was not as interested in ascertaining that God or
an afterlife exist, as he was in putting coincidences to work for him - by
having them suggest that "life is like a novel." It seems to me that such
an intention would imply in a wish on Nabokov's
part to dupe the reader, instead of playing games with some
of them. Here is another little story told by Nabokov:: "A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea
and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a
large fish – but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about
coincidence." (the exactness of the date is informative of the man's
alert wish to control events, something which I doubt Nabokov had
been unaware of when he constructed this exemplary
and ironic nano-fairytale).
........................................................................................................
* - Quoting Alexander: "Nabokov had a profound respect for coincidences as
coincidences. One of his favorite examples of a selectively neutral instance of
"mimicry" was a butterfly wing marking that looked like a drop of dew with a
glint of light reflected in it. As he described it, a line along the wing edge
running through the "dewdrop" was shifted in a perfect imitation of refraction –
masterfully rendered, but still a coincidence. It is difficult to imagine what
function or advantage could be ascribed to an imitation of a dewdrop on, say, a
Blue's wing. It must be admitted, then, that some forms of "mimicry" may be
imposed by the lepidopterist's powers of interpretation. Since such cases of
false mimicry conferred no reproductive advantage – it merely amused – Nabokov
notes that it "seemed to have been invented by some waggish artists precisely
for the intelligent eyes of man." [...] "Cosmic teleology concerns the
suggestion of intention in the natural world. I use the term narrative teleology
to designate the suggestion of intention in fictional worlds. Nabokov wrote of
both cosmic and narrative telos as emergent phenomena. We can find examples of
emergent telos or intentionality in Nabokov's The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight..."