Mike Marcus to JM: "When you write
that it's 'not a Nabokovian kind of convolution (as I see it)', the
inference is that your conclusion is entirely subjective, albeit based,
no doubt, on profound knowledge of VN's work. Is there a theoretical
model of VN's degrees of "convolution"? If not, your guess is as good
as mine ..."
Jansy Mello: Sure, my conclusion is
entirely subjective. Literary quotes, scientific discoveries and
measures, or historical facts, all of them dependent on some type
of interpretation, are more objective than opinions, I grant you that.
But I don't think that my point should be so easily dismissed. It can
be argued against, or shared.#
Once Nabokov, very colloquially, opined
about the destiny of objects and other elements that are mentioned in a
novel, stating that "if a revolver is shown on a wall in the first
chapter, the reader expects to find it later on in the same book."
Elaborating on this idea, at times, after he included a character, or
some object, in a novel, he would immediately warn the reader that such
a character or thing was only presented once, that it would be
soon killed off, dwindle or disappear from the plot. There are more
sophisticated examples than those that just popped from my
recalcitrant memory. One shouldn't always trust Nabokov's joking
assertions and even this collection of items must be considered with a
grain of salt. However, there's more to the "Cory" (tutor William Cory)
allusion than "how unnecessary it seems to add his name and write about
a 'cory-door'," which caused me to consider the convolutions
"unNabokovian" in style. The thing is really very very subjective: in
my eyes it lacks the expected Nabokov elegance. Unless we find more
justifications in "Greek language" or "Tutors," or more about Sir
Philip Sydney in VN, his coat of arms, Pembroke, aso.
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#French psychoanalyst François Roustang
once wrote that "theories are the delusions of a special group of
theorists" - and he was not only implying psychoanalytic data.
PS: Additional quotes
related to the posting from [Brian X/piano forte] to Mike Marcus: As an
admirer of Nabokov and Shakespeare--who I have no doubt was Edward de
Vere--I too am curious about VN's exact views on the authorship
question...
First selection for M.Marcus's collection on "Vere" - from PNIN: "... Cinderella's glass shoes to be exactly of that
greenish blue tint; whereupon Professor Pain remarked
that...Cendrillon's shoes were not made of glass but of Russian
squirrel fur — vair, in French... verre being more evocative than
vair ... from veveritsa, Slavic for a certain beautiful, pale,
winter-squirrel fur, having a bluish, or better say sizïy, columbine,
shade — 'from columba, Latin for "pigeon "...'I always thought
"columbine" was some sort of flower,' said Thomas to Betty, who lightly
acquiesced*.)
Now,
more from ADA (and one shouldn't forget that Lolita's eyes were "vair"
in coloring):
1. ... the last-act ballet of
Caucasian generals and metamorphosed Cinderellas had come to a sudden
close, and Baron d’O., now in black tails and white gloves, was
kneeling in the middle of an empty stage, holding the glass slipper
that his fickle lady had left him when eluding his belated advances....
2. "...Kant was famous for his cucumicolor iris. ... Lucette,
considering her left shoe, her very chic patent-leather Glass shoe, as
she crossed her lovely legs,..
3. ‘...and fell at her feet — at
her bare insteps in glossy black Glass slippers...As if she had just
escaped from a burning palace and a perishing kingdom, she wore over
her rumpled nightdress a deep-brown, hoar-glossed coat of sea-otter
fur, the famous kamchatstkiy bobr of ancient Estotian traders, also
known as ‘lutromarina’ on the Lyaska coast: ‘my natural fur,’ as Marina
used to say pleasantly of her own cape, inherited from a Zemski
granddam, when, at the dispersal of a winter ball, some lady wearing
vison or coypu or a lowly manteau de castor (beaver, nemetskiy bobr)
would comment with a rapturous moan on the bobrovaya shuba.
‘Staren’kaya (old little thing),’
4. "He heard Ada Vinelander’s voice calling for her Glass bed slippers
(which, as in Cordulenka’s princessdom too, he found hard to
distinguish from dance footwear), "
5. "...not Marina’s
poor French — it was our little goose Blanche. Yes, she rushed down the
corridor and lost a miniver-trimmed slipper on the grand staircase,
like Ashette in the English version."
6. "... the dog,
being quite as excited as the rest of the reunited family, had
scampered in after Marina with an old miniver-furred slipper in his
merry mouth. The slipper belonged to Blanche, who had been told to
whisk Dack to her room... Both children experienced a chill of déjà-vu
(a twofold déjà-vu, in fact, when contemplated in artistic retrospect)."
7. She did not see her whole life flash before her... She saw a pair of
new vair-furred bedroom slippers, which Brigitte had forgotten to
pack...
Probably, if any allusion to de Vere
was being made, through "Verre" (glass) and "Vair", in Pnin, Ada,
Lolita , the entire setting must be taken into account. There are
burning palaces, barns, princesses, phantom maids (Blanche), a repeated
scene (slipper/red 'bandage') and, most of all, slippers and various
kinds of fur.
We'll find slippers also in RLSK (a silvery
magic one), in TOoL*, one or two short-stories.
Ashette,Cendrillon and Cinderella
(Aschenputtel, in Grimm's fairy tales) relate not only to slippers but
also to pumpkin-coaches (an here the link is with Gogol)
What strikes me in particular are the links
between Cinderella and furs (not only miniver).
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* - I found a sentence in ADA with the
description of a pair of slippers that are encased in a foetal position
and it's extremely similar to the image of the slippers that belong to
Flora (in "The Original of Laura"): On the way
there he acquired his second walking stick... In an adjacent store he
got a suitcase, and in the next, shirts, shorts, socks, slacks,
pajamas, handkerchiefs, a lounging robe, a pullover and a pair of
saffian bedroom slippers fetally folded in a leathern envelope. (I'll locate it sometime in the future)