Matthew Roth:
Readers of the list may (or may not!) be
interested in a VN blog I’ve started here: kobaltana.wordpress.com.[ ] I
am going to offer another example of what I call “education-by-Nabokov”–the kind
of literary sleuthing that often takes one through the hinterlands of unimagined
landscapes.As any “expert solver” of PF will tell you, one of the frustrations
and delights of the novel is that it requires one to pursue vast, wide-ranging
sources and allusions that fall well beyond the bounds of common literary
knowledge. In this example, then, I want to note a collection of oddities picked
up along the way–oddities that together form a strange phonetic web of
(non)sense. Read the whole thing here: http://wp.me/p3PUy5-1c
Jansy Mello: "Education-by-Nabokov" is just right: a
dedicated reader must research about geography, history, mythology, mathematics,
astronomy, conchology, biology, world literature .. just name it!
Matt Roth's investigation focused on Pale Fire, but there's Swiss
"Bern", or German "Berlin" and, in ADA, all the Russian "bears" to
consider.
In Pale Fire there's not only Kinbote compared to the botfly and
the berne worm. but also a constelation: (line 119: That’s Dr.
Sutton’s light. That’s the Great Bear), a reincarnation as "a bear cub
beneath a burning pine,/Or a book mite in a revived
divine." (line 564) and a strangely
antecipatory note by Kinbote (on Shade's parents, line 71, but
reporting on Campbell and with a similar wording as in JS's verses )*:" He had immolated his life, so to speak, at the portable
altars of a vast number of hobbies, from the study of book mites to bear
hunting, and could reel off Macbeth ..."
Alexey Sklyarenko: "His [Shakespeare's]
name is protean. He begets doubles at every corner". (Bend Sinister, chapter 7)
Proteus is a sea god noted for his ability to assume different forms.
Vadim, whom a demon is forcing to impersonate another writer, is VN's double.
[ ] Van, Ada and Lucette are great-grandchildren of
Prince Peter Zemski (1772-1832). In his poem Biblioteka (The Library) Prince
Peter Vyazemski calls Voltaire Protey-pisatel' ("the protean
writer").
Jansy Mello: While
perusing ADA, I found an amusing mythological wordplay with Proust
("Proustian bed") and another type of "shape-changing" (albeit a forced and
painful one) in the insterted reference to the "Procustean bed" :
"But beware, anime meus, of the marcel wave of fashionable
art; avoid the Proustian bed and the assassin pun (itself a suicide — as those
who know their Verlaine will note)." **
This
observation is certainly intended as a critique of the "marcel wave,".but I
didn't catch Nabokov's aim at this
point.
..............................................................................................................
* Has anyone
reported on Kinbote's "antecipation" by quoting Shade's lines in another
context (mites/bears)?
** - Wiki:
"In Greek mythology, Procrustes or "the stretcher [who hammers out the
metal]", also known as Prokoptas or Damastes, "subduer", was a rogue smith and
bandit from Attica who physically attacked people by stretching them or cutting
off their legs, so as to force them to fit the size of an iron bed. In general,
when something is Procrustean, different lengths or sizes or properties are
fitted to an arbitrary standard"
¨¨