I found two other interesting images to add to the former theme of
"tesselation": a hyperbolic quilt (by Helaman Ferguson) and what I, albeit
loosely, relate to "the Arctic no longer vicious
Circle" reference in Ada, namely "geodesic
rectangular coordinates on annular hyperbolic plane.
There's Vaniada's death in association to
the pressed leaves found in the begining of the novel, and various
other clues about VN's explorations of "performing words"and
"upside-down metaphors" related to our globe, to infinity and
to everlasting time. As "Van Veen himself
was to find out, at the time of his passionate research in terrology (then a
branch of psychiatry) even the deepest thinkers, the purest philosophers, Paar
of Chose and Zapater of Aardvark, were emotionally divided in their attitude
toward the possibility that there existed 'a distortive glass of our distorted
glebe' as a scholar who desires to remain unnamed has put it with such euphonic
wit." (Ada, or Ardis).
After comparing Van's "Mascodagama" revertible feats with a
paragraph in Bend Sinister, highlighted by S.E.Sweeney's
reapraisal of an acrobat's "amphiphorical gesture,"* I feel closer to the
conclusion that, in V.Nabokov, we are not in the realm of a 'fine
excess' and rhetorical hyperboles only, but perhaps confronting
(frightened Blaise is, of course, Pascal) mathematical
explorations of human limitations in relation to time/space expressed by
the means of words and structure.
Bend
Sinister: "... after one backward glance from the first landing ran
upstairs trailing her wrap with all its constellation — Cepheus and Cassiopeia
in their eternal bliss, and the dazzling tear of Capella, and Polaris the
snowflake on the grizzly fur of the Cub, and the swooning galaxies — those
mirrors of infinite space qui m'effrayent, Blaise, as they did you, and
where Olga is not, but where mythology stretches strong circus nets, lest
thought, in its ill-fitting tights, should break its old neck instead of
rebouncing with a hep and a hop — hopping down again into this urine-soaked dust
to take that short run with the half pirouette in the middle and display the
extreme simplicity of heaven in the acrobat's amphiphorical gesture, the
candidly open hands that start a brief shower of applause while he walks
backwards and then, reverting to virile manners, catches the little blue
handkerchief..."
.............................................................................................................................................................................................
* - "In referring to Nabokov’s metaphorical
constructions, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney uses the term “amphiphore” (Sweeney
1987). The “amphiphore” is a “portmanteu word” borrowed from Bend Sinister. It
highlights the capacity of a metaphor to activate different, often contradictory
referential frames. The metaphorical entity “letters-butterflies” from
Speak, Memory (p.251) serves as an example of the “amphiphoric
gesture” (p.133) [ ] the amphiphore embraces the past, present and future
tenses by indicating what is anticipated as the “future recollection” within the
actual perception.
The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V.
Nabokov’s Fiction: Narrative Strategies and Cultural Frames: Marina
Grishakova
https://www.google.com.br/?gws_rd=cr#q=susan+sweeney+bend+sinister+amphiforichttps://www.google.com.br/?gws_rd=cr#q=susan+sweeney+bend+sinister+amphiforic