Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021916, Sun, 7 Aug 2011 11:17:17 -0300

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Fw: [NABOKV-L] SKB re Coincidences
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Stan Kelly-Bootle: "Ten days passed and a farmer in Milton Lilbourne, Wiltshire pulled a balloon out of the hedge that separated his fields from his neighbour's house..." Tori: Bravo! A point to note that affects the probability calculations: the second Laura* [* I almost wrote 'not the original Laura' to add a Nabokovian touch to the coincincidence.] did not find the balloon! ... VN's allusions to such are of passing interest.A possible analogy: I read Genesis and Pale Fire with the same spine-tingling impact.

JM: It seems to me that mountain-fountain coincidences never touched Stan Kelly.* Yesterday I was listening to a record in which a lovely part of the The Canterbury Tales were recited, and it so happened that I was carrying "Murder in the Cathedral" in my lap, so it occurred to me that there was an inevitable reference to Chaucer on Eliot's part - one that, in my ignorance, I'd never have put together by myself (and this find is irrelevant in my case).

pn:Find the cat in this image (it's not an example of mimetism, though)

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* - A gipsy foretold to my husband that he must find a wife born in the same day as his parents were (both celebrated their birthdays in the same date - and so do I), but he didn't search into any registrar when he felt ripe to mate. Astrologically, such a coincidence of birthdates is insignificant (there may be different planets and stars on the ascendant, or whatever it's said about these maps) and my source of wonder is how did the gipsy know that herconsultant's parents shared a date, like VN's and Shakespeare's. Besides, I suppose that it was he who invented the whole precog tale since I cannot imagine him offering his ruka to a gipsy.

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