Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0020696, Wed, 8 Sep 2010 18:18:46 -0300

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Re: THOUGHTS: Phanessa/Vanessa, more dark and light
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Matt Roth:Phanes, insomuch as he is winged, may himself resemble a butterfly--thus the conjecture regarding the genus name. I wonder, however, how Kinbote, who knew very little about butterflies, would have known this altogether obsolete entomological variation on Vanessa. Doesn't this require a deeper knowledge than we're used to seeing in Kinbote?

JM: I posted a first answer from a different address (no internet at home) on the item on "phaneros" and "evanescence" (a flare, a sudden transient manifestation), also related to "dark and light" (the phases of the moon). I hope it is accepted by SB, for I got no copy of it.

A good point on Kinbote's lack of extensive knowledge about butterflies, but wouldn't he have been familiar with the ancients ( Plutarch?), or Rilke and Mallarmé?
I found various bibliographical references to Orpheus and Pythagoras but, of course, the idea of "counterpoint" and a "rhyming universe" as expressive of Pythagorean theories about "the music of the spheres" are Shade's, not Kinbote's.

In "Bend Sinister" there is a sentence about Pythagoras, but I got no access to books and archies now. It nmight clarify Nabokov's interest and view about him.

There is a poem by Rilke in which Orpheus returns to Hades to bring back Eurydice she is apathetic and forgetful, truly marked by the world of shades she inhabits. She doesn't even plead with him to look at her, but he looks back because he feels uncertain that she is coming: this description is totally unlike a Nabokovian view of the shadow-world...
Anyway, here are some items offered by google:
1.. Reading Rilke's Orphic identity -
Erika M. Nelson - 2005 - Literary Criticism - This point is the focus of Rilke's early "Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes." The point the poet's gaze seeks is the center, vortex, and void, which Mallarme ...
books.google.com.br/books?isbn=3039102877...
2.. A critical bibliography of French literature -
David Clark Cabeen, Richard A. Brooks, David Clark Cabeen - 1951 - Literary Criticism
Also treats the distinction between speech and writing, and M.'s attempt to abolish genre. Strauss, Walter A. Mallarme: Orpheus and ...
books.google.com.br/books?isbn=0815625669...
3.. Moving Space: Mallarmé's "jeux circonvolutoires" in Rilke's ... -
de A Rosenblithe - 1996 - Citado por 2 - Artigos relacionados
15 Jan 2010 ... MALLARMÉ IN RILKE'S SONETTE AN ORPHEUS. 1 45. In addition to using expressions that could apply to either physical or ...
www.jstor.org/stable/40247051

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