Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017054, Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:05:01 -0300

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[NABOKOV-L] [QUERY] Sebastian Knight
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I - J.A. In my Library of America edition of the book, pg. 53, the title to Goodman's biography reads The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight, with the article out front; JM: ...on page 4..."Tragedy of Sebastian Knight."
JM: On the other hand ( or cuff?) in vthe New Directions ed, we find "Tragedy.."with no araticle in the first chapter, b ut "The Tragedy" ( twice) in the seventh chapter. And the same occurs in The Library of America (Boyd's 1941-1951), on page 47 we get "The Tragedy"...
Indeed, a proliferating oversight. Perhaps...
Something equally intriguing occurred with Mallarmé, in one of his translations intended to "abolish randomness from writing."
Instead of George W.Cox's original euripidean "If the gods do ougth unseemly, then they are not gods at all", in Mallarmé this came out as "Si les dieux ne font riend d'incovenant, c'est alors qu'ils ne son plus dieux du tout" ( If the god don't do ought unseemly, then. In French a "ne" was added!)

II -

J.Aisenberg: [if there are articles that compare "V" and Charles Kinbote]: Michael Wood in his discussion of the TRLSK, "Lost Souls", in The Magician's doubts,...points out that this line: '... the very sound of the word "sex" with its hissing vulgarity and the "ks, ks" catcall at the end, seems so inane...") --has a certain similarity to the hysterical hypocritical prissy tone of some of Kinbote's writing. ... There definitely does seem to be an odd echo between V. and Kinbote, except that V. is a mild mannered and completely ethical person set adrift by mourning for a lost loved one and Kinbote a freak without much in the way of scruples, though both of them try to appropriate their subjects in a strange internal way for personal purposes that are hard to grasp... Seems meant to suggest something cosmic while simultaneously funning illusionism ...
JM: You observed that V. is a "completely ethical person set adrift by mourning for a lost loved one". Is he, indeed? In TRLSK V. writes: "Beware of the most honest broker. Remember that what you are told is really threefold: shaped by the teller, reshaped by the listener, concealed from both by the dead man of the tale. Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight? repeats that voice in my conscience. Who indeed? ..." We can also read another sentence of his: the meek little man waiting for a train who helped three miserable travellers in three different ways? " In Pale Fire Nabokov warns the reader about "fairy-tales" ( CK's notes about the haunted barn): "There are always "three nights" in fairy tales, and in this sad fairy tale there was a third one too."
What can we make out about the sentences above and this one,below?
"He is said to have been three times to see the same film - a perfectly insipid one called The Enchanted Garden. A couple of months after his death, and a few days after I had learnt who Madame Lecerf really was..."
There are moments when VN writes a definite "three" ( although not necessarily indicating "three nights"). Would this precise "three" indicate some kind of trite, tritheist trinity fairy-tale revelation? And did "V" in fact learn who Mme Lecerf "really" was?

BTW: I fully agree with your suggestion: "suggest something cosmic while simultaneously funning illusionism"...

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