Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017215, Fri, 24 Oct 2008 02:12:10 -0200

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Re: THOUGHTS: Terra and Antiterra and ADA,plus spotted Feirefiz
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Re: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS: Terra and Antiterra and ADA
S. Kelly-Bootle, on Ada's chess-games: "When VN writes "an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence," his use of "infinite" and "finite" is entirely in accord with normal mathematical usage. When he speaks of "infinite" transitions in LEGAL games-of-chess, he is mathematically wrong. This fleeting deviation is worthy of attention simply because we think of and revere VN as the skilled chess-player/problemist endowed with a love of precise scientific language that's rare in novelists."
SKB argued that "Human Life spans are finite in the sense of having a limited temporal duration. During that finite period, though, the "number" of sensations/thoughts experienced can plausibly be considered infinite[...] There are specific rules that prevent endless chess games, e.g., you can't have repetitions such as 1 Nf3 Nc6 2 Ng1 Nb8 3 Nf3 Nc6 4 Ng1 Nb8 ... In fact, it's even more complex than forbidding such sequences; if the same position recurs thrice at any time during a game, a draw can be claimed."

Nabokov's original sentence: "two chess games with identical openings and identical end moves might ramify in an infinite number of variations, on one board and in two brains, at any middle stage of their irrevocably converging development"
I ask our illustrious mathematician: Because I understood that VN implicitly mentioned Euclid's fifth (?) theorem, the one about "parallel lines" ( according to which they'd converge in infinity) when he wrote about the "two brains irrevocable converging" ( reference to maths) which also might be facing and mirroring each other ( reference to optics), VN's choice of "infinite number of variations" might favour this kind of infinity ( math's or mirrors in optics) and not the legal chess-game moves themselves. In this case, could VN's "infinite" be correct?

Btw: In TRLSK there is a character in SK's own book "Success" ( that deals with "the workings of fate") named Perceval Q. In SK's book-shelves there is a book about the Holy Grail, "Le Morte d'Arthur", written by Sir Thomas Malory. Other medieval and later authors also wrote about Perceval ( Parzival, Parsifal).
In Wolfram from Echenbach's book we learn that Parzival (Perceval) has a half-brother called Feirefiz. According to WfE, when Perceval fights against an unknown knight his sword breaks. The other knight doesn't slay him and soon they discover that they share the same father. "I was against my own self," says Parzival to Feirefiz.
By a stroke of luck, while reading Peter Handke's "Wunschloses Unglück", 1972, ("A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. A Life Story"), I learned that in Chrétien de Troyes' version, Feirefiz's spotted face reproduces the black and white squares in a chess-board ( I'm not sure that this is not some kind of irony by Handke, though. Elsewhere I only found mention to b&w shapeless marks..)
I haven't been able to spot any references to this half-brother but in TRLSK both Sebastian and Nina Rechnoy's lover are identified with a black knight. The latter is playing chess when V. meets him.
QUERY: I wonder if any of you TRLSK's readers found any indicative clue concerning a disguised Feirefiz?

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