Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0008659, Sat, 27 Sep 2003 09:36:30 -0700

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Fw: Fw: more Bernoulli links to Pale Fire
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more Bernoulli links to Pale Fire
----- Original Message -----
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 9:16 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: more Bernoulli links to Pale Fire


Keithsz has brought up Mircea Eliade and Carolyn Kunin has given special notice to patterns of repetition and to the idea of " though changed I return over and over again the same" in connection to Pale Fire.
I would like to remind you that Mircea Eliade has written extensively on the Myth of Eternal Recurrence and about ancestral cyclical time versus historical time. Besides his researches he has also written a novel where there is a passage to another dimension that is to be reached through the water ( The novel is called "Rue Mantuleasa" or some other similar title ).

In the Post-Script that VN added to "Lolita" he speaks about enchanters and he uses the word "fractails". I wonder if he could also be making a reference there to the modern mathematical discoveries concerning "fractals" ?
Would those " smaller and smaller golden rectangles" of Bernouilli´s logarithmic spiral -brought up by C. Kunin - be in any way related to the findings about fractals? Would VN be familiar with Math, Bernouilli and Fractal theory?

Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: D. Barton Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 10:44 PM
Subject: Fw: more Bernoulli links to Pale Fire



----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 10:55 AM
Subject: more Bernoulli links to Pale Fire


First my apologies to Pynchoner David Morris who found the Bernoulli lemniscate before I did.

Euclid discovered the number phi but Bernoulli discovered its relation first to the to the golden rectangle and then to the beautiful spiral that is formed by smaller and smaller golden rectangles built within each other -- the logarithmic spiral which he called miraculous.

Bernoulli ended his paper on this spiral with the words "eadem mutata resurgo semperdem [Though changed, I return over and over again the same]." These words (minus the un-Christian semperdem) are engraved on his tombstone in the cathedral in Berne.

If IPH = phi and Bernoulli discovered and named the lemniscate curve, then perhaps "eadem mutata resurgo" also has something to do with Pale Fire.

CK
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