Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0008680, Tue, 30 Sep 2003 11:31:12 -0700

Subject
Fw: Fw: Certainly not a fractious fracas: topics proposed by
Don, Carolyn, Jansy, David Morris, et al.
Date
Body
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stringer-Hye, Suellen" <suellen.stringer-hye@vanderbilt.edu>
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> Coincidentally, I happen to be working on a paper about Nabokov and
> Libraries. Several libraries in Nabokov's works have spiral
> staircases down which (put simplistically) the bad guys descend and
> the angels ascend. The other day, while reading the Nabokv-l post
> Seven Dwellings
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> <http://www.fannyalexander.org/archivio/en.ada_home.htm>
>
>
> about a musical work performed this summer in Italy, I noticed this
> comment in the Vaniada section of the work:
>
> "The lecture takes place in Ada and Van's Nirvana, lieu X, into
> pure abstraction: the ideal places are studies, libraries, reading
> rooms, archives, literary boudoires"
>
> I'm not sure how all of this contributes to the current discussion
> but I couldn't help mentioning the spiral staircases in this
> context.
>
> ---Suellen
>
> ------------------------------------------
Excerpt from DN's posting.

> VN may have had some idea, more poetical than strictly
> mathematical, of the logarithmic spiral. He liked the spiral
> concept in general; for example, he often mentioned the Hegelian
> spiral of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which can be applied in
> many disciplines.
>
>