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Fw: Comment on VNA's response to BB's response
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----- Original Message -----
From: Akiko Nakata
To: D. Barton Johnson
Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 9:29 PM
Subject: Re: Comment on VNA's response to BB's response
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Akiko Nakata a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp
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Thank you, Nick, for your comments on my essay. I am not certain that it reinforces Dr. Alexander's assertion because I am ignorant of science. At least, I do not think that Nabokov could not imagine the supernatural. As you wrote, A. Chernyshevsky's last words ironically show a failure in attempting to prove the non-existence of the afterlife with some wrong evidence, but A. Chernyshevsky does not represent Nabokov's point of view. A few pages later, Fyodor, confused by the death of A. Chernyshevsky, is relieved by thinking, "as if the responsibility for his soul belonged not to him but to someone who knew what it all meant--he felt that all this skein of random thoughts, like everything else as well [...] was but the reverse side of a magnificent fabric, on the front of which there gradually formed and became alive images invisible to him" (314) and that someone seems to me Nabokov himself, who has made/is making the magnificent fabric.
I agree with you that it is "spooky." When I remember Nabokov's reply "I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more" (Strong Opinions 45) when asked if he believes in God, I feel a little chill (salutary? I don't know) as he hopes and I presume that his problem is that he cannot explain something beyond explanation but not that he does not know or imagine it--like Mr. R, who has found something unknown to man but gives up writing it in a great book. Or Nabokov could explain it, but would not. In her well-known introduction to Stiki in which she points out Nabokov's otherworldliness, Vera writes, "He came closest to expressing it [the theme of otherworldliness], however, in the poem 'Slava' ('Fame') where he defined it quite frankly as a secret that he carries within his soul and that must not and cannot be revealed." And she cites from the poem, "That main secret tra-ta-ta tra-ta-ta tra-ta-/ and I must be overexplicit..." (In Poems and problems, the line is "I must not too explicit" ). I am tempted to connect these tra-ta-ta's with Transparent Things, Tralatitions and Tractatus. But, I might be going too far...
----- Original Message -----
From : "D. Barton Johnson" <chtodel@cox.net>
To : <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent : September 1 2002 4:07
Subject : Comment on VNA's response to BB's response
> lines) ------------------
> > VNA wrote:
> > >I think Nabokov would argue that the supernatural, if it exists, would
> be
> > unlike anything any person could imagine, certainly >nothing anyone could
> > "prove" with "evidence."
> >
> > Unhappily, I can currently only read e-mails from this mailing list at
> > weekends. Happily, this means I can read swathes of them in rapid
> > succession, and so it struck me that Akiko Nakata's essay on Transparent
> > Things seemed to reinforce Tori Alexander's assertion above.
> Specifically,
> > Alexander Chernyshevsky's reflection on the afterlife (strictly the lack
> > thereof) on his deathbed seems a perfect example of a person attempting to
> > prove his point with evidence and getting it very wrong indeed.
> >
> > I thought it...almost spooky.
> >
> > Yours,
> > Nick.
> >
> > PS - For what it's worth, I'm enjoying the discussion on Pale Fire
> > enormously, although I do wonder if I'm alone in finding comments like "A
> > good argument needs evidence and positions that don't slide to new ground
> > when challenged" from Professor Boyd a little...unworthy?
> >
> >
> >
>