-----Mensagem
Original-----
Enviada em: terça-feira, 8 de março de 2011 01:13
Assunto: Re: [NABOKV-L] Fw: [NABOKOV-L] [THOUGHTS]
Beerbohm's on Samuel Johnson's strong opinions on sermons
addendum to "not that I would particularly mind if any
one at the Nab-L once in a while helped me to discover, for example,
how to find a copy of Nabokov's Chapter 16 in Speak,Memory"
After gaining access to Brian Boyd's commentary and to the chapter
in question, I learned that Nabokov wrote it as a reviewer, in the
third person. For him "the permanent importance
Conclusive Evidence has, lies in its being the meeting point of an
impersonal art form and a very personal life story. Nabokov's method is
to explore the remotest regions of his past life for what may be termed
thematic trails or currents. Once found, this or that theme is followed
up through the years."
He also notes that the author "is out to
prove that his childhood contained, on a much reduced scale, the main
components of his creative maturity; thus, through the thin sheath of a
ripe chrysalis one can see, in its small wing cases, the dawning of
colour and pattern, a miniature revelation of the butterfly that will
soon emerge and let its flushed and diced wings expand to many times
their pupal size.*" A great many similes and explicitations,
presented in a nutshell on Ch.16, were taken up by Nabokov in different
occasions, in his replies to interviews (collected in "Strong
Opinions"), when they were more naturally developped.
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* Dmitri Nabokov, in his foreword to TOoL, mentions that the novel "is an embryonic masterpiece whose pockets of genius
were beginning to pupate" - perhaps hinting at a variant
of the "theory of recapitulation" ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny")
which is unfolding while his father writes his Memoirs - for
example when he mentions "the...various smiling
disguises of this or that thematic line running through the
book...certain "rhythmic patterns", the "contrapuntal" nature of fate;
life's "blending of lines of play";... the "emblemata" on pieces of
broken pottery; a final picture puzzle completing the spiral of the
theme. .." and perhaps the spiral serves to indicate that
there's a disciplined breaking away from "recapitulation," through art.
.