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Re: [NABOKOV-L] Pompons and pumpkins
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Steve Norquist ("compare Farmer's comment with another, from ADA, using Nabokov's words: "the lewd, ludicrous and vulgar mistake of the Signy-Mondieu analysts consists in their regarding a real object, a pompon, say, or a pumpkin as a significant abstraction of the real object," but I got nowhere...
Farmer's comment seems clear enough to me...Nabokov's, on the contrary, remains puzzling ) I believe your Ada comparison is on the right track, in that VN's words are further evidence of his rejection, stated emphatically in Speak, Memory, of Freud's mundane and vulgar idea that a madman might reconstruct his personal "reality" by scouring repressed memories for "kernels of truth" (childhood abuse, pompoms, pumpkins, whatever) to understand how they define him. VN's take might be that a madman's inner "kernel of sanity" can only blossom posthumously, in an aesthetic and spiritual otherworld. A discussion of the VN-"Signy Froit" argument may be seen, i.e., at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/cohen4.htm and Brian Boyd's annotations at Ada Online might give you some useful ideas as well: http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/index.htm
JM: Steve, my point was not to argue for, or against, Freud (fetish, in the modern sense, derives from the writings of Marx and Freud), but to make sense of Nabokov's sentence. Now I must also try to make sense of your answer with its madmen and "kernels of sanity"!
Let me try to pick the matter up from a different vertex. Nabokov often stressed his realization that "reality is a very subjective affair," but here he writes quite naturally about "real objects" to suggest that not only concrete entities (pompons or pumpkins) are such "real objects," but that there are other similarly "real" entities (related to the "significant abstraction of the real object.").
I rather enjoyed your idea that there is madness and sanity in the spiritual world. Such a possibility hadn't occurred to me before, even though your suggestion might be very Nabokovian (should Hazel, for example, be seen as a collaborative, sane and generous ghost!).
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Farmer's comment seems clear enough to me...Nabokov's, on the contrary, remains puzzling ) I believe your Ada comparison is on the right track, in that VN's words are further evidence of his rejection, stated emphatically in Speak, Memory, of Freud's mundane and vulgar idea that a madman might reconstruct his personal "reality" by scouring repressed memories for "kernels of truth" (childhood abuse, pompoms, pumpkins, whatever) to understand how they define him. VN's take might be that a madman's inner "kernel of sanity" can only blossom posthumously, in an aesthetic and spiritual otherworld. A discussion of the VN-"Signy Froit" argument may be seen, i.e., at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/cohen4.htm and Brian Boyd's annotations at Ada Online might give you some useful ideas as well: http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/index.htm
JM: Steve, my point was not to argue for, or against, Freud (fetish, in the modern sense, derives from the writings of Marx and Freud), but to make sense of Nabokov's sentence. Now I must also try to make sense of your answer with its madmen and "kernels of sanity"!
Let me try to pick the matter up from a different vertex. Nabokov often stressed his realization that "reality is a very subjective affair," but here he writes quite naturally about "real objects" to suggest that not only concrete entities (pompons or pumpkins) are such "real objects," but that there are other similarly "real" entities (related to the "significant abstraction of the real object.").
I rather enjoyed your idea that there is madness and sanity in the spiritual world. Such a possibility hadn't occurred to me before, even though your suggestion might be very Nabokovian (should Hazel, for example, be seen as a collaborative, sane and generous ghost!).
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
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