Subject
THOUGHTS: The meaning of preterist
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Jansy Mello writes:
J. Friedman [to M.Roth: Shade uses preterist in the sense of "one whose chief interest or pleasure is in the past."]I feel sure you're right. The overt meaning of "one who collects cold nests" must be someone who engages in the largely obsolete hobby of bird's-nest collection. The nests were warm when birds lived in them; now they're cold,their only life is in the past--but a preterist will find them still worth collecting [...] forgetting is a kind of death [...] He's (Shade) talking about resurrection after death [...] we know (in my case because I've been told) the answer in /Pale Fire/: Aunt Maud still has her aphasia wherever she is. Though [...] Shade will not be stuck with his sixty-one-year-old body. "Souls shall rise in their degree." --Browning [...] it Might answer Joseph Aisenberg's question of why Nabokov might have felt he "must not be overexplicit"[...] "Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire." --Voltaire
A.S (Lerche): Gradus [...] is the Latin word meaning "step" or "degree" (gradus is also Russian for "degree", in the English word's meteorological, geographical, geometrical and "alcoholic" sense; pod gradusom is colloquial for "drunk") [Grad] occurs, for instance, in Goethe's Faust, in the following lines (Part One, the Hexenkueche scene, Mephistopheles' words addressed to the witch who concocted the perilous drink that should make of Faust a young man again)
J.Friedman[to M.Roth's "he doesn't ask, as we might expect, what moment Death chooses; rather he asks when, during the process of decay-in-life, might
one "escape"?[...]The syllogism,I believe, is meant to cleverly suggest that when Shade dies ("But Doctor, I was dead!" "Just half a shade.") at the Crashaw Club he becomes another. (Other men die; "I was dead"; therefore I became another). ] I call that a charming argument for your MPD theory [...]This is connected to Shade's question about "the madman's fate". Are insane people insane when resurrected? If not, one might ask, in what sense are they the same person?"
JM:What a relief ! Jerry Friedman interpreted Webster's 2nd "preterist" in a way that accomodates the meaning of "different verbal modes", instead of indicating exclusively the perfect past of the cold nest. The nests are cold,"their only life is in the past -- but a preterist will find them still worth [RE?]collecting". They are as cold as the "ashen fluff"(the poet is its shadow, but he also "lives on... in a reflected sky"). And yet, the dilemma remains: does a poet only "live on" in his poetry ("a reflected sky"), or does he reach a particular "degree" in his soulful afterlife?
How interesting! The poem reveals Shade's ideas about resurrection of the "body" by Aunt Maud's messages marked by "aphasia".
Friedman and Sklyarenko mentioned "degree" with distinct meanings (Browning // Pod gradusom-Grad-Goethe's Faust).
I couldn't find a numerological chart and a statistical development I once came across related to a mathematical riddle proposed by Goesthe's Hexe. A fascinating exercise in "apophenia": that's what I remember about it.
J.Friedman inquires if "are insane people insane when resurrected? ...are they the same person?". Interesting point, but can a mere human judge, in absolute heavenly terms, who is or who is not "insane"? This quandary gains an added twist by the application of the "multiple personality disorder theory" versus standard identity-fingerprinting: would John Shade rise as a threesome: Shade, Kinbote,Gradus?
For Jerry, there only one who would then rise as a wise, spiritually evolved John Shade.
How about Kinbote, the poor enthusiastic half-mystic guy on his way to Hell?
Pale Fire's "producers" seem to be condemned, like Persephone, to stay in Hades for a time, then come out as a full-blossoming spring...
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J. Friedman [to M.Roth: Shade uses preterist in the sense of "one whose chief interest or pleasure is in the past."]I feel sure you're right. The overt meaning of "one who collects cold nests" must be someone who engages in the largely obsolete hobby of bird's-nest collection. The nests were warm when birds lived in them; now they're cold,their only life is in the past--but a preterist will find them still worth collecting [...] forgetting is a kind of death [...] He's (Shade) talking about resurrection after death [...] we know (in my case because I've been told) the answer in /Pale Fire/: Aunt Maud still has her aphasia wherever she is. Though [...] Shade will not be stuck with his sixty-one-year-old body. "Souls shall rise in their degree." --Browning [...] it Might answer Joseph Aisenberg's question of why Nabokov might have felt he "must not be overexplicit"[...] "Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire." --Voltaire
A.S (Lerche): Gradus [...] is the Latin word meaning "step" or "degree" (gradus is also Russian for "degree", in the English word's meteorological, geographical, geometrical and "alcoholic" sense; pod gradusom is colloquial for "drunk") [Grad] occurs, for instance, in Goethe's Faust, in the following lines (Part One, the Hexenkueche scene, Mephistopheles' words addressed to the witch who concocted the perilous drink that should make of Faust a young man again)
J.Friedman[to M.Roth's "he doesn't ask, as we might expect, what moment Death chooses; rather he asks when, during the process of decay-in-life, might
one "escape"?[...]The syllogism,I believe, is meant to cleverly suggest that when Shade dies ("But Doctor, I was dead!" "Just half a shade.") at the Crashaw Club he becomes another. (Other men die; "I was dead"; therefore I became another). ] I call that a charming argument for your MPD theory [...]This is connected to Shade's question about "the madman's fate". Are insane people insane when resurrected? If not, one might ask, in what sense are they the same person?"
JM:What a relief ! Jerry Friedman interpreted Webster's 2nd "preterist" in a way that accomodates the meaning of "different verbal modes", instead of indicating exclusively the perfect past of the cold nest. The nests are cold,"their only life is in the past -- but a preterist will find them still worth [RE?]collecting". They are as cold as the "ashen fluff"(the poet is its shadow, but he also "lives on... in a reflected sky"). And yet, the dilemma remains: does a poet only "live on" in his poetry ("a reflected sky"), or does he reach a particular "degree" in his soulful afterlife?
How interesting! The poem reveals Shade's ideas about resurrection of the "body" by Aunt Maud's messages marked by "aphasia".
Friedman and Sklyarenko mentioned "degree" with distinct meanings (Browning // Pod gradusom-Grad-Goethe's Faust).
I couldn't find a numerological chart and a statistical development I once came across related to a mathematical riddle proposed by Goesthe's Hexe. A fascinating exercise in "apophenia": that's what I remember about it.
J.Friedman inquires if "are insane people insane when resurrected? ...are they the same person?". Interesting point, but can a mere human judge, in absolute heavenly terms, who is or who is not "insane"? This quandary gains an added twist by the application of the "multiple personality disorder theory" versus standard identity-fingerprinting: would John Shade rise as a threesome: Shade, Kinbote,Gradus?
For Jerry, there only one who would then rise as a wise, spiritually evolved John Shade.
How about Kinbote, the poor enthusiastic half-mystic guy on his way to Hell?
Pale Fire's "producers" seem to be condemned, like Persephone, to stay in Hades for a time, then come out as a full-blossoming spring...
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
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/