Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0016049, Thu, 6 Mar 2008 19:13:41 -0300

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Re: Ganymede & cup-bearers; SK's on R.Grillet
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Matthew Roth wrote:You brought up the Ganymede myth and associated references to catamites in Ada. You then said: "I haven't yet found other mentions ... in Pale Fire. In fact, we did have a discussion of the Ganymede/Catamite myth in PF last year.See here: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0703&L=nabokv-l&T=0&P=5534

JM: Yes, indeed we had. Thank you for extracting the gist of more associations ( ingle, ingledom) to refresh my memory.
I was not intent on "Pale Fire" when the chance appearance of "goblets and cup-bearers" reached me and made me recall their presence in "Ada".

Sorry for not having been thorough enough and reached your former posts, Matt. I was sidetracked by noticing Nabokov's different, not totally unrelated uses of "cup" in "Ada" ( cupped hands/gowpen, hands cupped on breast or buttocks, breasts in bras... no "Bras d'Or" to take us to Golden Cups/"soutiens", though! ).
...Next, while travelling to Pale Fire, the sudden glimpse of Gradus ( as the dog Argus) recognizing his owner, a King who wanted to return to his Kingdom...( the hints are there but they don't make sense to me, yet: Kinbote as Ulysses...? Well, there are Sybils and mermen/maids...)
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Sandy Klein sent news about:
"Alain Robbe-Grillet turned the masses against inventive fiction. Now that he's dead, will experimental writing make a comeback? " (by Stephen Marche) "English fiction in the wake of Robbe-Grillet has become a deliberately old-fashioned activity, like archery or churning your own butter. He represented, through his status as cultural icon of the avant-garde, an entire generation that turned literary experimentation into self-involved blandness. In the '50s, writers like Nabokov could produce "Pale Fire" or "Lolita" and feel themselves part of the mainstream of literary culture. After the '60s, after Robbe-Grillet, anyone who experimented in fiction was being consciously marginal, or at least countercultural. Thomas Pynchon (Nabokov's student) removed himself in the most dramatic way; Nicholson Baker is another, quieter example."
JM:Ermelinda Ferreira, in "O leitor no texto", compared Calvino's 1979 novel and Nabokov's 1962 "Pale Fire" in relation to the "aesthetics of reception" (K. Burke and H.R.Jauss). After having recently re-read "The Vane Sisters" (1959), Italo Calvino's novel "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" was brought to my mind, for it also relies on acrostics and includes the reader.
I would be thankful to learn about any article approaching Nabokov's "The Vane Sisters" and Italo Calvino's 1979 book.
(And hoping that TOOL...etc)


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