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[NABOKOV] [TRIVIA] Rare shells and stratagems upon tesselated
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Dear List,
Arriving by chance at one or two Nabokovian words, now isolated from their familiar context, I'm sometimes struck by how they may thus acquire new evolving shapes, like superclusters that serve as nurseries for baby-stars. Today I passed from "rare shells" onto "stratagems rosily visible" in Lolita...
Unable to imagine chess moves taking place "in a square pool", even so I was spellbound by this poetic reference to "stratagems" upon a "tesselated bottom". I could discern something else, those very nabokovian "strata" like the "tesselated" images in which one discerns various archeological levels that reveal an unexpected rosy gem...
VN's words irrupt almost silently like underwater music and its bubbles are totally distinct from those condensed effects as those created by Joyce's laughtears: I suppose I am especially susceptible to the magic of games. In my chess sessions with Gaston I saw the board as a square pool of limpid water with rare shells and stratagems rosily visible upon the smooth tessellated bottom, which to my confused adversary was all ooze and squid-cloud.
Thinking about a hidden move in a chess-game, instead of looking up ADA's tesselations, I decided to search inside a pail of sea-shells and diamonds before I reached King Alfin, in PALE FIRE: "How often is it that kings engage in some special research? Conchologists among them can be counted on the fingers of one maimed hand."
Once again my original hypothesis drew a blank.
And yet my wonder lingers at VN's silent and invisible verbal "stratagems" with day breaking out of its shell as in primeval tales about created worlds ( Shade's lines, "Safe in my bed as day its eggshell broke,/ And robins walked and stopped...)
Failed finds and lost threads are also interesting to report and share. So here they are. A good Sunday to all...
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Arriving by chance at one or two Nabokovian words, now isolated from their familiar context, I'm sometimes struck by how they may thus acquire new evolving shapes, like superclusters that serve as nurseries for baby-stars. Today I passed from "rare shells" onto "stratagems rosily visible" in Lolita...
Unable to imagine chess moves taking place "in a square pool", even so I was spellbound by this poetic reference to "stratagems" upon a "tesselated bottom". I could discern something else, those very nabokovian "strata" like the "tesselated" images in which one discerns various archeological levels that reveal an unexpected rosy gem...
VN's words irrupt almost silently like underwater music and its bubbles are totally distinct from those condensed effects as those created by Joyce's laughtears: I suppose I am especially susceptible to the magic of games. In my chess sessions with Gaston I saw the board as a square pool of limpid water with rare shells and stratagems rosily visible upon the smooth tessellated bottom, which to my confused adversary was all ooze and squid-cloud.
Thinking about a hidden move in a chess-game, instead of looking up ADA's tesselations, I decided to search inside a pail of sea-shells and diamonds before I reached King Alfin, in PALE FIRE: "How often is it that kings engage in some special research? Conchologists among them can be counted on the fingers of one maimed hand."
Once again my original hypothesis drew a blank.
And yet my wonder lingers at VN's silent and invisible verbal "stratagems" with day breaking out of its shell as in primeval tales about created worlds ( Shade's lines, "Safe in my bed as day its eggshell broke,/ And robins walked and stopped...)
Failed finds and lost threads are also interesting to report and share. So here they are. A good Sunday to all...
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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