Subject
SIGNS: Some background re: earlier discussions on N-L
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Jerry Friedman replies to Anthony Stadlen:
--- On Mon, 4/28/08, Anthony Stadlen wrote:
> I am delighted that my Inner Circle Seminar on "Signs
> and Symbols" on 11
> May in London is being honoured in this way.
>
> Can I suggest that readers who want to link to the
> discussion that has
> already taken place turn to the archives of NABOKV-L for
> December 2004?
Thank you for doing so. I wish I'd paid more attention to
your thoughtful remarks at the time.
...
[Anthony Stadlen quotes a posting of Dec. 2004.]
> The untrustworthiness of this narrator is apparent from the
> contradictory sentences: ‘He had no desires’, and
> ‘What he really wanted
> to do was to tear a hole in his world and escape’.
I'm glad you pointed that out, since I was about to miss it.
...
> Such is the spell of this mere unsubstantiated assertion
> about the young
> man’s inaccessibility and incurablity that, as far as I
> know, nobody has
> suggested a simple possible explanation of the third
> telephone call. It
> appears to be easier for people to envisage the young
> man’s posthumously
> affecting somebody else’s telephone call than to think
> that he might
> simply make one himself, while still alive.
This response by so many people, though striking as you note,
seems reasonable to me. I haven't read all of VN's work by
any means, but I can easily think of more characters who
communicate or exert influence after death than characters who
escape from official confinement (Jack Grey) or recover from
insanity. (Sort of the way Shakespeare characters should
expect fair-faced youths to be disguised maidens.)
Furthermore, the night after he tried to kill himself should
be the time he's most firmly restrained, if not unconscious
from chloral hydrate.
> These parents, who supposedly know that their son has no
> desires
> although he is inaccessible to their normal minds, seem
> curiously
> uncurious about him. They do not even ask the nurse how he
> had tried to
> kill himself.
...
I don't think we know that. The nurse may have told them as
part of her explanation.
On the subject of the nurse, you're inspiring me to wonder
about what she told the parents (para. 3). Maybe her "a visit
might disturb him" was an understatement. Maybe the son tried
to kill himself because he'd been told his parents were about
to visit or because he surmised they'd visit on his birthday.
On the other hand, if as you suggest we shouldn't believe the
doctors, how about the nurse? Maybe the boy didn't attempt
suicide but the sanitarium wants to keep him away from his
parents because he'll ask, lucidly or half-lucidly, to be
taken home, as you suggest. Or maybe he shows the signs of
neglect or abuse, perhaps criminal, on the part of the
sanitarium staff. This latter possibility might be a better
pretext for such an awful lie.
> What makes readers so certain that the young man could not
> have been
> uncertain in his ‘suicide attempts’? If he is such a
> genius, surely his
> second attempt should have succeeded, after the bad luck of
> a patient
> stopping his last attempt?
He may be frustrated by his own irrationality or by the
precautions of even an understaffed sanitarium.
> Why is it so clear that the young man does not want to come
> home? Why
> should we accept the (unattributed) assertion that he wants
> to ‘escape’
> from the ‘world’ rather than from incarceration in a
> ‘sanatorium’?
Partly because there's no mention of his having raised the
subject, and we might expect such a mention, since it would
add to his parents' misery.
...
Jerry Friedman
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--- On Mon, 4/28/08, Anthony Stadlen wrote:
> I am delighted that my Inner Circle Seminar on "Signs
> and Symbols" on 11
> May in London is being honoured in this way.
>
> Can I suggest that readers who want to link to the
> discussion that has
> already taken place turn to the archives of NABOKV-L for
> December 2004?
Thank you for doing so. I wish I'd paid more attention to
your thoughtful remarks at the time.
...
[Anthony Stadlen quotes a posting of Dec. 2004.]
> The untrustworthiness of this narrator is apparent from the
> contradictory sentences: ‘He had no desires’, and
> ‘What he really wanted
> to do was to tear a hole in his world and escape’.
I'm glad you pointed that out, since I was about to miss it.
...
> Such is the spell of this mere unsubstantiated assertion
> about the young
> man’s inaccessibility and incurablity that, as far as I
> know, nobody has
> suggested a simple possible explanation of the third
> telephone call. It
> appears to be easier for people to envisage the young
> man’s posthumously
> affecting somebody else’s telephone call than to think
> that he might
> simply make one himself, while still alive.
This response by so many people, though striking as you note,
seems reasonable to me. I haven't read all of VN's work by
any means, but I can easily think of more characters who
communicate or exert influence after death than characters who
escape from official confinement (Jack Grey) or recover from
insanity. (Sort of the way Shakespeare characters should
expect fair-faced youths to be disguised maidens.)
Furthermore, the night after he tried to kill himself should
be the time he's most firmly restrained, if not unconscious
from chloral hydrate.
> These parents, who supposedly know that their son has no
> desires
> although he is inaccessible to their normal minds, seem
> curiously
> uncurious about him. They do not even ask the nurse how he
> had tried to
> kill himself.
...
I don't think we know that. The nurse may have told them as
part of her explanation.
On the subject of the nurse, you're inspiring me to wonder
about what she told the parents (para. 3). Maybe her "a visit
might disturb him" was an understatement. Maybe the son tried
to kill himself because he'd been told his parents were about
to visit or because he surmised they'd visit on his birthday.
On the other hand, if as you suggest we shouldn't believe the
doctors, how about the nurse? Maybe the boy didn't attempt
suicide but the sanitarium wants to keep him away from his
parents because he'll ask, lucidly or half-lucidly, to be
taken home, as you suggest. Or maybe he shows the signs of
neglect or abuse, perhaps criminal, on the part of the
sanitarium staff. This latter possibility might be a better
pretext for such an awful lie.
> What makes readers so certain that the young man could not
> have been
> uncertain in his ‘suicide attempts’? If he is such a
> genius, surely his
> second attempt should have succeeded, after the bad luck of
> a patient
> stopping his last attempt?
He may be frustrated by his own irrationality or by the
precautions of even an understaffed sanitarium.
> Why is it so clear that the young man does not want to come
> home? Why
> should we accept the (unattributed) assertion that he wants
> to ‘escape’
> from the ‘world’ rather than from incarceration in a
> ‘sanatorium’?
Partly because there's no mention of his having raised the
subject, and we might expect such a mention, since it would
add to his parents' misery.
...
Jerry Friedman
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