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Re: NATASHA: Natasha's age?
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Laurence H : "Natasha is not a child; she is at least 15, according to the clues afforded by the text: when she saw the Virgin Mary for the first time, she was about ten, and she saw her again five years later." [...] "in addition to being a sick old man haunted by terrible memories, I wonder whether Khrenov isn't some kind of sorcerer who can "see" in a trance what is taking place now (the killings...) in the country he has left."
Will Dane: I wonder too if Natasha has inherited some form of her father's gift. Is her characterization of her visions as "fantasy" accurate, or is it her way of explaining the troubling visions that she has? At the end of the story, it seems that Natasha's vision of her father outside the house is not a result of active fantasizing, but rather something she is actually seeing. Her version of her father's gift may be a faulty variant, or perhaps it is an immature version (because of her youth) that will one day be as accurate as her father's.
JM: I agree with W. Dane that Natasha's exchanges with her father while he stood by a newstand is not "active fantasizing" but a "vision"( and, inspite of her flippant dismissal to the Baron, so were those of the Virgin Mary). Just like the young girl in Lourdes or "The Song of Bernadette" ( which I'd not have remembered were it not by the mention of Theodore Dreiser in the interview S.Klein just sent, with William Buckley Jr., where the latter says that" In Strong Opinions, Nabokov wrote, "Ever since the days when such formidable mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, a person called Tagore, another called Maxim Gorky, a third called Romain Rolland, used to be accepted as geniuses, I have been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called 'great books.' " ) In Natasha, therefore, the narrator describes three different expressions of trance-like states: the Baron's artistic fabulations; the father's feverish dreams and hallucinations alternating with a socially conscious " gift", and Natasha's more restricted religious visions. Like W.Dane I think Natasha may suffer from a "faulty variant, an immature version" of her father's. And yet, I cannot dismiss the supposition that VN was being ironical in relation to Natasha's Virgin Mary.
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Will Dane: I wonder too if Natasha has inherited some form of her father's gift. Is her characterization of her visions as "fantasy" accurate, or is it her way of explaining the troubling visions that she has? At the end of the story, it seems that Natasha's vision of her father outside the house is not a result of active fantasizing, but rather something she is actually seeing. Her version of her father's gift may be a faulty variant, or perhaps it is an immature version (because of her youth) that will one day be as accurate as her father's.
JM: I agree with W. Dane that Natasha's exchanges with her father while he stood by a newstand is not "active fantasizing" but a "vision"( and, inspite of her flippant dismissal to the Baron, so were those of the Virgin Mary). Just like the young girl in Lourdes or "The Song of Bernadette" ( which I'd not have remembered were it not by the mention of Theodore Dreiser in the interview S.Klein just sent, with William Buckley Jr., where the latter says that" In Strong Opinions, Nabokov wrote, "Ever since the days when such formidable mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, a person called Tagore, another called Maxim Gorky, a third called Romain Rolland, used to be accepted as geniuses, I have been perplexed and amused by fabricated notions about so-called 'great books.' " ) In Natasha, therefore, the narrator describes three different expressions of trance-like states: the Baron's artistic fabulations; the father's feverish dreams and hallucinations alternating with a socially conscious " gift", and Natasha's more restricted religious visions. Like W.Dane I think Natasha may suffer from a "faulty variant, an immature version" of her father's. And yet, I cannot dismiss the supposition that VN was being ironical in relation to Natasha's Virgin Mary.
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/