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Phyllis Roth on symmetry
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I couldn't agree more with Stadlen's general rule below. "Self-absorbed
narcissists like Hermann and Kinbote," solipsists like Humbert, all
attempt to conflate their fictions with "reality," that elusive
locution, as I argued at much too great a length, far more years ago
than I care to share, in a dissertation on doubling in the novels. It
has always seemed to me the case that the inventors of the putative
doubles in the novels -- albeit aimed at banging their "bruised fists"
against "the walls of time separating me and my bruised fists from the
free world of timelessness" Nabokov mourns in the beginning of SPEAK,
MEMORY -- are exposed as most often lunatics, sometimes poets, but
always ficitonalizing, as well as fictional. The point, I think, is to
see the difference, the gap, not only any resemblance. The mimicry of
the insect is as remarkable as it is because of its excess, as Nabokov
has said, and also because it IS mimicry of something OTHER. Collapsing
the symmetries destroys them; witness Felix, Shade, Quilty.
Phyllis Roth
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narcissists like Hermann and Kinbote," solipsists like Humbert, all
attempt to conflate their fictions with "reality," that elusive
locution, as I argued at much too great a length, far more years ago
than I care to share, in a dissertation on doubling in the novels. It
has always seemed to me the case that the inventors of the putative
doubles in the novels -- albeit aimed at banging their "bruised fists"
against "the walls of time separating me and my bruised fists from the
free world of timelessness" Nabokov mourns in the beginning of SPEAK,
MEMORY -- are exposed as most often lunatics, sometimes poets, but
always ficitonalizing, as well as fictional. The point, I think, is to
see the difference, the gap, not only any resemblance. The mimicry of
the insect is as remarkable as it is because of its excess, as Nabokov
has said, and also because it IS mimicry of something OTHER. Collapsing
the symmetries destroys them; witness Felix, Shade, Quilty.
Phyllis Roth
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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