Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0013781, Sun, 29 Oct 2006 08:14:11 -0500

Subject
VN's attitude toward music
From
Date
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Dear Dmitri,

I wanted to argue against certain ideas discussed in this list:
that the principles of musical composition are used as main, basic
principles in the construction of PF. These ideas were used to support
the theories going quite far, like Shade's split personality.
Of course music is present, but not as formal, almost axiomatic
system that would require professional knowledge of musical
composition and permit to derive theorems and corollaries:
"because this musical form requires a coda Shade must have a fit that
permitted emergence of Kinbote..." (sorry, I am not a musician).
This is why I mentioned opera and other musical forms as alternative to
this
too formal use of musical analogy... And I felt that what was said in
the interviews and books about VN has to be oversimplified.

All the best,

Sergei

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