Subject
"NABOKOV'S DREAMS": The New Yorker [2nd try] (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. The material in the New Yorker is part of the VN Archive at
the NY Public Library's Berg Collectio, entitled "Nabokv under Glass: A
Centennial Exhibition"--a celebration of the writer's birth--from April
23rd through August 21st.
-----------------------------
From: Aline & Alexander Drescher <drescher@bcn.net>
Encouraged by the recent Waugh give & take, and hoping that a
spirit of lightness, curiosity, humor and forgiveness may still prevail
for a while, I return to my curiosity about the New Yorker dream, trusting
that VVN's bedside was not at the New Yorker, and that a close reading can
be respectful.
The description of the dream suggests that the waking VVN thought
it fertile as against a sterile earlier awakening. Almost half of the
description deals with the setting. Most dreams occur in real places [in
this case perhaps when VVN was a younger man: spry, thin, in summer
whites]. Is this setting identifiable?
Four images stand out: [1] the spoon instead of butterfly net, [2] the
letter box, [3] the green butterfly [so often not found in VVN's search
dreams], and [4] the red Morocco case: plus the specifications of left and
right.
The description of the Green Fritillary is a wonderful example of the
transformation of the visual, intuitive mode of dreaming into the
narrative mode of dream remembrance. No surprise that VVN makes this a
small literary gem. It also suggests the exhilarating bi-modal puns and
puzzle making of the creative dream process.
Useful interpretations can only be made by that dreamer, but
outsiders are permitted to guess: Something, aberrant, in some way
nourishing, is guiltily received/taken from the right; is mercifully
relieved of its agony; and made the dreamer's own. Expected disapproval
from the left, in English, fails to occur due to lack of appropriate
assertion by an injured microscopist.
Many dream enthusiasts think Freud was mistaken in believing that
dreams expressed forbidden wishes. Rather, the thought is that the brain
can reserve important issues for off-line, intuitive reconsideration and
problem solving during sleep. To go further would require knowledge about
23 Nov. 1964. A solution to the puzzle would probably involve some
consideration of the right/left, green/red polarities and the distortions
of wing structure and pattern.
Parenthetically: what a wonderful portrait of pleasure [photo:1958,
Carl Mydans]!
Sandy Drescher
drescher@bcn.net
the NY Public Library's Berg Collectio, entitled "Nabokv under Glass: A
Centennial Exhibition"--a celebration of the writer's birth--from April
23rd through August 21st.
-----------------------------
From: Aline & Alexander Drescher <drescher@bcn.net>
Encouraged by the recent Waugh give & take, and hoping that a
spirit of lightness, curiosity, humor and forgiveness may still prevail
for a while, I return to my curiosity about the New Yorker dream, trusting
that VVN's bedside was not at the New Yorker, and that a close reading can
be respectful.
The description of the dream suggests that the waking VVN thought
it fertile as against a sterile earlier awakening. Almost half of the
description deals with the setting. Most dreams occur in real places [in
this case perhaps when VVN was a younger man: spry, thin, in summer
whites]. Is this setting identifiable?
Four images stand out: [1] the spoon instead of butterfly net, [2] the
letter box, [3] the green butterfly [so often not found in VVN's search
dreams], and [4] the red Morocco case: plus the specifications of left and
right.
The description of the Green Fritillary is a wonderful example of the
transformation of the visual, intuitive mode of dreaming into the
narrative mode of dream remembrance. No surprise that VVN makes this a
small literary gem. It also suggests the exhilarating bi-modal puns and
puzzle making of the creative dream process.
Useful interpretations can only be made by that dreamer, but
outsiders are permitted to guess: Something, aberrant, in some way
nourishing, is guiltily received/taken from the right; is mercifully
relieved of its agony; and made the dreamer's own. Expected disapproval
from the left, in English, fails to occur due to lack of appropriate
assertion by an injured microscopist.
Many dream enthusiasts think Freud was mistaken in believing that
dreams expressed forbidden wishes. Rather, the thought is that the brain
can reserve important issues for off-line, intuitive reconsideration and
problem solving during sleep. To go further would require knowledge about
23 Nov. 1964. A solution to the puzzle would probably involve some
consideration of the right/left, green/red polarities and the distortions
of wing structure and pattern.
Parenthetically: what a wonderful portrait of pleasure [photo:1958,
Carl Mydans]!
Sandy Drescher
drescher@bcn.net