Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022577, Sun, 11 Mar 2012 14:30:43 -0300

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Re: Distortions and slanting views
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Bruce Stone ["what do you mean by "searching for the "real" in Nabokov's fiction"?] "I was referring to those interpretations that, like mine, attempt to separate the fact from the fictive within the fictional world--those efforts to find the "real story" that underlies the narration (the recent articles about internal authorship in Pale Fire come to mind). It seems to me that many of these papers might be said to seek, ultimately, the terra firma in the fictional world--or they try to bring us as close as we can get to that place."

JM: I'd rather ponder about "the real story that underlies the narration" as something distinct from an "attempt to separate the fact from the fictive within the fictional world." Not that I ever got very far anyway, specially concerning the second option.
NB: While returning to your article on "Errata and Aporia" in my last posting, I made a slip. I meant to note that "John Ray's preambulation walks ahead of itself, just like Humbert Humbert comes before himself." (and my reformulation still isn't precise because there are too many legs to stumble upon!)

Anthony Stadlen [on "Lolita's 56 days" conundrum observes that he was "struck by the fact that those who write about it seem invariably to refer to a discrepancy of "three days". Presumably this is a matter of one ]person's miscounting and the rest's not bothering to count, but merely copying. For the discrepancy is, in fact, four days, as I shall show." And his demonstration is very throrough, delightful indeed! When he comments, from Appel's notes "Humbert's record of the presumably fake registration numbers of his car left by Quilty -- Q 32888 and CU 88322 -- make a great deal of the fact that the two car numbers add up to 52." and elegantly connects it to other Appel-notes [251/14] in which he says: "There are fifty-two cards in a deck, and the author of King, Queen, Knave still has a few up his sleeve, as he demonstrates here." and [251/15]: "...it is quite impossible that either H.H. or Quilty could realize the full significance of the number fifty-two; only one person can, and the 'common denominator' points to the author."] made me risk another possible hint (I'm a hopeless case with figures and cards!): the registration numbers of Quilty's car involve three ciphers only (8,3,2). The doubling of the 8 in one, and of the 2 in the other stands in the way of arriving at two pairs of numbers growing in opposing directions: 3288(8) and 8832(2). We must remember that Nabokov once confessed that he was "subject to the embarrassing qualms of superstition: a number, a dream, a coincidence can affect me obsessively." * and that his number superstition might in fact have helped him to achieve the venerable age of "three score and ten."...

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* Interview with Alden Whitman, in mid-April, 1971, reproduced, with misprints and other flaws, in The New York Times, April 23.
AW: You, sir, will be seventy-two in a few days, having exceeded the Biblical three score and ten. How does this feat, if it is a feat, impress you?
VN: "Three score and ten" sounded, no doubt, very venerable in the days when life expectancy hardly reached one half of that length. Anyway, Petersburgan pediatricians never thought I might perform the feat you mention: a feat of lucky endurance, of paradoxically detached will power, of good work and good
wine, of healthy concentration on a rare bug or a rhythmic phrase. Another thing that might have been of some help is the fact that I am subject to the embarrassing qualms of superstition: a number, a dream, a coincidence can affect me obsessively-- though not in the sense of absurd fears but as fabulous (and on the whole rather bracing) scientific enigmas incapable of being stated, let alone solved.


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