Dear Jansy and List,
Thank you, Jansy, for raising such a grave issue that could
be comparable to the one concerning the reality/fiction
of *Lolita* II. 27 (or II. 22) to the end.
If HP does not strangle Armande and nearly a half of
the work (except Chs. 4-19) is his or someone else's dreams, the meaning of
the novella must be completely different. So far, I simply
believe HP unintentionally but actually kills Armande and at
the end he is experiencing the pangs necessary to go into
the world after death so that the end of the last chapter leads to the
beginning of the first chapter. If HP should be awakening
from his last nightmare (or someone else's dream) into the "real"
world, I could not understand the first chapter as well as the
structure of the novella. I think TT is full of fragmental memories and dreams,
about most of which we are not certain who remembers or dreams, but all are
not dreams.
On the other hand, I have some questions still unanswered and your
interpretation would solve some of them. For example, the unreasonable
facts about HP's imprisonment and treatment in a mental hospital about
which Mr. R. asks in his last letter. And if all is his
dreams, that parallels "the supposition that 'reality' might
be only a 'dream'" (Ch. 24), i. e., the mysterious chapter could be the
clue to the whole TT.
And I would like to ask--
>4. While still a student, Hugh would already have
been suffering from a jealous rage, such as Napoleon´s might have
been because..
did not
Bonaparte´s second wife Marie Louise betray him and bear two children
from Count Neipperg? ( please correct me,
Historians!)
Who was Hugh jealous about
then?
Would HP suffer from a jealous rage before he met Armande? As far
as we know, his nightmares are erotic and sadistic, but could not be called
"jealous" even after he marries Armande -- of course, you could interpret them
(as an expert!) as his suppressed raging jealousy. And in Ch. 7,
I think the spirit of Napoleon gets furious because
he remembers enduring humiliation in St. Helena. I might be too
short-sighted.
If we include in the Moore discussion Brian Boyd's recently
published article "*ADA*, the Bog and the Garden," (NS #8) it would be more
complicated. Is "Moore" also connected with "peat bog," Brian? (I am
sorry if I missed something when I read the article).
Best,
Akiko
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 3:03 AM
Subject: B.Boyd´s "Nabokov´s ADA" /Morio and Moore
Dear Akiko and List,
B. Boyd writes in his introduction to "Nabokov´s
Ada - The Place of Consciousness" ( I only managed to secure a copy of it
today!):
"After working out the reason for the sudden
appearance of horse and groom (...) we would next seek to explain the names
Van has given his invented horse and groom". ( Moiro/ Moore).
"There is a simple, immediately-offered solution
for the Morio-Moore sound play (...) your Moore is in fact an anagram of
Romeo, and with this Shakespearean hint black Morio points towards Othello,
the blackamoor Iago calls " a Barbary horse" (...)
Van (...) leaves the young Romeo behind and
charges off on a black steed reminiscent of Othello: "Ardis the First" is
comparable in freshness and lyric radiance of its young love only to Romeo and
Juliet, while the chapters between "Ardis the First" and "Ardis the
Second" (...) are marked by the
ever-deepening shadow of potentially violent jealousy..."
After all our conjectures about Borromeo/Moore in
TT, I thought it worth to bring up (again?) B.Boyd´s observations
about this "Moore" in Ada as illustrating a transition from
"romantic love" to " violent jealousy" created by VN.
Is it possible to trace a similar kind of
pattern in TT?
The first mention to a Moore seems to be on Ch.
7:
" As a penultimate echo came the strange case of his struggle with a bedside table. This
was when Hugh attended college and lodged with a fellow student, Jack Moore (
no relation), in two rooms of the newly built Snyder Hall"
(...)
when he " was executing a furious war dance all by
itself, as he had seen a similar article do at a séance when asked if the
visiting spirit ( Napoleon) missed the springtime sunsets of St.
Helena".
1. Jack Moore has "no relation" to any of the
various Swiss Jacks, to sculptor Henry Moore, to Julia Moore.
2. Jack rescues Hugh from his "penultimate"
instance ( or more precisely, " penultimate echo") of
somnambulism.
3.The "ultimate" episode would be the one in
which Hugh strangled Armande while still dreaming that he was rescuing
her from dropping from a NY balcony while Hugh´s veggie nightmares and his dream with air hostess Armande
( that anexed the external fire as part of the dream), before
he could reach the " mysterious mental maneuver to pass from one state of
being to another", represented not another somnambulic attack in a
"person and the shadows of related matter" on the brink of a "new being"
but maintained the transparent quality of dream and awakening.
4. While still a student, Hugh would already have
been suffering from a jealous rage, such as Napoleon´s might have
been because..
did not
Bonaparte´s second wife Marie Louise betray him and bear two
children from Count Neipperg? ( please correct me,
Historians!)
Who was Hugh jealous about
then?
5. If the circumstances of Hugh´s death
were taken as a kind of somnambulic attack , then this would mean
that he could not have strangled Armande in the first place - as all the
elements in the novel ( plus our good-sense ) indicate. And
yet, the mixture between reality and dream ( for Hugh and in the eyes of
the reader as well) seem to be present in all these
episodes.
Sorry to return to the same issues we´ve been
discussing but I still feel in the clasp of someone else´s
dream.
Jansy