Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] On symmetry
From: "Phyllis Roth" <[email-masked]>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 16:53:05 -0400

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

Anthony Stadlen wrote:

> In a message dated 27/09/2006 14:00:04 GMT Standard Time, 
> [email-masked] writes:
>
>     'The Circle' - the story flows into itself (as middle part of Pale
>     Fire)
>
> There is no middle part of Pale Fire, and no evidence as far as I 
> know, apart from Kinbote's unsubstantiated assertion that, in the 
> second part, the poem itself, line 1000 = line 1.
>  
> Dmitri Nabokov, answering my question about this some months ago, 
> said that his father had at an early stage pointed out the "round the 
> corner" nature of the last line, but he has not yet answered my 
> question just what he or his father meant by that, or whether that 
> actually implies line 1000 = line 1 in the mind of Shade or of VN (or 
> indeed DN).
>  
> I think Susan Elizabeth Sweeney's suggestion for line 1000 (in 
> the great competition at the turn of this last year) was the nicest, 
> but it still lacks the consonne d'appui.
>  
> As a general rule, is it not crucial not to fall for the symmetries 
> and circularities proposed by self-absorbed narcissists like Hermann 
> and Kinbote? A large part of VN's challenge to the reader is not to be

> seduced by such unreliable (to put it absurdly mildly) narrators. It 
> may seem easy not to be seduced, as these narrators are so outrageous,

> but in fact people do seem to me to accept some of their assertions 
> far too readily (as happened with Humbert too, of course). Such 
> acceptance does not seem to me the mark of what VN called a good 
> reader.    
>  
> Anthony Stadlen 
>
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