Math Roth: As
I was rereading “A Visit to the Museum”... I suddenly realized that the narrator
dies quite early in the story. ..
“A Matter of Chance” has a similar crossing image at the end, as Luzhin,
having decided to kill himself, is about to be struck by a train..."as if taking
a stroll” (59).
JM: Matt outlines a dreary vision
of afterlife, as if VN's dead characters could only move
onto another nightmarishly distorted literary dimension, instead of
being able to flee the story and the (now cruel) eyes of the
reader. Nabokov's verbal "pearly gates" are deceitful!
I was wondering about the two suicidal Luzhins's
names, Alexey and Alexander. Should these names be etymologically
related, we find that Alex is "a short form of Alexander, from Latin
Alexander, from Ancient Greek Ἀλέξανδρος (Aléxandros) 'he who wards off men',
i.e. protector, possibly of Hittite origin; and from Alexius, from the same
Ancient Greek root, alexios "helping, defending". These two origins of Alex are
indistinguishable in most languages" - and in their case, this seems to be
rather ironical.