Subject
Re: [NABOKOV-L] H.G.Wells and "Glory" (and several short-stories)
From
Date
Body
Jansy: to a certain class of moviegoers, Green Door uniquely points to the
classic 1972 porn film, Behind the Green Door!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068260/
My friends tell me it has artistic merits beyond your typical skinflick. Not
sure of the idiom¹s origin, but it seems to refer to the exotic antics
people perform in private, antics you wouldn¹t expect from their respectable
exterior curtains or doors.
SKB
On 02/03/2010 12:38, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Today a person mentioned to me Hugh G. Well's short-story "The Door in the
> Wall," and, like the green door it describes. I was revisited by my first
> experience of reading it as a young girl*. I never returned to it until today,
> thanks to internet resources.
>
> It seems that Nabokov, who used to like Wells in his early childhood, might
> have equally been haunted by a green door.His way of expressing this opening
> into "arcadia," as a parallel world co-existing with ours, changed along the
> years, but... the longing remained.
> We find its progression in, for example, "The Woodsprite," "Sounds," "Gods,"
> "La Veneziana," "A Visit to the Museum." It is present in "Glory," in
> "Speak,Memory." It is found in "Lolita" (perhaps this green door serves as the
> deep link with the German Ur-Lolita?) and in "Ada."
>
> Nevertheless, although this "green door" suggests the familiar indication of
> a "hereafter" or "other worlds," I surmise it indicates still another
> dimension of ecstatic experience, it is something that applies to the present
> moment, something that remains permanently accessible, always within reach
> through time (not space), through words...
>
> ...............................................................
> * Excerpts from H.G.Well's short-story:
> "It was wonderful to me, because the pages of that book were not pictures, you
> understand, but realities." ...They were realities--yes, they must have been;
> people moved and things came and went in them; my dear mother, whom I had near
> forgotten; then my father, stern and upright, the servants, the nursery, all
> the familiar things of home... so at last I came to myself hovering and
> hesitating outside the green door in the long white wall, and felt again the
> conflict and the fear."
> [...]
> "There are times when I believe that Wallace was no more than the victim of
> the coincidence between a rare but not unprecedented type of hallucination and
> a careless trap, but that indeed is not my profoundest belief...I am more than
> half convinced that he had in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense,
> something--I know not what--that in the guise of wall and door offered him an
> outlet, a secret and peculiar passage of escape into another and altogether
> more beautiful world. At any rate, you will say, it betrayed him in the end.
> But did it betray him? There you touch the inmost mystery of these dreamers,
> these men of vision and the imagination We see our world fair and common, the
> hoarding and the pit. By our daylight standard he walked out of security into
> darkness, danger and death. But did he see like that? " (if you haven't read
> the story, it's here
> <http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/H_G_Herbert_George_Wells/The_Door_in_the_Wall_
> And_Other_Stories/The_Door_in_the_Wall_Chapter_I_p1.html> .)
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
classic 1972 porn film, Behind the Green Door!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068260/
My friends tell me it has artistic merits beyond your typical skinflick. Not
sure of the idiom¹s origin, but it seems to refer to the exotic antics
people perform in private, antics you wouldn¹t expect from their respectable
exterior curtains or doors.
SKB
On 02/03/2010 12:38, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Today a person mentioned to me Hugh G. Well's short-story "The Door in the
> Wall," and, like the green door it describes. I was revisited by my first
> experience of reading it as a young girl*. I never returned to it until today,
> thanks to internet resources.
>
> It seems that Nabokov, who used to like Wells in his early childhood, might
> have equally been haunted by a green door.His way of expressing this opening
> into "arcadia," as a parallel world co-existing with ours, changed along the
> years, but... the longing remained.
> We find its progression in, for example, "The Woodsprite," "Sounds," "Gods,"
> "La Veneziana," "A Visit to the Museum." It is present in "Glory," in
> "Speak,Memory." It is found in "Lolita" (perhaps this green door serves as the
> deep link with the German Ur-Lolita?) and in "Ada."
>
> Nevertheless, although this "green door" suggests the familiar indication of
> a "hereafter" or "other worlds," I surmise it indicates still another
> dimension of ecstatic experience, it is something that applies to the present
> moment, something that remains permanently accessible, always within reach
> through time (not space), through words...
>
> ...............................................................
> * Excerpts from H.G.Well's short-story:
> "It was wonderful to me, because the pages of that book were not pictures, you
> understand, but realities." ...They were realities--yes, they must have been;
> people moved and things came and went in them; my dear mother, whom I had near
> forgotten; then my father, stern and upright, the servants, the nursery, all
> the familiar things of home... so at last I came to myself hovering and
> hesitating outside the green door in the long white wall, and felt again the
> conflict and the fear."
> [...]
> "There are times when I believe that Wallace was no more than the victim of
> the coincidence between a rare but not unprecedented type of hallucination and
> a careless trap, but that indeed is not my profoundest belief...I am more than
> half convinced that he had in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense,
> something--I know not what--that in the guise of wall and door offered him an
> outlet, a secret and peculiar passage of escape into another and altogether
> more beautiful world. At any rate, you will say, it betrayed him in the end.
> But did it betray him? There you touch the inmost mystery of these dreamers,
> these men of vision and the imagination We see our world fair and common, the
> hoarding and the pit. By our daylight standard he walked out of security into
> darkness, danger and death. But did he see like that? " (if you haven't read
> the story, it's here
> <http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/H_G_Herbert_George_Wells/The_Door_in_the_Wall_
> And_Other_Stories/The_Door_in_the_Wall_Chapter_I_p1.html> .)
>
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/