Subject
Re: [NABOKOV-L] A novel with "Real people and not my inventions",
Nabokov, 1925
Nabokov, 1925
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This masterful sentence serves as a reminder of Karl Popper¹s warning that
one cannot write ³everything all at once.² At least not in a linear,
natural-language text. The reader parses in sequence, a word or phrase at a
time, solving complex semantic-scoping problems. Does ³within a work of
fiction² apply to the adjacent ³young he² or to the ³actual love letter²
that occurs earlier in the sentence? The RE-reading, so often urged by VN,
resolves the mild ambiguity in this case. The sentence is also a reminder,
if such were needed, that Speak, Memory is a treasured insight into VN¹s
world and mind, uniquely defying the labels of memoir and autobiography.
Stan Kelly-Bootle.
On 03/03/2010 21:49, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark05@MAIL.RU> wrote:
> "Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he
> received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a
> clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives."
>
> Speak, Memory, Chapter Twelve, 5. The section begins with this sentence.
>
> best,
> Alexey
>
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one cannot write ³everything all at once.² At least not in a linear,
natural-language text. The reader parses in sequence, a word or phrase at a
time, solving complex semantic-scoping problems. Does ³within a work of
fiction² apply to the adjacent ³young he² or to the ³actual love letter²
that occurs earlier in the sentence? The RE-reading, so often urged by VN,
resolves the mild ambiguity in this case. The sentence is also a reminder,
if such were needed, that Speak, Memory is a treasured insight into VN¹s
world and mind, uniquely defying the labels of memoir and autobiography.
Stan Kelly-Bootle.
On 03/03/2010 21:49, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark05@MAIL.RU> wrote:
> "Happy is the novelist who manages to preserve an actual love letter that he
> received when he was young within a work of fiction, embedded in it like a
> clean bullet in flabby flesh and quite secure there, among spurious lives."
>
> Speak, Memory, Chapter Twelve, 5. The section begins with this sentence.
>
> best,
> Alexey
>
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/