Subject
Re: Poetry: Language and Love ...
From
Date
Body
Re: [NABOKV-L] Poetry: Language and Love ...
On Sandy P. Klein's posting of Alexander Nazaryan's article (http://www.brooklynrail.org/) ["Lolita may be a coquette, but it is the boundless possibility of English that is the true object of Humbert Humbert's lust. An exemplary polymath, Nabokov found himself enthralled more by the near-infinite cornucopia afforded by words; the lives drawn by them sometimes seem secondary."]
Stan K-B notes that: ' In the interests of the Nabokovian linguistic precision ...a key notion in modern linguistics is that the "cornucopia afforded by words" is not "near-infinite" but truly infinite.' [...] What is arcane and enthralling is that, given an arbitrary mapping of integers to letters/words/sentences, the entire Nabokovian published corpus can be found embedded in sequences of the digits of (Greek) PI! "[...] On "Nazaryan's conjecture that HH's real lust was for words rather than for nymphets. Really? That would lead to a drastic re-reading of "Lolita" the novel! We would now seem to have HH inventing his carnal adventures; are Lo and his other victims merely figments of a frustrated but highly literate imagination? "
Joseph Aisenberg agrees "one hundred percent, but I think the critic was merely echoing that old idea that Nabokov's novel was a record of his love affair with the English languange [...] The critic took this idea somewhat literally [...] it seems like the idea of linguistic proxy, while not being exactly the heart of the book, represents a certain Quixotic something [...] I always wondered, is artistic perfection really much of a palliative for Humbert? Because if it is, then Humbert doesn't really believe, as he says, that he has only words to play with."
JM: Stan, "the boundless possibility of English" and a truly infinite "cornucupia afforded by words" is, indeed, quite a long stretch! I wonder, though, how this demarcation and mapping of "letters/words/sentences of the entire Nabokovian published corpus" to reach PI has been achieved ( I'm assuming the news is that it's an exclusive quality of VN's literal patterning)?
[ to JA} By "linguistic proxy" do you mean a fetish? Because VN also inspired Shade to write (lines 949-952):
And all the time, and all the time, my love,
You too are there, beneath the word, above
The syllable, to underscore and stress
The vital rhythm.
M.Roth:[...][...] the "aunts and orphans" thread and the Cedarn thread unite in Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh," [...]"As when you paint your portrait for a friend,/Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it/Long after he has ceased to love you, just/To hold together what he was and is. That's precisely what "PF" is: an attempt by John Shade to hold together what he was and is [...] "cedarn shade" was indeed a well-known cliche [...]Interesting too that most of these uses of cedarn carry with them Milton's original context--a paradise or hereafter, Arcadian or Elysian. "Ravenstone," of course, comes from the German Rabenstein, the place of the gallows, which is mentioned in Goethe's Faust[...] Baring-Gould writes: "A German name for [the gallows] is the raven's stone, not only, perhaps, because raven's come to it, but because the raven was the sacred bird of Odin." Odin is easily tied the Erl-King, and round and round we go [...].
JM: Round and round we go... and I forgot to add the raven mentioned by J.A.Haney in his comments to "The Slovo" ( The Song of Igor's Campaign): "Celtic deity Mortigan, the goddess of war and death (cf. Russian Maria Morevna), on whose shoulders perched a raven and a squirrel."
I agree with you, PF represent a poet's attempt to "hold together what he was and is" but I would rather consider it in relation to Nabokov himself.
Like in "Lenore" or in Goethe's Romantic "arcady" themes, Nabokov was dealing with loss, permanent loss (grief for a lost childhood, child-loves, Russia and language) when he developped PF and a Zemblan dream.
Btw, Wolfgang Iser ( "Das Fiktive and das Imaginäre"), compares Virgil's eclogues and Sannazaro's, Sidney's and W.Alexander 's works on Arcadia, to illustrate how, for a poet that is grieving for a lost love, to search for Arcadia doesn't imply in an attempt to recover a lost paradise, but to find a place where it is possible to mourn for it.
Although the references to Arcady are more insistent in PF, I think most of VN's works are, among other things, a superb ellaboration of life's experiences of deep and irreparable loss: Ada, Lolita, Pnin,...
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/
On Sandy P. Klein's posting of Alexander Nazaryan's article (http://www.brooklynrail.org/) ["Lolita may be a coquette, but it is the boundless possibility of English that is the true object of Humbert Humbert's lust. An exemplary polymath, Nabokov found himself enthralled more by the near-infinite cornucopia afforded by words; the lives drawn by them sometimes seem secondary."]
Stan K-B notes that: ' In the interests of the Nabokovian linguistic precision ...a key notion in modern linguistics is that the "cornucopia afforded by words" is not "near-infinite" but truly infinite.' [...] What is arcane and enthralling is that, given an arbitrary mapping of integers to letters/words/sentences, the entire Nabokovian published corpus can be found embedded in sequences of the digits of (Greek) PI! "[...] On "Nazaryan's conjecture that HH's real lust was for words rather than for nymphets. Really? That would lead to a drastic re-reading of "Lolita" the novel! We would now seem to have HH inventing his carnal adventures; are Lo and his other victims merely figments of a frustrated but highly literate imagination? "
Joseph Aisenberg agrees "one hundred percent, but I think the critic was merely echoing that old idea that Nabokov's novel was a record of his love affair with the English languange [...] The critic took this idea somewhat literally [...] it seems like the idea of linguistic proxy, while not being exactly the heart of the book, represents a certain Quixotic something [...] I always wondered, is artistic perfection really much of a palliative for Humbert? Because if it is, then Humbert doesn't really believe, as he says, that he has only words to play with."
JM: Stan, "the boundless possibility of English" and a truly infinite "cornucupia afforded by words" is, indeed, quite a long stretch! I wonder, though, how this demarcation and mapping of "letters/words/sentences of the entire Nabokovian published corpus" to reach PI has been achieved ( I'm assuming the news is that it's an exclusive quality of VN's literal patterning)?
[ to JA} By "linguistic proxy" do you mean a fetish? Because VN also inspired Shade to write (lines 949-952):
And all the time, and all the time, my love,
You too are there, beneath the word, above
The syllable, to underscore and stress
The vital rhythm.
M.Roth:[...][...] the "aunts and orphans" thread and the Cedarn thread unite in Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh," [...]"As when you paint your portrait for a friend,/Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it/Long after he has ceased to love you, just/To hold together what he was and is. That's precisely what "PF" is: an attempt by John Shade to hold together what he was and is [...] "cedarn shade" was indeed a well-known cliche [...]Interesting too that most of these uses of cedarn carry with them Milton's original context--a paradise or hereafter, Arcadian or Elysian. "Ravenstone," of course, comes from the German Rabenstein, the place of the gallows, which is mentioned in Goethe's Faust[...] Baring-Gould writes: "A German name for [the gallows] is the raven's stone, not only, perhaps, because raven's come to it, but because the raven was the sacred bird of Odin." Odin is easily tied the Erl-King, and round and round we go [...].
JM: Round and round we go... and I forgot to add the raven mentioned by J.A.Haney in his comments to "The Slovo" ( The Song of Igor's Campaign): "Celtic deity Mortigan, the goddess of war and death (cf. Russian Maria Morevna), on whose shoulders perched a raven and a squirrel."
I agree with you, PF represent a poet's attempt to "hold together what he was and is" but I would rather consider it in relation to Nabokov himself.
Like in "Lenore" or in Goethe's Romantic "arcady" themes, Nabokov was dealing with loss, permanent loss (grief for a lost childhood, child-loves, Russia and language) when he developped PF and a Zemblan dream.
Btw, Wolfgang Iser ( "Das Fiktive and das Imaginäre"), compares Virgil's eclogues and Sannazaro's, Sidney's and W.Alexander 's works on Arcadia, to illustrate how, for a poet that is grieving for a lost love, to search for Arcadia doesn't imply in an attempt to recover a lost paradise, but to find a place where it is possible to mourn for it.
Although the references to Arcady are more insistent in PF, I think most of VN's works are, among other things, a superb ellaboration of life's experiences of deep and irreparable loss: Ada, Lolita, Pnin,...
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/