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Re: Dolinin's article on "Signs & Symbols"
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Dear List,
I enjoyed Marina Marina Grishakova´s rich commentary about the contrasts
that are created by VN´s parallel plots and which may appear as
"implicit/explicit" or as "siuzhet" and "fabula" oppositions. I valued her
suggestion in particular ( if I understood her argument correctly ) that the
establishment of such oppositions makes it harder to follow what, in VN, are
preferently "changes of places" : that inside ( hidden) or outside (
revealed ) plots are not to be taken as clear cut contrasts but, perhaps,
behaving as objects placed on a Moebius strip.
I´m not only refering to the merging of figure/background as in Topology,
but thinking also of Bach´s point/counterpoint techniques and Escher´s
drawings ( Cf. D.Hofstadter´s Pulitzer winning " Goedel,Escher,Bach: an
eternal golden braid")
Perhaps "the Viennese delegation" should remain quiet, but I wish to bring
up Freud´s work on the "manifest and latent meaning of dreams" and his
theory that any dreams´s umbelical point is not "analysable" & thus all
dream interpretation tends to infinity.
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 2:42 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Dolinin's article on "Signs & Symbols"
> Dear Don and list,
>
> I've read A. Dolinin's article on "Signs and Symbols" on Zembla and have
> a few remarks concerning this interesting reading of the story as
> another version of the "otherworld message" (among similar messages,
> abounding in Nabokov's fiction).
>
> A. Dolinin's reading is based on the Russian Formalists's distinction
> between the "siuzhet" and "fabula", which means that the hidden, "main"
> story (i.e. "fabula") is the "true" story, or, otherwise, "the sum total
> of interconnected textual events (or motifs) in chronological and causal
> order". First, the very relevance of the distinction has been put
> under question many times by now. Could it be that Nabokov's story just
> exemplifies the dichotomy? Second, Russian Formalists' views on siuzhet
> and fabula are more complicated and less clear than Tomahsevsky's
> pedagogical definition.
>
> I used V. Shklovsky's article "Roman tajn" (The Mystery Novel) in my
> own text on Nabokov's visual poetics (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, N
> 54, 2002, pp. ; the early version www.ruthenia.ru/document/404860.html
> <http://www.ruthenia.ru/document/404860.html>) to explain the relations
> between the "implicit" and the "explicit" story (the stories which often
> change places) in Nabokov's mature fiction. According to Shklovsky,
> multiple divergencies and convergencies in parallel PLOT LINES produce
> a "mystery" in the mystery novel (e.g. in Radcliffe or in Dickens). The
> denouement reveals the whole network of these connections.
>
> There is a similar construction in many Nabokov's texts, yet the final
> "explanation" or "fabula" is missing, whereas the classical mystery or
> detective novel discloses at least some part of the "fabula". Actually a
> text, which would reveal "the sum total of interconnected textual
> events (or motifs) in chronological and causal order", does not exist in
> the world literature.
>
> Of course, the "hidden story" has a special status thanks to its
> implicit nature. Bitsilli and E. Naiman call it "allegory", G.
> Barabtarlo calls it "an invisible over-plot", P. Tammi and L. Toker
> speak of the author's control over the text (or, following in D. Cohn's
> footsteps, the "struggle over narrative control"), I wrote about the
> metanarrative status of the hidden plot line. Yet I don't think the
> critics who "deny the existence of the main story of question its
> relevance" are absolutely wrong: an uncertainty and oscillation between
> several plot lines make a charm of Nabokov's fiction. By the way, the
> very narrative form of the "circle" Nabokov mentions in his letter to K.
> A. White points at the potential "infinity" of reading.
>
> What is wrong, I think, is an intention to produce a "monopolistic
> interpretation". Thus, according to Dolinin, "the idea of seeing a
> model for the reader's response in the boy's pan-semiotic approach to
> reality [...] should be rejected from the very start" since "referential
> mania" is limited to natural phenomena (clouds, trees, sun flecks,
> pools, air, mountains) and random artifacts (glass surfaces, coats in
> store windows) but "excludes real people from the conspiracy". This kind
> of "pan-semiotic" interpretation has a long tradition. I don't see why
> should it be rejected. I've touched upon a possibility of reading "Signs
> and Symbols" in the light of the "Umwelt" theory in my article on the
> observer (Sign Systems Studies 30.2). The "Umwelt" (as well as Leibniz'
> /monad/) is a closed individual world inaccessible to other similar
> worlds (i.e. beings): the surrounding world enters the Umwelt only in
> the semiotic guise,i.e. the difference between "natural" and the
> "unnatural" is erased.
> In conclusion: I think reading is a "jouissance" and knowledge grows
> through accumulation.
>
> Best wishes,
> Marina Grishakova,
> Tartu University
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Donald B. Johnson wrote:
>
> >EDNOTE. "Signs & Symbols" has been the topic of more articles than any
other VN
> >story. Now Alexander Dolinin, one of Nabokov's most acute scholars,
offers a
> >new treatment. Highly recommended.
> >--------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >----- Forwarded message from chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu -----
> > Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 09:46:31 -0800
> > From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> >
> >
> >Quoting Jeff Edmunds <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>:
> >
> >)
> >
> >
> >>------------------
> >> From Jeff Edmunds <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>:
> >>
> >>Dolinin, Alexander. "The Signs and Symbols in Nabokov's 'Signs and
Symbols.'"
> >>
> >>See the news page for the link.
> >>
> >>http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
> >>
> >>Thank you.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >----- End forwarded message -----
> >
> >
> >
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----
I enjoyed Marina Marina Grishakova´s rich commentary about the contrasts
that are created by VN´s parallel plots and which may appear as
"implicit/explicit" or as "siuzhet" and "fabula" oppositions. I valued her
suggestion in particular ( if I understood her argument correctly ) that the
establishment of such oppositions makes it harder to follow what, in VN, are
preferently "changes of places" : that inside ( hidden) or outside (
revealed ) plots are not to be taken as clear cut contrasts but, perhaps,
behaving as objects placed on a Moebius strip.
I´m not only refering to the merging of figure/background as in Topology,
but thinking also of Bach´s point/counterpoint techniques and Escher´s
drawings ( Cf. D.Hofstadter´s Pulitzer winning " Goedel,Escher,Bach: an
eternal golden braid")
Perhaps "the Viennese delegation" should remain quiet, but I wish to bring
up Freud´s work on the "manifest and latent meaning of dreams" and his
theory that any dreams´s umbelical point is not "analysable" & thus all
dream interpretation tends to infinity.
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 2:42 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Dolinin's article on "Signs & Symbols"
> Dear Don and list,
>
> I've read A. Dolinin's article on "Signs and Symbols" on Zembla and have
> a few remarks concerning this interesting reading of the story as
> another version of the "otherworld message" (among similar messages,
> abounding in Nabokov's fiction).
>
> A. Dolinin's reading is based on the Russian Formalists's distinction
> between the "siuzhet" and "fabula", which means that the hidden, "main"
> story (i.e. "fabula") is the "true" story, or, otherwise, "the sum total
> of interconnected textual events (or motifs) in chronological and causal
> order". First, the very relevance of the distinction has been put
> under question many times by now. Could it be that Nabokov's story just
> exemplifies the dichotomy? Second, Russian Formalists' views on siuzhet
> and fabula are more complicated and less clear than Tomahsevsky's
> pedagogical definition.
>
> I used V. Shklovsky's article "Roman tajn" (The Mystery Novel) in my
> own text on Nabokov's visual poetics (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, N
> 54, 2002, pp. ; the early version www.ruthenia.ru/document/404860.html
> <http://www.ruthenia.ru/document/404860.html>) to explain the relations
> between the "implicit" and the "explicit" story (the stories which often
> change places) in Nabokov's mature fiction. According to Shklovsky,
> multiple divergencies and convergencies in parallel PLOT LINES produce
> a "mystery" in the mystery novel (e.g. in Radcliffe or in Dickens). The
> denouement reveals the whole network of these connections.
>
> There is a similar construction in many Nabokov's texts, yet the final
> "explanation" or "fabula" is missing, whereas the classical mystery or
> detective novel discloses at least some part of the "fabula". Actually a
> text, which would reveal "the sum total of interconnected textual
> events (or motifs) in chronological and causal order", does not exist in
> the world literature.
>
> Of course, the "hidden story" has a special status thanks to its
> implicit nature. Bitsilli and E. Naiman call it "allegory", G.
> Barabtarlo calls it "an invisible over-plot", P. Tammi and L. Toker
> speak of the author's control over the text (or, following in D. Cohn's
> footsteps, the "struggle over narrative control"), I wrote about the
> metanarrative status of the hidden plot line. Yet I don't think the
> critics who "deny the existence of the main story of question its
> relevance" are absolutely wrong: an uncertainty and oscillation between
> several plot lines make a charm of Nabokov's fiction. By the way, the
> very narrative form of the "circle" Nabokov mentions in his letter to K.
> A. White points at the potential "infinity" of reading.
>
> What is wrong, I think, is an intention to produce a "monopolistic
> interpretation". Thus, according to Dolinin, "the idea of seeing a
> model for the reader's response in the boy's pan-semiotic approach to
> reality [...] should be rejected from the very start" since "referential
> mania" is limited to natural phenomena (clouds, trees, sun flecks,
> pools, air, mountains) and random artifacts (glass surfaces, coats in
> store windows) but "excludes real people from the conspiracy". This kind
> of "pan-semiotic" interpretation has a long tradition. I don't see why
> should it be rejected. I've touched upon a possibility of reading "Signs
> and Symbols" in the light of the "Umwelt" theory in my article on the
> observer (Sign Systems Studies 30.2). The "Umwelt" (as well as Leibniz'
> /monad/) is a closed individual world inaccessible to other similar
> worlds (i.e. beings): the surrounding world enters the Umwelt only in
> the semiotic guise,i.e. the difference between "natural" and the
> "unnatural" is erased.
> In conclusion: I think reading is a "jouissance" and knowledge grows
> through accumulation.
>
> Best wishes,
> Marina Grishakova,
> Tartu University
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Donald B. Johnson wrote:
>
> >EDNOTE. "Signs & Symbols" has been the topic of more articles than any
other VN
> >story. Now Alexander Dolinin, one of Nabokov's most acute scholars,
offers a
> >new treatment. Highly recommended.
> >--------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >----- Forwarded message from chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu -----
> > Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 09:46:31 -0800
> > From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> >
> >
> >Quoting Jeff Edmunds <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>:
> >
> >)
> >
> >
> >>------------------
> >> From Jeff Edmunds <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>:
> >>
> >>Dolinin, Alexander. "The Signs and Symbols in Nabokov's 'Signs and
Symbols.'"
> >>
> >>See the news page for the link.
> >>
> >>http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
> >>
> >>Thank you.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >----- End forwarded message -----
> >
> >
> >
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----