Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0006246, Wed, 5 Dec 2001 13:03:50 -0800

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[Fwd: [Fwd: Prophecy in Pale Fire?]]
Date
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EDITOR's NOTE. I suspect T.AA. Colquhoun misses the point of the
original Andersonnote and S. Aksenov's comment--ir maybe I do. I took
both to be spoofs on some VN scholarship that relies (overly much) on
numerology and such like. On the other hand, VN did engage in
oneirological number mongering.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Fwd: Prophecy in Pale Fire?]
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 13:21:11 -0500
From: TA Colquhoun <TAColquhoun@compuserve.com>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>



Message text written by Vladimir Nabokov Forum

>I just received a copy of Priscilla Meyer's "Find What the Sailor Has
Hidden" and I noticed on p. 185 that she connects King Alfin crashing
his plane (called a "bird of doom" in the notes to line 71) into a
building (reminiscent of certain recent events) with the waxwing flying
into the window. She mentions that the Swiss call the waxwing
Sterbevogel ("death-bird") and consider it an omen of war, pestilence
and famine, which reappears every 7 years (though it was actually 8
years since the last attack on the World Trade Center). She also
mentions that Shade died 16 days after his 61st birthday. 16+61=77, the
number of one of the planes involved in the terrorist attack of
September 11th. Don't read too much into this, it's just a wild
coincidence that I thought you guys might find interesting.

Sincerely,
Steve Anderson<

-----------------------------------------------------
What utter piffle. It's on a par with all those silly urban legends about
11 Sept - like the face of the devil in the flames of the WTC and all the
Nostradamus rubbish. Pleeeease. Let's keep Nab's beautiful world out of the
fray. The only 'birds of doom' are the cretins that give credence to this
sort of thing.

Alexandra Colquhoun


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