Subject
VN & anagrams
From
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. Gavriel Shapiro's article "Setting his myriad faces in
his text: Nabokov's authorial presences revisited" (pp. 15-35) may be
found in NABOKOV AND HIS FICTION. NEW PERSPECTIVES, ed. Julian Connolly
( Cambridge UP, 1999).
---------------------------------------
From: <senderovich <ss51@cornell.edu>
Kiran Krishna. recently has enthusiastically recommended Gavriel
Shapiro's article on Nabokov's signatures. His expertise must be
balanced by the opinion of a different expert, Alexander Dolinin of
University of Wisconsin at Madison and
Pushkin House, St. Petersburg. In a recent article Dolinin wrote:
"A great interest in seemingly forgotten topic, anagrams in Nabokov, has
recently flared up. Gavriel Shapiro, for example, in his recent work,
discovered a whole series of anagrams in Nabokov's Invitation to a
Beheading. The
methodology of these discoveries is highly dubious. He takes a fragment
of a text, e.g., three-four lines and extracts from them, by
manipulating letters, name or name-cum-patronimic of Nabokov (Vladimir
Vladimirovich Nabokov, or
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov-Sirin). This method is statistically
absurd, for in any fragment of a text taken at random from any piece of
Russian prose, one can, given a desire, to discover, by the same token,
almost any name-cum-partonomic or last name. I checked the fragments
suggested by Shapiro in his writings and easily discovered in them
Vladimir Ilich Ulianov-Lenin, Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi and Alexader
Alexeevich Dolinin." (A. Dolinin, "Of some anagrams in the work of
Vladimir Nabokov," -- Culture of Russian Diaspora: Vladimir Nabokov -
100, Tallinn, 2000, p. 99. Transl. from the Russian by me. S.S.).
*********************
Savely Senderovich
Professor of Russian Literature & Medieval Studies
Dept. of Russian Lit.
226 Morrill Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Tel: 607/255-8350. Fax: 607/255-2044
his text: Nabokov's authorial presences revisited" (pp. 15-35) may be
found in NABOKOV AND HIS FICTION. NEW PERSPECTIVES, ed. Julian Connolly
( Cambridge UP, 1999).
---------------------------------------
From: <senderovich <ss51@cornell.edu>
Kiran Krishna. recently has enthusiastically recommended Gavriel
Shapiro's article on Nabokov's signatures. His expertise must be
balanced by the opinion of a different expert, Alexander Dolinin of
University of Wisconsin at Madison and
Pushkin House, St. Petersburg. In a recent article Dolinin wrote:
"A great interest in seemingly forgotten topic, anagrams in Nabokov, has
recently flared up. Gavriel Shapiro, for example, in his recent work,
discovered a whole series of anagrams in Nabokov's Invitation to a
Beheading. The
methodology of these discoveries is highly dubious. He takes a fragment
of a text, e.g., three-four lines and extracts from them, by
manipulating letters, name or name-cum-patronimic of Nabokov (Vladimir
Vladimirovich Nabokov, or
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov-Sirin). This method is statistically
absurd, for in any fragment of a text taken at random from any piece of
Russian prose, one can, given a desire, to discover, by the same token,
almost any name-cum-partonomic or last name. I checked the fragments
suggested by Shapiro in his writings and easily discovered in them
Vladimir Ilich Ulianov-Lenin, Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi and Alexader
Alexeevich Dolinin." (A. Dolinin, "Of some anagrams in the work of
Vladimir Nabokov," -- Culture of Russian Diaspora: Vladimir Nabokov -
100, Tallinn, 2000, p. 99. Transl. from the Russian by me. S.S.).
*********************
Savely Senderovich
Professor of Russian Literature & Medieval Studies
Dept. of Russian Lit.
226 Morrill Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Tel: 607/255-8350. Fax: 607/255-2044