Subject
Kamera Obskura/ Laughter in the Dark (fwd)
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From: didier.machu@univ-pau.fr
The time discrepancy Yuri Dashevsky mentions is not found in the English
version. In Laughter in the Dark Margot sighs: 'Was it really only two
years since that day?' (137). And indeed both Rex's voyage to the States
and Albinus's party occur in winter. But Nabokov seems to have tried to
achieve the same result with different means: a bit later Albinus is so
taken in by Axel Rex that the shortness of their acquaintance seems to him
'a mere accident in no way connected with the inner spiritual time during
which their friendship [has] developed and matured' (181). When I first
read this I thought Albinus's wonder was to be linked with the distinction
Nabokov makes in his Lectures on Russian Literature between "the Anna
physical time on one side and the Lyovin spiritual time on the other"
(196). The link is evidently quite ironical here. Another possible
connection would be with the 'double time' availing in Othello-and Othello
is very much the matter in this particular novel.
The time discrepancy Yuri Dashevsky mentions is not found in the English
version. In Laughter in the Dark Margot sighs: 'Was it really only two
years since that day?' (137). And indeed both Rex's voyage to the States
and Albinus's party occur in winter. But Nabokov seems to have tried to
achieve the same result with different means: a bit later Albinus is so
taken in by Axel Rex that the shortness of their acquaintance seems to him
'a mere accident in no way connected with the inner spiritual time during
which their friendship [has] developed and matured' (181). When I first
read this I thought Albinus's wonder was to be linked with the distinction
Nabokov makes in his Lectures on Russian Literature between "the Anna
physical time on one side and the Lyovin spiritual time on the other"
(196). The link is evidently quite ironical here. Another possible
connection would be with the 'double time' availing in Othello-and Othello
is very much the matter in this particular novel.