Subject
Re: "Cloud, Castle, Lake": RJ response to Zimmer (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITORIAL NOTE. Dieter Zimmer, editor of the Rowohlt edition of Nabokov's
works and German translator of much of VN's work (including "Cloud,
Castle, Lake"), continues the discussion of Roy Johnson's analysis of the
story. ---------------------------------------- I am glad Gennady
Barabtarlo said much better than I could have what may have been the
rationale behind leaving the "representative" of "Cloud, Castle, Lake"
vague. It emphasizes the character of the story as an artefact. The reader
has to counterbalance two hypotheses: (1) If the "representative" is a
traveling salesman, then the man who pretends to be the story's author
must be the boss of some company that employs traveling salesmen. As he
knows this is not true, he must conclude that he is being fooled and that
the alleged author is not the author but some fictitious character who is
but the representative of the true author. (2) The man may be a traveling
salesman or not--this is so unimportant that it can be left in the dark.
However, he certainly is a figment of the true author's mind. He has been
conjured up by the true author, he has suffered something that the true
author in some way has suffered, and the true author lets him go at the
end, just as he lets go Adam Krug at the end of "Bend Sinister". It is one
of Nabokov reflections on what constitutes the semblance of "reality" in a
piece of fiction.
Dieter E.Zimmer, Erikastrasse 81a, D-20251 Hamburg, Germany
Phone +49-40-488140, Fax +49-40-4606129
E-mail 100126.2576@compuserve com
works and German translator of much of VN's work (including "Cloud,
Castle, Lake"), continues the discussion of Roy Johnson's analysis of the
story. ---------------------------------------- I am glad Gennady
Barabtarlo said much better than I could have what may have been the
rationale behind leaving the "representative" of "Cloud, Castle, Lake"
vague. It emphasizes the character of the story as an artefact. The reader
has to counterbalance two hypotheses: (1) If the "representative" is a
traveling salesman, then the man who pretends to be the story's author
must be the boss of some company that employs traveling salesmen. As he
knows this is not true, he must conclude that he is being fooled and that
the alleged author is not the author but some fictitious character who is
but the representative of the true author. (2) The man may be a traveling
salesman or not--this is so unimportant that it can be left in the dark.
However, he certainly is a figment of the true author's mind. He has been
conjured up by the true author, he has suffered something that the true
author in some way has suffered, and the true author lets him go at the
end, just as he lets go Adam Krug at the end of "Bend Sinister". It is one
of Nabokov reflections on what constitutes the semblance of "reality" in a
piece of fiction.
Dieter E.Zimmer, Erikastrasse 81a, D-20251 Hamburg, Germany
Phone +49-40-488140, Fax +49-40-4606129
E-mail 100126.2576@compuserve com