Subject
[THOUGHTS}Swivel experiments in space or time
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I have often been intrigued by the swivel experiment performed in Look at the Harlequins: "On the contrary: now is the moment to shut your eyes tight and concentrate. I want you to imagine yourself turning on your heel so that `right' instantly becomes `left,' and you instantly see the `here' as a `there,' [ ]
"Done," said Iris. "About-face executed.[ ] Shall we start walking back?"
"You may, I can't! This is the point of the experiment. In actual, physical life I can turn as simply and swiftly as anyone. But mentally, with my eyes closed and my body immobile, I am unable to switch from one direction to the other. Some swivel cell in my brain does not work [ ] some kind of atrocious obstacle, which would drive me mad if I persevered, prevents me from imagining the twist which transforms one direction into another, directly opposite. I am crushed, I am carrying the whole world on my back in the process of trying to visualize my turning around and making myself see in terms of `right' what I saw in terms of
`left' and vice versa."
It might have been a reference to some spacial quirk or a metaphorical elaboration on "right" and "left," but somehow the quandary seems to reflect a difficulty with "time," not "space," associated to what in SM and in ADA appears under the term "chronophobia.," particularly by looking backwards in time to a period when the individual wasn't yet born, that is, a historically true or a non (totally) subjective past.
I came across a particular line in Barnes's "The Sense of an Ending" that brought Nabokov once again to my mind*. Not because of. Nabokov's exceptional memory, his record keepings, his way of applying tags. The impossibility of predicting one's future and then, from that standpoint, look backwards, experienced by JB's character, isn't a problem that a novelist,. who invents the entire plot, has to face. It is the author's, not the character's blockage. and irrespective of the writer's talent, there's no redemption for him, even when he sets things right in fiction (as did Ian McEwan's Brittany, in "Atonement") or extracts the gems from the stones in his memoirs. Humbert Humbert certainly knew this kind of despair. I cannot remember any other character who expresses this closed-door as clearly and as poingnantly as he does.
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* JB- "...when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. ...You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire....You may go further and consider your own approaching death...But all this is looking ahead. What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from the future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records - in words, sound, pictures - you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping."
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"Done," said Iris. "About-face executed.[ ] Shall we start walking back?"
"You may, I can't! This is the point of the experiment. In actual, physical life I can turn as simply and swiftly as anyone. But mentally, with my eyes closed and my body immobile, I am unable to switch from one direction to the other. Some swivel cell in my brain does not work [ ] some kind of atrocious obstacle, which would drive me mad if I persevered, prevents me from imagining the twist which transforms one direction into another, directly opposite. I am crushed, I am carrying the whole world on my back in the process of trying to visualize my turning around and making myself see in terms of `right' what I saw in terms of
`left' and vice versa."
It might have been a reference to some spacial quirk or a metaphorical elaboration on "right" and "left," but somehow the quandary seems to reflect a difficulty with "time," not "space," associated to what in SM and in ADA appears under the term "chronophobia.," particularly by looking backwards in time to a period when the individual wasn't yet born, that is, a historically true or a non (totally) subjective past.
I came across a particular line in Barnes's "The Sense of an Ending" that brought Nabokov once again to my mind*. Not because of. Nabokov's exceptional memory, his record keepings, his way of applying tags. The impossibility of predicting one's future and then, from that standpoint, look backwards, experienced by JB's character, isn't a problem that a novelist,. who invents the entire plot, has to face. It is the author's, not the character's blockage. and irrespective of the writer's talent, there's no redemption for him, even when he sets things right in fiction (as did Ian McEwan's Brittany, in "Atonement") or extracts the gems from the stones in his memoirs. Humbert Humbert certainly knew this kind of despair. I cannot remember any other character who expresses this closed-door as clearly and as poingnantly as he does.
................................................................................................................................................................................
* JB- "...when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. ...You imagine the loss of status, the loss of desire....You may go further and consider your own approaching death...But all this is looking ahead. What you fail to do is look ahead, and then imagine yourself looking back from the future point. Learning the new emotions that time brings. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records - in words, sound, pictures - you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/