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Re: Personification, animism, cartoon-imagery?
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Jansy Mello:One of the things that always strike me when I read VN's novels lies in his frequent attribution of human qualities and intentions to inanimate objects [ ] I never examined them in detail, but my impression is that this particular form of "personification" is absent from his later, American, novels ( I'm thinking of "Pale Fire" and "Ada")
Mary H. Efremov: ":no, he didn't abandon it...it is in ADA, LOLITA...just read..."
Jansy Mello: You are most probably right. In ADA there's the licentious skirt: "He [Van] remembered with a pang of pleasure the indulgent skirt Ada had been wearing then" and, quite certainly, a thousand other examples will be found. In LOLITA , right at the start, we now get close to another kind of visual-auditory interchange, this time between the body and words: "Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." and to a related image, but totally distinct in body and sound, from "Spring in Fialta": "Occasionally, in the middle of a conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the steps of a chance sentence, without turning her head.".
Perhaps I'll be able to find the time to isolate various instances from VN's novels to be more precise. My initial assumption was hasty indeed!
It will be fun to distinguish each kind of animation personalization, poetic analogy, aso, as it happens in another sentence from the same short-story "because of our sudden draft a wave of muslin embroidered with white dahlias got sucked in, with a shudder and knock, between the responsive halves of the French window, and only when the door had been locked did they let go that curtain with something like a blissful sigh"
Take KQK - & this is only from the first chapter: "The clock face will slowly turn away, full of despair, contempt, boredom, as one by one the iron pillars will start walking past,,," ; "the old chair extended their plush-covered arms with comical cordiality"; "He turned a page, looked around, and the ourside world avidly, like a playful dog waiting for that moment, darted up to him with a bright bound. But pushing Tom away affectionately, Dreyer again immersed himself in his anthology of verse."; "the huge cavity of the station drew in the train, which at once grew sluggish, and then, with a jolt, redundant." ( every sample demands a different rethorical nook).
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Mary H. Efremov: ":no, he didn't abandon it...it is in ADA, LOLITA...just read..."
Jansy Mello: You are most probably right. In ADA there's the licentious skirt: "He [Van] remembered with a pang of pleasure the indulgent skirt Ada had been wearing then" and, quite certainly, a thousand other examples will be found. In LOLITA , right at the start, we now get close to another kind of visual-auditory interchange, this time between the body and words: "Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." and to a related image, but totally distinct in body and sound, from "Spring in Fialta": "Occasionally, in the middle of a conversation her name would be mentioned, and she would run down the steps of a chance sentence, without turning her head.".
Perhaps I'll be able to find the time to isolate various instances from VN's novels to be more precise. My initial assumption was hasty indeed!
It will be fun to distinguish each kind of animation personalization, poetic analogy, aso, as it happens in another sentence from the same short-story "because of our sudden draft a wave of muslin embroidered with white dahlias got sucked in, with a shudder and knock, between the responsive halves of the French window, and only when the door had been locked did they let go that curtain with something like a blissful sigh"
Take KQK - & this is only from the first chapter: "The clock face will slowly turn away, full of despair, contempt, boredom, as one by one the iron pillars will start walking past,,," ; "the old chair extended their plush-covered arms with comical cordiality"; "He turned a page, looked around, and the ourside world avidly, like a playful dog waiting for that moment, darted up to him with a bright bound. But pushing Tom away affectionately, Dreyer again immersed himself in his anthology of verse."; "the huge cavity of the station drew in the train, which at once grew sluggish, and then, with a jolt, redundant." ( every sample demands a different rethorical nook).
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/