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Re: Personification, animism, cartoon-imagery?
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Barrie Karp:I think you have proven to be delightfully precise in this thread, thank you, Jansy. I look forward to more fun of your analyses of rhetorical nuances in VN (you wrote: (every sample demands a different rethorical nook).)
Jansy Mello: Thank you for you encouraging response. I'm sure there will be collaborators to provide corrections or enlightenment while I stumble on.
VN's agility is thrilling and many finds come to me as a belated surprise (like the one in which the outside world leaps towards Dreyer like a dog, and he pats it affectionately - the outside world has been turned into Tom, the dog that readers shall only meet in a future chapter !
Personalization takes place when bodily actions and emotions are transposed onto inanimate objects by literary devices, or (perhaps?) in the description of how one living body-part influences or reflects another passive part of the body ( the tongue essaying three steps down the palate during speech in "Lolita" or "The Enchanter's" "fidgety thoughts" and "tiptoeing words"(E p.24 and 43).
However, when we reach descriptions in which there is a passage from a character's dancing and locomotive acts into thoughts and metaphors,* as it happens with Van's maniambulations in ADA, the mind-body-word focus changes, as it also occurs when the character's fantasy system acts over the objective functions of his autonomous brain and its sexual response for, in this case, it's the illusion of solipsism that which seems to be paramount in Nabokov (there's a kind of "mental practice" that is expected by some of the characters to have no effect on the external world, nor does it deserve a special verbal treatment) ** But what about the terrified "little Gulliver"(who has, as one author expanded into a book, "a mind of his own"), a "toy with the familiar but never tedious trick" (E p.72) although this time his "owner's" imagination has been "left hanging on barbed wire." (E55)? And... what's in a ."suspicious car" ( E79)?
A subjectively experienced body, acting over - or being acted by, the same body now transformed into a thing, is something altogether different from the instances in which a character applies to "the toilet door such a slam that the crystalware in the dining room react with fright ...amid the panic-stricken chairs" (E 64), the "sponge shedding its tears...while decorum and morality, aware neither of the goings-on nor of the address, would remain from visiting" (E.73), or "the blank face of his wristwatch" (E75).and "the forest that kept approaching in undulating hops from hillside to hillside until it slied down an incline and tripped over the road, where it was counted and stored away" (E 79)
See, Barry, I get easily lost...(but recovering special VN sentences and sharing them with others is still quite delectable ...)
...........................................................................
* S.E Sweeney (2012) elaborates over how "Nabokov's novels often dwell on this contrast between mentally practicing and physically executing an action."Cf. "Backwards, Upwards, Contrariwise, Downside Up:- Thinking in Different Directions in Nabokov"
** "Lolita" (with a ballooning skirt!) and excerpts from the davenport scene:
"My heart beat like a drum as she sat down, cool skirt ballooning, subsiding, on the sofa next to me, and played with her glossy fruit...and her bare knees rubbed and knocked impatiently against each other..Then, with perfect simplicity, the impudent child extended her legs across my lap...By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane. Sitting there, on the sofa, I managed to attune, by a series of stealthy movements, my masked lust to her guileless limbs. It was no easy matter to divert the little maiden's attention while I performed the obscure adjustments necessary for the success of the trick..and all the while keeping a maniac's inner eye on my distant golden goal, I cautiously increased the magic friction that was doing away, in an illusional, if not factual, sense, with the physically irremovable, but psychologically very friable texture of the material divide (pajamas and robe) between the weight of two sunburnt legs, resting athwart my lap, and the hidden tumor of an unspeakable passion...every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty - between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock...I felt I could slow down in order to prolong the glow. Lolita had been safely solipsized. The implied sun pulsated in the supplied poplars; we were fantastically and divinely alone; I watched her, rosy, gold-dusted, beyond the veil of my controlled delight, unaware of it, alien to it, and the sun was on her lips, and her lips were apparently still forming the words of the Carmen-barmen ditty that no longer reached my consciousness...There she stood and blinked, cheeks aflame, hair awry, her eyes passing over me as lightly as they did over the furniture... Blessed be the Lord, she had noticed nothing!"
When Humbert Humbert's fantasies provoke a sexual reaction that brings into play the erotic link between a mental practice and a private physical "action" (actually, reaction), it remains very doubtful that his victim will perceive nothing unusual in her circumstances ("she has noticed nothing" is his conclusion,l inspite of his description of Lolita's innocent physical response).HH'ss silent mental exertions reach out onto the world to become actions even before he decides to write his memoirs using metaphors, personalizations and objectifications - which now pass to another realm, that is, to literature In "The Enchanter" the protagonist initially denies any intention to touch his little russet, save in imagination. Like HH, he approaches the shadows of her body as she moves, to caress her in thought, only. However, he senses that something monstrous is actually taking place and that he is corrupting her (at least, during his early confessional mood). Besides, this psychic force is powerful enough to drive an indignant lady away from the train cabin she is sharing with him while he is day-dreaming about his nymphet, although there's nothing palpable to justify the lady's discomfiture and shame. It seems that even on a strictly mental level (or should we include rolling eyes and panting?) a character's literary fantasy life has an effect on the world ( that's obvious.
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Jansy Mello: Thank you for you encouraging response. I'm sure there will be collaborators to provide corrections or enlightenment while I stumble on.
VN's agility is thrilling and many finds come to me as a belated surprise (like the one in which the outside world leaps towards Dreyer like a dog, and he pats it affectionately - the outside world has been turned into Tom, the dog that readers shall only meet in a future chapter !
Personalization takes place when bodily actions and emotions are transposed onto inanimate objects by literary devices, or (perhaps?) in the description of how one living body-part influences or reflects another passive part of the body ( the tongue essaying three steps down the palate during speech in "Lolita" or "The Enchanter's" "fidgety thoughts" and "tiptoeing words"(E p.24 and 43).
However, when we reach descriptions in which there is a passage from a character's dancing and locomotive acts into thoughts and metaphors,* as it happens with Van's maniambulations in ADA, the mind-body-word focus changes, as it also occurs when the character's fantasy system acts over the objective functions of his autonomous brain and its sexual response for, in this case, it's the illusion of solipsism that which seems to be paramount in Nabokov (there's a kind of "mental practice" that is expected by some of the characters to have no effect on the external world, nor does it deserve a special verbal treatment) ** But what about the terrified "little Gulliver"(who has, as one author expanded into a book, "a mind of his own"), a "toy with the familiar but never tedious trick" (E p.72) although this time his "owner's" imagination has been "left hanging on barbed wire." (E55)? And... what's in a ."suspicious car" ( E79)?
A subjectively experienced body, acting over - or being acted by, the same body now transformed into a thing, is something altogether different from the instances in which a character applies to "the toilet door such a slam that the crystalware in the dining room react with fright ...amid the panic-stricken chairs" (E 64), the "sponge shedding its tears...while decorum and morality, aware neither of the goings-on nor of the address, would remain from visiting" (E.73), or "the blank face of his wristwatch" (E75).and "the forest that kept approaching in undulating hops from hillside to hillside until it slied down an incline and tripped over the road, where it was counted and stored away" (E 79)
See, Barry, I get easily lost...(but recovering special VN sentences and sharing them with others is still quite delectable ...)
...........................................................................
* S.E Sweeney (2012) elaborates over how "Nabokov's novels often dwell on this contrast between mentally practicing and physically executing an action."Cf. "Backwards, Upwards, Contrariwise, Downside Up:- Thinking in Different Directions in Nabokov"
** "Lolita" (with a ballooning skirt!) and excerpts from the davenport scene:
"My heart beat like a drum as she sat down, cool skirt ballooning, subsiding, on the sofa next to me, and played with her glossy fruit...and her bare knees rubbed and knocked impatiently against each other..Then, with perfect simplicity, the impudent child extended her legs across my lap...By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane. Sitting there, on the sofa, I managed to attune, by a series of stealthy movements, my masked lust to her guileless limbs. It was no easy matter to divert the little maiden's attention while I performed the obscure adjustments necessary for the success of the trick..and all the while keeping a maniac's inner eye on my distant golden goal, I cautiously increased the magic friction that was doing away, in an illusional, if not factual, sense, with the physically irremovable, but psychologically very friable texture of the material divide (pajamas and robe) between the weight of two sunburnt legs, resting athwart my lap, and the hidden tumor of an unspeakable passion...every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty - between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock...I felt I could slow down in order to prolong the glow. Lolita had been safely solipsized. The implied sun pulsated in the supplied poplars; we were fantastically and divinely alone; I watched her, rosy, gold-dusted, beyond the veil of my controlled delight, unaware of it, alien to it, and the sun was on her lips, and her lips were apparently still forming the words of the Carmen-barmen ditty that no longer reached my consciousness...There she stood and blinked, cheeks aflame, hair awry, her eyes passing over me as lightly as they did over the furniture... Blessed be the Lord, she had noticed nothing!"
When Humbert Humbert's fantasies provoke a sexual reaction that brings into play the erotic link between a mental practice and a private physical "action" (actually, reaction), it remains very doubtful that his victim will perceive nothing unusual in her circumstances ("she has noticed nothing" is his conclusion,l inspite of his description of Lolita's innocent physical response).HH'ss silent mental exertions reach out onto the world to become actions even before he decides to write his memoirs using metaphors, personalizations and objectifications - which now pass to another realm, that is, to literature In "The Enchanter" the protagonist initially denies any intention to touch his little russet, save in imagination. Like HH, he approaches the shadows of her body as she moves, to caress her in thought, only. However, he senses that something monstrous is actually taking place and that he is corrupting her (at least, during his early confessional mood). Besides, this psychic force is powerful enough to drive an indignant lady away from the train cabin she is sharing with him while he is day-dreaming about his nymphet, although there's nothing palpable to justify the lady's discomfiture and shame. It seems that even on a strictly mental level (or should we include rolling eyes and panting?) a character's literary fantasy life has an effect on the world ( that's obvious.
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/