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Re: SIGHTINGS: Victor's poem in PNIN and other observations
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PPS: "When I returned to Nabokov's original this time, there was one word that, again, struck a chord. Namely "skiagrapher." ... I decided to explore its synonimous "shadowgraph" (keeping in mind Pnin's "shadow behind the heart"). This second return to the theme was prompted by a surprising information on shadowgraphy which I noticed and forgot to comment. There is a reference to Jean-Paul Marat's studies about fire*
In one of Nabokov's shoe boxes with his cards (cf.SO), one of his interviewers found a note about Marat, who " collected butterflies." In Ada and in Lolita Marat's murder is mentioned indirectly (Cora Day).** We know that, like Nabokov, Marat relieved the discomfort caused by psoriasis by immersions in a bath tub.*** and I remember that in a past N-L posting there was information about J-P Marat's scientific pretensions, in relation to the French Academy of Sciences, to his theories about the ether and the phlogyston, which had been thwarted by Lavoisier. Somehow, all these invisibilities and shadowy tails, seem to converge in Nabokov's dispersed observations about shadows and color.
If we connect Victor Wind's little poem about Leonardo's "nun-pale ... Mona Lisa’s lips that you had made so red," and the closing lines of Lolita where Humbert Humbert mentions "the secret of durable pigments": "And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita." ( Lolita), there might be other hints about light and color deserving further examination.
Almost ten years ago I read a thriller by the Argentine writer Federico Andahazi, more widely known through his novel "The Anatomist." The plot of El secreto de los flamencos (The Secret of the Flemish,2002 ),set at the beginning of the Renaissance, departs from a bloody struggle between the Florentine painters (who guarded the secrets of perspective),and the Flemish (who kept to themselves their knowledge about durable pigments). Andahazi assimilates Borges's "Aleph" to what he describes as "Coloris in Status Purus" (its radiation blinds, after marvelllous revelations, those who look at its emanations from a golden chalice, where it is kept under seven keys and codes). The novelist makes reference to Aristotle's De Anima, ch VII, De Sensu et Sensibili and De Coloribus. In a way, although I couldn't find any specific information in relation to Leonardo's Mona Lisa, Aristotle's writings, as quoted by Andahazi, may lead us back to the issue of the invisble and the ether.# I have no idea if Nabokov was familiar with Jean-Paul Marat's theories about fire and ether, or if he had read Aristotle before he developped his ideas about a color wheel (actually, Prof. Lake's and his dreams about Rennassaince skiagraphy and velvety pigment grinders, in Pnin).
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* (wiki) "Shadowgraph is a type of flow visualisation...The plume of hot air rising from a fire, for example, can be seen by way of its shadow cast upon a nearby surface by the uniform sunlight [ ]... it was Robert Hooke who first scientifically demonstrated the sunlight shadowgraph and Jean-Paul Marat who first used it to study fire "
** - "He struggled to keep back his tears, while AAA blew his fat red nose, when shown the peasant-bare footprint of Tolstoy preserved in the clay of a motor court in Utah where he had written the tale of Murat, the Navajo chieftain, a French general's bastard, shot by Cora Day in his swimming pool. What a soprano Cora had been!" (Cf. B.Boyd's Annotation to Ada, Part One, ch.28); "This state of affairs lasted from 1935 to 1939. Her only asset was a muted nature which did help to produce an odd sense of comfort in our small squalid flat: two rooms, a hazy view in one window, a brick wall in the other, a tiny kitchen, a shoe-shaped bath tub, within which I felt like Marat but with no white-necked maiden to stab me." ( LOLITA, p.26 ch.8)
*** On the "Annotated Lolita,",p.; 344, Alfred Appel also indicated Pale Fire's lines 893-894: "Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed" Appel (in 1970) equally indicates the links of Tolstoy's Hadji Murad, and of Napoleon's brother in law General Murat, to Marat.
# Aristotle 418b2–419b27, book II, ch. 7: Sight, How color is Seen
"...What is without colour is the transparent and the invisible, or what is barely seen, being dark. The transparent is precisely of this nature when it is not in act, but in potency... Not all visible things, however, are visible in light...There are certain things which are, indeed, not seen in light, but which produce a sensation in darkness, such as those which burn or are luminous...Such are the fungi of certain trees, horn, fish-heads, scales, and eyes. But the colour proper to each of these is not perceived...But fire is seen in both darkness and light: necessarily, for the transparent is made light by it. § 436 Thomas Aquinas: In Aristotelis De Anima Commentarium: English
dhspriory.org/thomas/DeAnima.htm
'. . . The essence of color, in fact, consists of being the agent that sets the transparent into motion in actuality and the entelecia of the transparent is, in turn, light . . .' light is the entelecia of the transparent and it is what makes it possible, in the last instance (final cause). for things to be seen.
20th WCP: The Metaphor of Light and the Active Intellect as Final ...
www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Anci/AnciDono.htm
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In one of Nabokov's shoe boxes with his cards (cf.SO), one of his interviewers found a note about Marat, who " collected butterflies." In Ada and in Lolita Marat's murder is mentioned indirectly (Cora Day).** We know that, like Nabokov, Marat relieved the discomfort caused by psoriasis by immersions in a bath tub.*** and I remember that in a past N-L posting there was information about J-P Marat's scientific pretensions, in relation to the French Academy of Sciences, to his theories about the ether and the phlogyston, which had been thwarted by Lavoisier. Somehow, all these invisibilities and shadowy tails, seem to converge in Nabokov's dispersed observations about shadows and color.
If we connect Victor Wind's little poem about Leonardo's "nun-pale ... Mona Lisa’s lips that you had made so red," and the closing lines of Lolita where Humbert Humbert mentions "the secret of durable pigments": "And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita." ( Lolita), there might be other hints about light and color deserving further examination.
Almost ten years ago I read a thriller by the Argentine writer Federico Andahazi, more widely known through his novel "The Anatomist." The plot of El secreto de los flamencos (The Secret of the Flemish,2002 ),set at the beginning of the Renaissance, departs from a bloody struggle between the Florentine painters (who guarded the secrets of perspective),and the Flemish (who kept to themselves their knowledge about durable pigments). Andahazi assimilates Borges's "Aleph" to what he describes as "Coloris in Status Purus" (its radiation blinds, after marvelllous revelations, those who look at its emanations from a golden chalice, where it is kept under seven keys and codes). The novelist makes reference to Aristotle's De Anima, ch VII, De Sensu et Sensibili and De Coloribus. In a way, although I couldn't find any specific information in relation to Leonardo's Mona Lisa, Aristotle's writings, as quoted by Andahazi, may lead us back to the issue of the invisble and the ether.# I have no idea if Nabokov was familiar with Jean-Paul Marat's theories about fire and ether, or if he had read Aristotle before he developped his ideas about a color wheel (actually, Prof. Lake's and his dreams about Rennassaince skiagraphy and velvety pigment grinders, in Pnin).
......................................................................................................................
* (wiki) "Shadowgraph is a type of flow visualisation...The plume of hot air rising from a fire, for example, can be seen by way of its shadow cast upon a nearby surface by the uniform sunlight [ ]... it was Robert Hooke who first scientifically demonstrated the sunlight shadowgraph and Jean-Paul Marat who first used it to study fire "
** - "He struggled to keep back his tears, while AAA blew his fat red nose, when shown the peasant-bare footprint of Tolstoy preserved in the clay of a motor court in Utah where he had written the tale of Murat, the Navajo chieftain, a French general's bastard, shot by Cora Day in his swimming pool. What a soprano Cora had been!" (Cf. B.Boyd's Annotation to Ada, Part One, ch.28); "This state of affairs lasted from 1935 to 1939. Her only asset was a muted nature which did help to produce an odd sense of comfort in our small squalid flat: two rooms, a hazy view in one window, a brick wall in the other, a tiny kitchen, a shoe-shaped bath tub, within which I felt like Marat but with no white-necked maiden to stab me." ( LOLITA, p.26 ch.8)
*** On the "Annotated Lolita,",p.; 344, Alfred Appel also indicated Pale Fire's lines 893-894: "Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed" Appel (in 1970) equally indicates the links of Tolstoy's Hadji Murad, and of Napoleon's brother in law General Murat, to Marat.
# Aristotle 418b2–419b27, book II, ch. 7: Sight, How color is Seen
"...What is without colour is the transparent and the invisible, or what is barely seen, being dark. The transparent is precisely of this nature when it is not in act, but in potency... Not all visible things, however, are visible in light...There are certain things which are, indeed, not seen in light, but which produce a sensation in darkness, such as those which burn or are luminous...Such are the fungi of certain trees, horn, fish-heads, scales, and eyes. But the colour proper to each of these is not perceived...But fire is seen in both darkness and light: necessarily, for the transparent is made light by it. § 436 Thomas Aquinas: In Aristotelis De Anima Commentarium: English
dhspriory.org/thomas/DeAnima.htm
'. . . The essence of color, in fact, consists of being the agent that sets the transparent into motion in actuality and the entelecia of the transparent is, in turn, light . . .' light is the entelecia of the transparent and it is what makes it possible, in the last instance (final cause). for things to be seen.
20th WCP: The Metaphor of Light and the Active Intellect as Final ...
www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Anci/AnciDono.htm
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/