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Re: THOUGHTS: Death & Afterlife in "Visit to the Museum"
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Math Roth: As I was rereading “A Visit to the Museum”... I suddenly realized that the narrator dies quite early in the story. .. “A Matter of Chance” has a similar crossing image at the end, as Luzhin, having decided to kill himself, is about to be struck by a train..."as if taking a stroll” (59).
JM: Matt outlines a dreary vision of afterlife, as if VN's dead characters could only move onto another nightmarishly distorted literary dimension, instead of being able to flee the story and the (now cruel) eyes of the reader. Nabokov's verbal "pearly gates" are deceitful!
I was wondering about the two suicidal Luzhins's names, Alexey and Alexander. Should these names be etymologically related, we find that Alex is "a short form of Alexander, from Latin Alexander, from Ancient Greek ????a?d??? (Aléxandros) 'he who wards off men', i.e. protector, possibly of Hittite origin; and from Alexius, from the same Ancient Greek root, alexios "helping, defending". These two origins of Alex are indistinguishable in most languages" - and in their case, this seems to be rather ironical.
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JM: Matt outlines a dreary vision of afterlife, as if VN's dead characters could only move onto another nightmarishly distorted literary dimension, instead of being able to flee the story and the (now cruel) eyes of the reader. Nabokov's verbal "pearly gates" are deceitful!
I was wondering about the two suicidal Luzhins's names, Alexey and Alexander. Should these names be etymologically related, we find that Alex is "a short form of Alexander, from Latin Alexander, from Ancient Greek ????a?d??? (Aléxandros) 'he who wards off men', i.e. protector, possibly of Hittite origin; and from Alexius, from the same Ancient Greek root, alexios "helping, defending". These two origins of Alex are indistinguishable in most languages" - and in their case, this seems to be rather ironical.
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/