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Re: VN reading and discussion
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Re: [NABOKV-L] VN reading and discussionStan K-Bootle: "Fascinating. Thankyou AD and BB. The saddest VN portrait ... So appropriate. Any Quantum Mechanics out there who may share my frissons on hearing Nabokov's reference to hazy waves. We have VN now and VN then, years apart, yet state-entangled until the poem's self-observation achieves decoherence? Known in Copenhagen as the 'collapse of the wave function.' We know of VN's occasional snipes at Einstein. Perhaps this poem indicates Nabokov siding with Bohr/Heisenberg?[ responding to "A reading by VN, in English and Russian, of "We so firmly believed," and a blog on the poem: http://www.openculture.com/2012/06/vladimir_nabokov_recites_his_early_poem_of_transition_to_my_youth.html http://www.openculture.com/2012/06/vladimir_nabokov_recites_his_early_poem_of_transition_to_my_youth.html>
The question of the dating of the poem was hard enough to answer to warrant a little article in the next Nabokovian.Brian Boyd"]
Jansy Mello: Touching comments by Stan, highlighting aspects that, perhaps, only mathematicians or "Quantum Mechanics out there," might fully realize, concerning VN's poem "We so firmly believed."
From my simple perspective any interpretation needs to be quite limited.
Starting from what seem to be lines written at a critical phase in VN's life (he must have been fortyish, still in Europe, perhaps entangled in a distressing love-affair), he describes a ruptute in his belief about "the linkage of life."*
At first, I thought these words indicated a transitory crisis, related to Life itself, which we could witness as something later solved by the poet John Shade, after his near-death experience [ "...And blood-black nothingness began to spin/ A system of cells interlinked within/ Cells interlinked within cells interlinked /Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct/ Against the dark, a tall white fountain played." ----- .."Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense./ Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find/Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind/ Of correlated pattern in the game.../"]
Then, I realized (this seems to be both STan K-B and BB's opinion) that the fissure relates to Vladimir Nabokov's sense of personal history and, probably, his feeling of "identity..":As an adult emigré he finds himself so disconnected from his childhood environment, and also from his juvenile experiences, that his personal construction about the person he has become now, doesn't correspond to his feeling of a past "I," in the poetic register that his acute sensibility allows him to formulate and share. Sad and poignant and...universal?
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* "We so firmly believed in the linkage of life,/but now I've looked back-and it is astonishing/to what a degree you, my youth,/seem in tints not mine, in traits not real./If one probes it, it's rather like a wave's haze/between me and you.../.../.../ You've long ceased to be I. You're an outline.../...yet how long/we believed/that there was no break in the way.../.../" (quoted from B.Boyds article and links)
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The question of the dating of the poem was hard enough to answer to warrant a little article in the next Nabokovian.Brian Boyd"]
Jansy Mello: Touching comments by Stan, highlighting aspects that, perhaps, only mathematicians or "Quantum Mechanics out there," might fully realize, concerning VN's poem "We so firmly believed."
From my simple perspective any interpretation needs to be quite limited.
Starting from what seem to be lines written at a critical phase in VN's life (he must have been fortyish, still in Europe, perhaps entangled in a distressing love-affair), he describes a ruptute in his belief about "the linkage of life."*
At first, I thought these words indicated a transitory crisis, related to Life itself, which we could witness as something later solved by the poet John Shade, after his near-death experience [ "...And blood-black nothingness began to spin/ A system of cells interlinked within/ Cells interlinked within cells interlinked /Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct/ Against the dark, a tall white fountain played." ----- .."Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense./ Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find/Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind/ Of correlated pattern in the game.../"]
Then, I realized (this seems to be both STan K-B and BB's opinion) that the fissure relates to Vladimir Nabokov's sense of personal history and, probably, his feeling of "identity..":As an adult emigré he finds himself so disconnected from his childhood environment, and also from his juvenile experiences, that his personal construction about the person he has become now, doesn't correspond to his feeling of a past "I," in the poetic register that his acute sensibility allows him to formulate and share. Sad and poignant and...universal?
...........................................................................................................................................................................................
* "We so firmly believed in the linkage of life,/but now I've looked back-and it is astonishing/to what a degree you, my youth,/seem in tints not mine, in traits not real./If one probes it, it's rather like a wave's haze/between me and you.../.../.../ You've long ceased to be I. You're an outline.../...yet how long/we believed/that there was no break in the way.../.../" (quoted from B.Boyds article and links)
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/