----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2004 12:48 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Fw: One Letter
What called my attention here were the first letters
of "a dream America" ( adA...)
Thank you, Jansy, for your interesting
observation.
The acronymous title Ada is reversed, so to
say, as if it were seen in a mirror of a
newspaper article (the actually mirrored letters would yield a
slightly different image though).
I suggest no special parallel, but also want to make a
minor observation. In the beginning of Ada's Part Two, Van catches a
mirrored glimpse of his father Demon who sits reading a newspaper that says in
reversed characters: 'Crimea Capitulates.' (I wonder if anyone can read the
title of a newspaper article in a mirror? I tried several times, but invariably
failed.) A moment later he sees the VPL messenger James Jones glancing
through 'Crime Copulates Bessaremenia.'
It is as if the first newspaper (that Demon reads) were
the serious and sedate Golos ("The Voice") and the second (glanced
through by J.J.), the mocking and pun-addicted Logos. But, on
Antiterra, it seems to be one and the same newspaper, and a Russian-language one
at that.
May be the British newspaper Daily Mirror has anything
to do with all this? And, if I'm not mistaken, the boom of the London Times
began during the Crimean War of 1853-1856?
best,
Alexey
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2004 6:03 AM
Subject: Fw: Fw: One Letter
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2004 6:50 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: One Letter
Hello, Alexey
While explaining about the missing
"L" in word, ( or the surplus "L" in world ! ), you told us that "word" is slovo in Russian, and "Slovo" is the name of
the magazine where both the electricity article and the Paul Alexis story
appeared.
Perhaps it is worth remembering
what Nabokov wrote ( Strong Opinions, Vintage International, page 112 )
abour the word world....
"The
accepted notion of a "modern world" continuously flowing around us belongs to
the same type of abstraction as say, the "quaternary period" of
paleontology. What I feel to be the real modern world is the world the
artist creates, his own mirage, which becomes a new mir (
"world" in Russian ) by the very act of his shedding, as it were, the age he
lives in. My mirage is produced in my private desert, an arid but ardent
place, with the sign No Caravans Allowed on the trunk of a lone palm..."
( Feb.17,1968)
Just as a
curious "coincidence", I want to note that on page 116 ( September
3,1968) when asked about " the novel on which you are working" Nabokov
replied:
" My new novel (
now 800 pages long) is a family chronicle, mostly set in a dream
America".
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2004 9:47
PM
Subject: Fw: One Letter
EDNOTE: Corr4ected
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2004 5:05 PM
Subject: Fw: One Letter
I thought of the possibility that the
disappearance of l from "world" might have something to do with the L
disaster. But it is unclear how this l-dropping in "world" making out of it
"word" could cause the notion of 'Terra' and the ban on
electricity on Antiterra. True, "word" is slovo in Russian,
and "Slovo" is the name of the magazine where both the electricity article
and the Paul Alexis story ("La fin de Lucie Pelegrin") that I think is used
by Lucette's spirit for sending Van a dream from Terra appeared. But,
still, the connection, if it exists at all, seems too vague to
me.
Alexey
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2004 7:29
PM
Subject: Fw: One Letter
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2004 2:56 AM
Subject: One Letter
Reading the sparkling
discussion on Terra and Logos (in fact, A. Sklyarenko brilliant
argumentation) I want to make a tiny footnote:
Nabokov points that difference
between cosmic and comic is one letter S. I'd add, that
difference between Word and World is also in one
letter.