From VN's short-story ( originally written in English) Scenes
from the Life of a Double Monster (casually introduced in
the list by A.S and M.R and superficially explored by me) I selected two
sentences.
The first one was quoted already (the aitch would see
an eye, the Roman two a one, the scissors a knife).
The second: " When, for example, one of us was about to
stoop to possess himself of a pretty daisy and the other, at exactly the same
moment, was on the point of stretching up to pluck a ripe fig,individual success
depended upon whose movement happened to conform to the current ictus of our
common and continuous rhythm, whereupon, with a very brief, chorealike shiver,
the interrupted gesture of one twin would be swallowed and dissolved in the
enriched ripple of the other's completed action. I say "enriched" because the
ghost of the unpicked flower somehow seemed to be also there, pulsating between
the fingers that closed upon the fruit"
I consider both as exemplary of a particular consequence of Nabokov's
ingenious manipulation of words. To me it seems that he managed to find
- and often apply - the exact location from which a word
(not actually an entire sentence, nor a logical paradox) could
potentialize its contradictory indications of meaning.
A scissor that is used to cut and separate can also be cut and
separated.
Two "I" conjoined by a xiphoid, membrane or an umbellical chord to
constitute an "H", "forget" this linkage and see their separated
partner as another individual "I".
One motion would simultaneously pluck a fig and carry in it the ghost of an
unpicked flower that continues to live on in the
fig*
(btw I'm deliberately avoiding freudian theories on castration
aso).
My proposition: Very often when Nabokov asserts something
his affirmation carries along the ghost of its opposite. The 1958 short-story
reflects and describes, in part, this monstruous "doubleness" in words,
ideas, life.
...................................................................................................................................................
* - This "ghost", I've seen it outlined in Updike"s novel "Marry Me" (
the body of the rival present during coition by a certain concavity in the
lover's reminiscing motions).
It is a constant feature of controversial engraver, sculptor and painter
Hans Bellmer ( the feminine imprint of a nate in a sofa matching the next
sitter's, a masculine seal of another actual nate,etc).
Hans Bellmer was fond of nymphets ( his cousin Ursula), palindromes (
one he collected by Victor Hugo is worth quoting here: “l’ame dês uns jamais n’use de
mal”. ). He only recognized one of his twin daughters, aptly
called Dorianna to honor Wilde's Dorian Gray.
( Cf.
R. C. Morgan. “Hans Bellmer: the Infestation
of Éros”. A Hans Bellmer Miscellany
Malmberg and T. Baum, 1993, pp. 7-9 ; Yves Bonnefoy,
“La Corruption des
Lois”, Obliques, 1979, p. 39.Hans
Bellmer; Petite Anatomie de l‘Inconscient
Physique ou l’Anatomie de l’Image, 1957, p. 38, Jean-François Rabain, “Le
Sexe et Double” (1979). Obliques, Ed.
Borderie, Nyons, p. 21.)