JM: Second thoughts on my answer to
SK-B: "As I
suspected, although the Bard concludes that "life is a
stage", articulate art always signifies something.As I had not
suspected, jokes depend on an expected (silent and failed)
meaning: it
seems there's not a chance of any true cosmic laughter after
all!" followed by HH: "Unless it can be proven to
me unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I
see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local
palliative of articulate art."
Stan's explanation and examples
( and JF's admission) let it clear that post-modern thought departs from a
premiss, "God is Dead", to reject transcendence ( there is nothing but
"text"). Signification results from the infinite mirrored self-references that
point one to the other.
And yet, it is impossible to
understand the poignancy of HH's contrition and self-condemnation if we don't
reason that he is addressing words towards an external point of
reference (that is clearly not the reader), to weigh his project
of "articulate art".
Of course, in Nabokov, thinks
are never clear-cut ( only sentences!).
HH rejects faith and transcendence
while he, at the same time, recognizes the importance of what
has happened between Lolita and himself. Therefore he invokes an
"external logic" ( a "magic word") in order to prove something.
He seems not to believe that life is a joke and that, as Macbeth
concluded, nothing remains of human joy and pain but
dust.
Second Item: There was a commentary on the ancient manuscrit
about Igor's Tale, related to slovo , quoted in the
List, where it is stated that "Vladimir's reign divides the pagan
and Christian eras, the 'two ends of time' recognized by the poet and given such
thematic importance" (A.J.V.Haney). It reminded me of Nabokov's own
"chronophobia" and his insistence on the theme of the two darknesses at the
extremities of life.
I would have dismissed this "two ends
of time" reference had I not learned, through a vague remark, that
Nabokov himself had translated this ancient manuscript. I asked for
more information about this element, but got no answer.
In B.Boyd's Russian Years, page 174,
there is only a reference to the Song of Igor: "In his formal studies at
Cambridge Nabokov's greatest gain was probably the deep love he acquired for the
medieval masterpieces he may not otherwise have encountered Aucassin and
Nicolette and the work of Chrétien de Troyes* - that could share a shelf in his
mind with the medieval Russian Song of Igor's Campaign, dear to him from
schooldays."
......................
If VN enjoyed Chrétien de Troyes, then
VN must have had some acquaintance with Adam d'Arras, le
Bossu