Stan Kelly -Bootle: [The two
(Oxford) Anthologies of "Humour" and of "XXth Century Poets" I consulted carry
no Nabokov [...] Where could I find out about which anthologies in English
included VN among American, English-speaking, novelists or the Russian poets and
authors?] "...I can report that he flourishes in most of the FAMOUS
QUOTATIONS collections I've come across. One of the collections (Oxford Univ.
Press, I think) was devoted specifically to Lit & Lang aphorisms (or "pithy
sayings," he lisped!). Dozens of Nabokovian quips, which one has the feeling
were deliberately polished with such collections in mind.
JM: My access to specialized
libraries is limited, as you know, so your ellucidation helped to balance
my overall impression. For ex, The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
(1979), under V. Nabokov, quotes: "Lolita, light of my life,
fire of my loins." Not very inspiring!
Jerry Friedman [idem] You can
find some anthologies that included works VN's work by searching Google Books,
Amazon, etc., for terms
such as "Nabokov anthology". The list won't be
complete,though. I think you'll find that his prose has been anthologized more
often than his poetry in English [.. ]the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
does list three stories that have appeared in sf or sf-ish anthologies http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Vladimir_Nabokov .
JM: There are plays on names: Albina
Dunkelberg, Rosetta Stone, the mirthful Austrian Bodo
von Falternfels. I'm sure this trend has been
sufficiently explored, together with the two inverted pairs of
Starr/Stern ( Christopher and Louise Starr and Louis and Christina
Stern), and the mysterious Russian Narrator. I haven't yet found out how they make their way into PF,
but Pnin's (now darker) presence might indicate some
other subreptitious reappearances of set "types." Dates
might offer a clue.
In an off-list response to my query on PNIN and
time-lines I was directed, among other interesting leads, to "A Resolved Discord
(Pnin)" by Gennady
Barabtarlo at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/barab21.htm". It's curious that Pnin is described By GB as:
"attractive because in that trio of
consecutive foreign academics, three
pointedly foreign bodies in America, he is the only sane and compassionate man
flanked by self-absorbed and
perverted madmen.". He is a dear, our
Prof.Pnin,... but he is a nut-case all the same, no?
According to Barabtarlo, "Time management is
[...] marked by [...]for instance, the extreme compression of time as the novels
unwinds (the first three chapters span almost two-and-a-half years, the
next four less than a year), ingenious flashbacks and timeslides in every
chapter, and chronological duplexity created by a deliberate confusion of
calendar styles, nowhere to a stronger effect than in Chapter Three, where
"Pnin's Day" (his birthday, February 15, ignored by Pnin because of the
academic routine and calendar mix-up) may be in fact the day of Pushkin's
death (February 10), so that Pnin's premonition of death, mingled with
Pushkin's melancholy verse, colors and even shapes the chapter as its
dominant theme[...] Only very early and shallow critics thought Pnin
to be little else than a book of stories about a quaint character, loosely
strung together by progressive chronology." I tried to go on with my
calculations, now more confident about my clues. So...after Pnin leaves the
Clemenses, and lodges with Sheppard, the year must have been 1954. When our
absent-minded professor and Victor finaly meet (ch.4,part 2) the fourteen
year-old boy is much taller than Pnin and, perhaps, wiser. Although he
looks two or three years older than his age, N. thinks that Victor doesn't love
anybody. Unlike Pnin.
I wanted to locate a cartoon VN described ( a cat
dreaming about a fish, a shipwreck dreaming about a woman and all they got in
the lonely island is a mermaid: 1952?). I'm certain I once saw it in
print. There is an allusion to a Magritte painting which should not be
missed, in my view, for it is similar in spirit. Victor is fond of
Monet and he has an artist's eye for color and shape ( In ch.4 the Narrator
sounds superficially Updikeish). Why not include Magritte? I have in mind
"Le Chant d'Amour" (1948) its mermaid displaying human legs
and a fish-head: a silent woman?