Advance PW Review: Nabokov's 'The Original of
Laura', Publishers Weekly, 7/30/2009 The Original of Laura: (Dying Is
Fun), Vladimir Nabokov. Knopf, $35 (288p) ISBN 978-0-307-27189-1 [ Depending
on the reader’s eye, the final card in the book is either haunting or the great
writer’s final sly wink: it’s a list of synonyms for “efface”—expunge, erase,
delete, rub out, wipe out and, finally, obliterate. ]
JM: The words selected by VN for his trump-card
"finis" are a collection that is chiefly applicable to
the written word, not to other objects and bodies.
VN's frequent insertion, in a novel, of instructions to his
publishers (Lolita,Pale Fire,Ada) gained for me a different twist and will
force me to re-evaluate Vaniada's "dying into the book."
I've been courting Nabokov's infinite regress and recursiveness and
yesterday while I was ordering VN-List's discussion about "Pale Fire" ( the
definitive "final solution to a puzzle" versus its multiple
inroads of interpretation). I perceived the sonorous proximity of two words:
infinite and definite. I checked onlime-etymology entries for more data.
Perhaps the results will interest our perfect List-participants,
particularly those who apprehend in Nabokov the verbal operation
with "signifiers," instead of with definite "meanings".
The sequence speaks for itself.
define: c.1384, from O.Fr. definir "to end,
terminate, determine," from L. definire "to limit, determine, explain,"
from de- "completely" + finire "to bound, limit," from finis "boundary,
end" (see finish).
definition: recorded from 1645 as a term in
logic, from define; the "meaning of a word" sense is older, attested from
1551.
definite (1553) means "defined, clear,
precise, unmistakable;"
definitive (c.1386) means
"having the character of finality."