Susan Elizabeth Sweeney (N-L, 2006) made a reference to Jenefer
Coates's work about anamorphism. Here is an excerpt from
the online news about Coates's visit to America. The promised
revelation about her special reading of "Signs and Symbols,"
(during a N-L discussion of the short-story) must have been anamorphically
encrypted somewhere ...I never got it!
"Scholar probes science and art in Nabokov's works" -
News - 22 Sep 2006, The Wesleyan Argus by Mollie Laffin-Rose, News
Editor
"On Monday, the Russian Department contributed to the University's 175th
Anniversary program Voices of Liberal Learning, as Jenefer Coates of Middlesex
University in London presented her research on history, science, and art within
Vladimir Nabokov's literature... A professor of comparative literature and
translation studies, Coates' project “Nabokov's Medieval Perspectives” began
with a fascination with the 20th century Russian author's unique writing style
and subject matter.
Coates found her first clue to understanding Nabokov when
she discovered that the young writer received his undergraduate degree from
Cambridge University in Medieval French. This body of literature is
characterized by verbal rhythm, imagination, and the “fool” personality, she
said. Medieval French works are also notorious for faulty crediting, Coates
added. “Once a work was published, it could be copied and distorted,” Coates
said.Medieval French writings were altered by uncensored scribes and were often
printed without the author's name....“Nabokov addressed his readers as
dreamers,” Coates said. “We ourselves are being forced to be constantly on our
guard. He wanted to explore the human psyche.” Coates bridged Nabokov's
psychological interests with the science and art that she said typify his
literature. In addition to writing, Nabokov studied optics, biology, and
physics. Optics in particular plays a significant role in his works, according
to Coates.
“It governs the way we see the world,” Coates said. “Art and
science were very intertwined then. It empowered [Nabokov] to write the way he
writes.” Coates examined how Nabokov incorporated the artistic concept of visual
perspective into his narration.“We take the size of things to be a code for
distance,” Coates said.
Nabokov, however, reversed this principle in his
writing, especially through the use of anamorphosis, she said. An anamorphic
image is distorted in such a way that a viewer can make sense of it only from a
certain angle or position. In the same way that in anamorphic artwork a figure's
eyes are positioned at the edge of the image rather than being in the center, in
Nabokov's writing, Coates explained, large points are not important, but small
details are significant. Key pieces of the story are detached form the main
framework. “Decoding is possible only by someone who knows the secret,” Coates
said. Nabokov made an art not only out of the content of his writing, but also
out of its structure, she said. When writing, he recorded fractions of a story
on separate cards. These fractions became dispersed pieces within the single,
final piece, and posed a “game of cards” for readers. “You as a reader have to
gather them back up again,” Coates said."