A.Stadlen
[to B. Stone's "I'm not sure
that "56 days ago' has a "'ormal' meaning...']
"If in the year 1950 a newspaper had an archive column
"25 years ago", "50 years ago", "100 years ago", these columns would contain
excerpts from 1925, 1900, 1850 respectively. There would not be any dispute
about what was the normal meaning of these terms...We will not make sense of
this if we cling to what I insist is an abnormal, indeed simply wrong,
interpretation of what "56 days ago" means, just because Nabokov scholars have
copied each other in speaking of "3 days discrepancy". They are simply
compounding the original mistake, and making it more difficult to decide whether
the original mistake was Nabokov's or Humbert's...Even if you want to insist
(perversely, as I see it) that "56 days ago" might mean what I, and
newspapers, and (I think) most English speakers would call "55 days ago", you
must surely acknowledge that what we mean by "56 days ago" is one
possible meaning. But this at least possible (and in my view unique and
correct) meaning has been neglected by Nabokov scholars, as far as I know, until
now."
JM: A.Stadlen's point
about the danger of scholars "compounding an original mistake" is quite
pertinent but, if we admit that Nabokov aimed at creating
particular ambiguities and "undecidability."in "Lolita," then
the discrepant three or four days must have been intended by
him.
There are various statements
by Nabokov that refer to dates and to counting which may corroborate
his relation with birthdays, degrees and intervals in time.. For
example, in Strong Opinions, perhaps in Speak,Memory, too
(concerning his turn-of-the century and his brother Sergey's
birth dates) and in Pale Fire (concerning the
age-difference between Kinbote and Shade after Kinbote desists to correct
an imprecision he spotted in one of his commentaries. The chronology
that establishes when John Shade was shot hasn't been satisfactorily
determined yet, either). In the opposite
direction, we find that a lot of space is
given by VN for the importance of correct dating, as in
his lecture on Tolstoy's Anna Karenin.
Everyone can remember the debates about
when did the new "Century" and the "Millenium" begin (not in Jan.
1st 2000, but in January 1st 2001...) and how the clocks
of computers had to be
re-programmed at the occasion of the passage from the 20th to the
21st. century. Something of the kind may have affected Humbert Humbert, for
his mind sometimes runs like a computer. Besides, he was not a native
American. Wasn't he a Swiss?*
.
.................................................................................................................................................................
* It
would take me hours to locate al the copious examples in
Nabokov about counting by natural numbers (& not by
whole numbers)