"Another thing that might have been of some
help is the fact that I am subject to
the embarrassing qualms of superstition: a
number, a dream, a coincidence can affect me obsessively-- though not in the
sense of absurd fears but as fabulous (and on the
whole rather bracing) scientific enigmas incapable of being
stated, let alone solved." (.Nabokov's interview.The New York
Times,1971, to Alden Whitman.)
The redundant quotes from today's batch of postings has been
organized to illustrate coincident themes, intertwined references and
extraordinary natural occurrences:
!. Carolyn Kunin [
to JM's reference to "The Strange Case of Pushkin and
Nabokov" by Edmund Wilson] "Hmm - only just now noticing the
interesting title EW chose for his critique of VN's
EO."
Brian Boyd:"...Nabokov's instruction to
his students, in the second paragraph of his Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
lecture: 'First of all, if you have the Pocket Books edition
I have, you will veil the monstrous, abominable, criminal, foul, vile,
youth-depraving jacket--or better say straitjacket. ...; it seems to me that to
call a movie house a theatre is the same as to call an undertaker a
mortician'." (Lectures on Literature 179)
2.
JM:"The English writer Graham Greene cited it [Lolita] among
the best books of 1955. Edmund Wilson, Evelyn Waugh, and E.M. Forster did not
share his view"
Carolyn Kunin [on Shirley Temple and Graham Greene's
review] "The film was Wee Willie Winkie and GG's review, this time in Night
and Day, was considered so shocking at the time that it could not be read aloud
in open court... '... already two years ago she [Miss Temple] was a fancy
little piece ... watch the way she measures a man with agile studio eyes, with
dimpled depravity. Adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of
childhood ... middle-aged men and clergy-men respond to her dubious coquetry, to
the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body ....'A lawsuit
ensues and lawyers for the studio and Little Miss L's parents proclaim the
offending magazine 'a beastly publication'.[ ]
Mrs B quotes GG referring to her as 'that little
bitch Shirley Temple.' He had no idea who he was dealing with. I don't think HH
ever figured it out either."
However, below we find the most striking
curiosity
3. Dr. Kurt Johnson, "co-author of
Nabokov's Blues, retired lepidopterist from the American Museum of Natural
History. [ ] In Nabokov-lore, the numeral-like underwing pattern of
this species [ Red Admiral] and the reported occurrence of such an outbreak
in Russia supposedly had some fateful parallel with the dates of the Russian
revolution...Well, in the last two days we have had an outbreak of Red Admirals
in NYC the likes of which I have never seen (not even close) and I've been here
45 years[ ]One would have to account for why there are so many of them in
this year's spring brood if nothing last year seemed unusual. / Well, I thought
this note might be useful re: the Nabokov lore about that report of incidents of
Red Admiral breakouts in Russia at the time of the revolution. I was
surprised today; never seen anything like it."