A. Stadlen answers to JM: "Nabokov's words are in his
letter to Katherine White (of the New Yorker) on 17 March 1951. He is
disappointed (to put it mildly) that she hasn't appreciated "The Vane
Sisters".[ ] He writes a sentence which it occurs to me might
have been, and still might be, made more of by people discussing Nabokov: "For
me, 'style' is matter." (Beckett's remark on Joyce's Work in Progress is
endlessly quoted: "Form is content, content is form." I expect Nabokov was
alluding to this.). Nabokov explains his purpose in "The Vane Sisters"
[ ] "Most of the stories I am contemplating (and some I have written
in the past -- you actually published one with such an 'inside' -- the one about
the old Jewish couple and their sick boy) will be composed on these lines,
according to this system wherein a second (main) story is woven into, or placed
behind, the superficial semitransparent one. I am really very disappointed that
you, such a subtle and loving reader, should not have seen the inner scheme of
my story." [ ]So Nabokov is not here "announc[ing] that there's
always an important story lurking behind a manifest plot", as Jansy puts it, but
he is saying that in some of his past and most of his future stories there was
or will be such a "second (main) story". It's worth comparing this with Freud's
notion, in the "Elisabeth von R." case in Studies on Hysteria (1895), of the
real "Leidensgeschichte" (passion narrative, existential history of suffering)
discovered by his "archaeological method" as a deeper layer beneath the "banal
Leidensgeschichte" that the "patient" and everyone else already knows. Only by
his encouraging her to tell the "deep", "buried" "Leidensgeschichte" can the
"patient" be "cured". It is what "Anna O." called the "talking cure" [ ]."
Jansy Mello: The "old Jewish couple and
their sick boy" might have been the reference to "Signs and Symbols" that I only
vaguely remembered. Your observations were most helpful.
Concerning "style is matter" (a philosophical issue I fouond explored,
under the issues of "form and content," by the mathematician Douglas
Hofstadter, in one of his popular columns, probably those written for the
Scientific American), you might be interested in Leland de la
Durantaye's
Style is
Matter www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~deladur/book.htm -.
You brought up one of Freud's hysterics very precisely,
noting the use of the word "Geschichte" (narrative, story).
It's always worth considering how Nabokov dealt with speech and the
unconscious. He might have tried to control the subconscious/unconscious
discourse by his reference to an "underside of the weave," but that's exactly
what I haven't yet managed to figure out. Kinbote's tapestry (or
whatever) represents a closed system (dominated by his narcisistic,
individualistic prison), unlike the Freudian unconscious. I may have
been kept confused by Nabokov's use of "weaving" only in a
metaphorical sense (was it?), unlike Freud's image in "The Interpretation
of Dreams," extracted from a poem by JWGoethe, that relates to the textile
process, the fixed warp and the moving weft (will try to locate it later
on) .
Laurence Hochard added Marina Grishakova's text
about "the models of space time and vision in Nabokov's fiction," a very
apt and useful reminder of MG's extensive work on this subject.
Wonderful! Thanks.