Jansy Mello: Early this morning I checked the
exchanges between the allegued "twin souls" Nabokov and Hitchcock, in "Selected
Letters 1940-1977" edited by Dmitri Nabokov and M, Bruccoli. The way
Sérgio.Augusto reccounted their encounters passes on the impression that both N
and H were on closer terms than the written evidence warrants. He
states that their biographers disregard or ignore these letters because
they dismiss their importance. On page 401 (VN,AY) B.Boyd mentions these letters
only in passing, stressing the plot of VN's initial project
concerning an "interplanetary love story and at the same time an
oppressive sense of superpower secrecy" anticipating VN's future "Letters
to Terra" and the idea for "ADA."*
Brian Boyd, in AY (p.466), describes Nabokov's arrival for Kubrick's
"Lolita" gala opening night, and quotes him: "as eager and
innocent as the fans who peered into my car hoping to glimpse James Mason but
finding only the placid profile of a stand-in for Hitchcock." Actually,
this is another point that Sérgio Augusto elaborated upon, by pairing:
Hitchcock's cameo appearances in his movies and Nabokov's authorial
interventions in his novels.**
............................................................................................................................
* - A.Sklyarenko (and other List Members) brought up to the List a Soviet
movie about interplanetary love but I cannot recollect the names he cited
to google- search for them.
** - In his last posting to the List, related to Kinbote's putative
knowledge about birds, butterflies and the "Phanessa/Phanes"
theories, Brian Boyd referred to one of these in Pale Fire: that
fits into his theory (I mean, the Shadean versus Kinbotean
controversy): "I think at this level of hide-and-seek, Nabokov winks
straight at the reader through the Kinbote mask." It's quite
amusing to think that, perhaps, this was indeed something the "souls"
of Hitch and Nabok shared: a taste for propitiating "Egophanies"
(if I may express myself like that...)
.