C. Kunin: Dear Jansy,I think I may have unintentionally confused[ ] Hoping you are not as befuddled as before?
Jansy Mello: Dear Carolyn, I got your point then – but thanks to you I’m now mercifully unbefuddled (at least
until your next message).
What I didn’t actually understand today was a message sent by Dick Johnstonib, because it reached me as a blank.
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Btw: The word "violl" got my attention, since it didn't seem to be related to the musical instrument in John Milton's quote: “Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
The same happens difficulty is
present in "Ada" with the underlying reference to "violation" in "triple viol" and "triplets":
‘I meant the real Tapper,’ cried Lucette (who was making a complete mess of her visit), ‘not my poor, betrayed, poisoned, innocent teacher of music, whom not even Ada, unless she fibs, could cure of his impotence.’
‘Driblets,’ said Van.
‘Not necessarily his,’ said Lucette. ‘His wife’s lover played the triple viol. Look, I’ll borrow a book’ (scanning on the nearest bookshelf The
Gitanilla, Clichy Clichés, Mertvago Forever, The Ugly New Englander) ‘and curl up, komondi, in the next room for a few minutes, while you — Oh, I adore The Slat Sign.’
I don't have access to special dictionaries to search for another acoustic option. However, in Shakespeare (Hamlet, first Act, 5) we find Claudius and a “violl” carrying poison that’ll be poured into… his ears (the viol must have sounded real bad)
“Briefe let me be: Sleeping within mine Orchard,
My custome alwayes in the afternoone;
65 Vpon my secure hower thy Vncle stole
With iuyce of
cursed Hebenon in a Violl,
And in the Porches of mine eares did poure
The leaperous Distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with bloud of Man,
70 That swift as Quick-siluer, it courses through
The naturall Gates and Allies of the body;
C. Kunin: “…quote from Milton “Books are not absolutely dead
things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
[snip] The reader learns in the opening sentence that a man named Nicky Slopen
has come back from death [and so on]. Well, doesn't this happen in at least one novel (Soglyadati, or The Eye) by VN, as it does in Dostoevsky (Son smeshnovogo Cheloveko)? Any others?
Jansy Mello: A very apt quote as a tribute to Nabokov’s birthday celebrations: sometimes the written word, an artist’s wordworld, may be as “immortal” and as contagious as a virus…( I just realized that I was repeating Laurie Anderson’s
song,* but, on second thoughts, no… I wasn’t).
However, this “essential” survival is unlike the one we encounter in VN’s “The Eye.” VN’s own conscious awareness and sensibility are no longer available, either to him or to us.
Any others? How about the “voice” saluting Hugh Person in “Transparent Things”?
The one below is more apt for this occasion:
It was a large room.
Full of people.
All kinds.
And they had all arrived at the same buidling at more or less the same time.
And they were all free.
And they were all asking themselves the same question:
What is behind that curtain?
You were born.
And so you're free.
So happy birthday.
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.