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Fw: [NABOKV-L] The Green Door
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Green Door chronology:
JM: ...a person mentioned to me Hugh G. Well's short-story "The Door in the Wall," and, like the green door it describes. I was revisited by my first experience of reading it as a young girl...It seems that Nabokov, who used to like Wells in his early childhood, might have equally been haunted by a green door.His way of expressing this opening into "arcadia," as a parallel world co-existing with ours, changed along the years, but... the longing remained.... Nevertheless, although this "green door" suggests the familiar indication of a "hereafter" or "other worlds," I surmise it indicates still another dimension of ecstatic experience...
Stan K-B: ... Green Door uniquely points to the classic 1972 porn film, Behind the Green Door! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068260/
Carolyn Kunin: I believe the source of the green door is the back door to Dr Jekyll's house. May be others, of course.
Fran Assa: Are you saying that VN actually made reference to a green door in any of these stories or books? ... A Green Baize door had a particular significance for Edmund Wilson: in his childhood, his neurotic father used to hide behind one--the green baize was to keep the sound out, like Proust's cork lined room.
David Powelstock: Jekyll’s back door is not green, at least not in my edition!
Dieds: The title of the porno movie refers to the 1956 pop hit by Jim Lowe...I doubt if this will be very helpful to Nabokovians.
JM: H.G. Well's "door in the wall" was indeed a green one, but the color he chose for it has probably no particular meaning.
When I referred to "a green door," in relation to Nabokov I was merely using it to signal its "opening into arcadia, hereafter, other worlds," to draw a parallel bt VN's and HGW's.fictions and a kind of nostalgia for a lost paradise, a lost landscape and lost childhood which both shared.It was a starting point for something else [paradise as relating to a future space, versus paradise as a kind of "epicurism of duration" (Van Veen, in ADA)].
Let's say that, quite innocently, I encouraged a sequence of "quid pro quods"...
Fran, great to learn that "a green baize door" was significant for E.Wilson, meaning his father's place of isolation from the world. I never checked for green baize doors in Nabokov's texts but. perhaps, they would be as insignificant as H.G.Wells choice for this color (the door was set in a white wall and there were carmine red flowers close by, I think).
Carolyn, interesting supposition of a "split-world" through RLStevenson (whom Nabokov continued to admire, against Wilson's critical comments, way into adulthood, unlike his appreciation of HGWells)
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JM: ...a person mentioned to me Hugh G. Well's short-story "The Door in the Wall," and, like the green door it describes. I was revisited by my first experience of reading it as a young girl...It seems that Nabokov, who used to like Wells in his early childhood, might have equally been haunted by a green door.His way of expressing this opening into "arcadia," as a parallel world co-existing with ours, changed along the years, but... the longing remained.... Nevertheless, although this "green door" suggests the familiar indication of a "hereafter" or "other worlds," I surmise it indicates still another dimension of ecstatic experience...
Stan K-B: ... Green Door uniquely points to the classic 1972 porn film, Behind the Green Door! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068260/
Carolyn Kunin: I believe the source of the green door is the back door to Dr Jekyll's house. May be others, of course.
Fran Assa: Are you saying that VN actually made reference to a green door in any of these stories or books? ... A Green Baize door had a particular significance for Edmund Wilson: in his childhood, his neurotic father used to hide behind one--the green baize was to keep the sound out, like Proust's cork lined room.
David Powelstock: Jekyll’s back door is not green, at least not in my edition!
Dieds: The title of the porno movie refers to the 1956 pop hit by Jim Lowe...I doubt if this will be very helpful to Nabokovians.
JM: H.G. Well's "door in the wall" was indeed a green one, but the color he chose for it has probably no particular meaning.
When I referred to "a green door," in relation to Nabokov I was merely using it to signal its "opening into arcadia, hereafter, other worlds," to draw a parallel bt VN's and HGW's.fictions and a kind of nostalgia for a lost paradise, a lost landscape and lost childhood which both shared.It was a starting point for something else [paradise as relating to a future space, versus paradise as a kind of "epicurism of duration" (Van Veen, in ADA)].
Let's say that, quite innocently, I encouraged a sequence of "quid pro quods"...
Fran, great to learn that "a green baize door" was significant for E.Wilson, meaning his father's place of isolation from the world. I never checked for green baize doors in Nabokov's texts but. perhaps, they would be as insignificant as H.G.Wells choice for this color (the door was set in a white wall and there were carmine red flowers close by, I think).
Carolyn, interesting supposition of a "split-world" through RLStevenson (whom Nabokov continued to admire, against Wilson's critical comments, way into adulthood, unlike his appreciation of HGWells)
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/