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Re: SIGNS: Some background re: earlier discussions on N-L
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Allow me to ruminate on this business of interpretation, briefly. There
seems little joy in insisting on literalism, at the expense of dense,
even crabbed, hermeneutics. We are all hermeneuts in one or another. One
reason Nabokov may have detested Freudian readings is that they were too
limiting—at least in the American academy of his time (and, of course,
Pnin's and Kinbote's). What was wanted was more, not less, hence signs
and symbols (precious echo of sighs and whispers). I thank Anthony
Stadlen for the link to Dreschler's excellent piece.
What is most pleasing for me is the suggestibility of Nabokov's story,
its cunning white noise. (I once spent 3 weeks trying to solve one of
his chess problems.) He makes me uncertain, he makes me attend to the
images in the puddle.
Paragraph 4-5: the twitching bird, rightly (I think) noted by Dreschler
as referring to the father and not the son. Or at least, to be precise,
to the father's hand. Why does the mother defer her tears?
Piers Smith
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seems little joy in insisting on literalism, at the expense of dense,
even crabbed, hermeneutics. We are all hermeneuts in one or another. One
reason Nabokov may have detested Freudian readings is that they were too
limiting—at least in the American academy of his time (and, of course,
Pnin's and Kinbote's). What was wanted was more, not less, hence signs
and symbols (precious echo of sighs and whispers). I thank Anthony
Stadlen for the link to Dreschler's excellent piece.
What is most pleasing for me is the suggestibility of Nabokov's story,
its cunning white noise. (I once spent 3 weeks trying to solve one of
his chess problems.) He makes me uncertain, he makes me attend to the
images in the puddle.
Paragraph 4-5: the twitching bird, rightly (I think) noted by Dreschler
as referring to the father and not the son. Or at least, to be precise,
to the father's hand. Why does the mother defer her tears?
Piers Smith
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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