Subject
[NABOKOV-LIST] Discussion about Signs and Symbols: untrustworthy
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Jerry Friedman : Why "deranged in his mind" instead of just "deranged"? Gallicism? Repetition so the reader can't miss it?...Why "was taboo"? The sentence is fine without it. Does it suggest a comparison with the networks of relationships in animist religions?
Piers Smith: Those ten different fruit jellies don't seem trifling or innocent, not even--on reflection--to outsiders. To take such a gift to one who reacts so strongly to man-made gifts or gross comforts strikes me as malicious or unthinking.
Anthony Stadlen:Should we believe to scientific monthly article (authored by Dr. Brink) and to the parents that real people are excluded from the 'referential mania' conspiracy? I could almost believe it if not for this chain of names flagging something in the story. Why should we believe even the first sentence of this story? What does it mean for someone to be 'incurably deranged in his mind'? ...So who is this narrator who tells us at the outset that the son in 'Signs and Symbols' is 'incurably deranged'? I would not believe this if told it by a psychiatrist or psychotherapist about a real person. Why should I believe it here? Similarly with the young man's allegedly being 'inaccessible to normal minds'. If this were true, how could the self-styled 'normal minds' know, for instance, that the 'inaccessible' one has 'no desires'? Indeed, how could the learned Dr Brink write his paper about him? [...] The untrustworthiness of this narrator is apparent...
Jansy Mello: I agree with most of the points raised by A.Stadlen. The "clinical" picture is composed of bits and pieces extracted from distinct mental disturbances. They are not to be trusted, nor the (partially?)"omniscient narrator." The interpretation we get about the "referential mania" is the one puzzled out by the old couple, not by "H.Brink" ( the word "brink" is often employed by VN and we shouldn't miss it here!).
Since we have jumped to paragraph seven, let me add a few quotes from VN's different works.
Paragraph Seven: A description of Herman Brink's (?) "referential mania", described by narrator as a system of delusions by which the patient "imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence"(solipsism). The sick boy excludes real people from the conspiratorial scheme of the world but everything else "is a cipher and of everything he is the theme"
The boy must "always be on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things." "The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains;.mountains.. sum up in terms of granite and groaning firs the ultimate truth of his being." ...
"His inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees...everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme"
Compare with:
1. Father's Butterflies
"a silent, subtle, charmingly sly conspiracy between nature and the one who alone can understand, who alone has at last achieved this comprehension - a spiritual alliance concluded above and beyond all the seething, the stirring, the darkness of roaming reveilles, behind the back of all the world's organic life.";
2. "That in Aleppo Once...", page 558
"something of which he was a mere symbol, something monstrous and impalpable, a timeless and faceless mass of immemorial horror that still keeps coming at me from behind even here, in the green vacuum of Central Park.";
In his other short-stories VN doesn't take into account "Herman Brink's" diagnostic about " Referential mania" - but we also find other instances of delusion, auditory hallucination together with ciphered "signs and symbols" which now enhance the "correspondences", as those outlined by Baudelaire, for instance, to describe the achievements of a poet and the dimension he sees in "art".
Sounds, page 14
"And when I withdrew deep into myself the whole world seemed like that - homogeneous, congruent, bound by lawsw of harmony. I myself, you, the carnations, at that instant all became vertical chords on musical staves. I realized that everything in the world was an interplay of identical particles comprising different kinds of consonance: the trees, the water, you... All was unified, equivalent, divine [...] It was as if my soul had extended countless sensitive feelers, and I lived within everything, perceiving simultaneously Nigara Falls thundering far beyond the ocean and the long golden drops...I...felt that, in place of arms, I possessed inclined branches covered with little wet leaves and, instead of legs, a thousand slender roots[...] I wanted to transfuse myself thus into all nature, to experience what it was like to be an old boletus mushroom...or a dragonfly; or the solar sphere."
Beneficence, page 77
"Here I became aware of the world's tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation, and I realized that the joy I had sought in you was not only secreted within you, but breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt... I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss..."
La Veneziana, page 97
"He sensed the onset of an auditory hallucination that had afflicted him since childhood. When in a meadow, or, as now, in a quiet, already duskening wood, he would involuntarily begin to wonder if, through this silence, he might perhaps hear the entire, enormous world traversing space with a melodious whistle, a bustle of distant cities, the pounding of sea waves..."
Cloud, Castle, Lake, page 431
"the inexpressible and unique harmoniousness of its three principal parts, in its smile, in some mysterious innocence it had, my love!, my obedient one! - was something so unique, and so familiar, and so long-promised..."
Lik, page 461
"go to live in that castle, and, moreover, find himself in a world of ineffable tenderness - a bluish, delicate world where fabulous adventures of the senses occur, and unheard-of metamorphoses of the mind...
Here these sense-perceptions clearly emerge now as pathological lapses or promptings into a delusional state:
1.A Nursery Tale, page 164:
"Nothing," said Frau Monde. "Your feeling, your desire, are a command in themselves. However, in order that you may be sure that the deal stands, I shall have a sign given to you every time - a smile, not necessarily addressed to you, a chance word in the crowd, a sudden patch of color - that sort of thing. Don't worry, you'll know."
2.Terror, page 176
"I stepped out into the center of an incidental city, and saw houses, trees, automobiles, people, my mind abruptly refused to accept them as "houses," "trees," and so forth - as something connected with ordinary human life. My line of communication with the world had snapped, I was on my own and the world was on its own, and that world was devoid of sense. I saw the actual essence of all things... I was no longer a man, but a naked eye, an aimless glance moving in an absurd world."
..........................................................................
Anthony Stadlen: Quoting: "can anyone explain the pattern of names: Mrs. Sol (the next door neighbor?) and Dr. Solov (family's doctor) surrounding, in the story line, Soloveichik"
Jansy Mello: V.E.Alexandrov mentioned various poets in connection to Nabokov and one of the names was Vladimir Soloviev. Could the family doctor's name and the Soloveichicks indicate a particular work by Soloviev?
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Piers Smith: Those ten different fruit jellies don't seem trifling or innocent, not even--on reflection--to outsiders. To take such a gift to one who reacts so strongly to man-made gifts or gross comforts strikes me as malicious or unthinking.
Anthony Stadlen:Should we believe to scientific monthly article (authored by Dr. Brink) and to the parents that real people are excluded from the 'referential mania' conspiracy? I could almost believe it if not for this chain of names flagging something in the story. Why should we believe even the first sentence of this story? What does it mean for someone to be 'incurably deranged in his mind'? ...So who is this narrator who tells us at the outset that the son in 'Signs and Symbols' is 'incurably deranged'? I would not believe this if told it by a psychiatrist or psychotherapist about a real person. Why should I believe it here? Similarly with the young man's allegedly being 'inaccessible to normal minds'. If this were true, how could the self-styled 'normal minds' know, for instance, that the 'inaccessible' one has 'no desires'? Indeed, how could the learned Dr Brink write his paper about him? [...] The untrustworthiness of this narrator is apparent...
Jansy Mello: I agree with most of the points raised by A.Stadlen. The "clinical" picture is composed of bits and pieces extracted from distinct mental disturbances. They are not to be trusted, nor the (partially?)"omniscient narrator." The interpretation we get about the "referential mania" is the one puzzled out by the old couple, not by "H.Brink" ( the word "brink" is often employed by VN and we shouldn't miss it here!).
Since we have jumped to paragraph seven, let me add a few quotes from VN's different works.
Paragraph Seven: A description of Herman Brink's (?) "referential mania", described by narrator as a system of delusions by which the patient "imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence"(solipsism). The sick boy excludes real people from the conspiratorial scheme of the world but everything else "is a cipher and of everything he is the theme"
The boy must "always be on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things." "The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains;.mountains.. sum up in terms of granite and groaning firs the ultimate truth of his being." ...
"His inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees...everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme"
Compare with:
1. Father's Butterflies
"a silent, subtle, charmingly sly conspiracy between nature and the one who alone can understand, who alone has at last achieved this comprehension - a spiritual alliance concluded above and beyond all the seething, the stirring, the darkness of roaming reveilles, behind the back of all the world's organic life.";
2. "That in Aleppo Once...", page 558
"something of which he was a mere symbol, something monstrous and impalpable, a timeless and faceless mass of immemorial horror that still keeps coming at me from behind even here, in the green vacuum of Central Park.";
In his other short-stories VN doesn't take into account "Herman Brink's" diagnostic about " Referential mania" - but we also find other instances of delusion, auditory hallucination together with ciphered "signs and symbols" which now enhance the "correspondences", as those outlined by Baudelaire, for instance, to describe the achievements of a poet and the dimension he sees in "art".
Sounds, page 14
"And when I withdrew deep into myself the whole world seemed like that - homogeneous, congruent, bound by lawsw of harmony. I myself, you, the carnations, at that instant all became vertical chords on musical staves. I realized that everything in the world was an interplay of identical particles comprising different kinds of consonance: the trees, the water, you... All was unified, equivalent, divine [...] It was as if my soul had extended countless sensitive feelers, and I lived within everything, perceiving simultaneously Nigara Falls thundering far beyond the ocean and the long golden drops...I...felt that, in place of arms, I possessed inclined branches covered with little wet leaves and, instead of legs, a thousand slender roots[...] I wanted to transfuse myself thus into all nature, to experience what it was like to be an old boletus mushroom...or a dragonfly; or the solar sphere."
Beneficence, page 77
"Here I became aware of the world's tenderness, the profound beneficence of all that surrounded me, the blissful bond between me and all of creation, and I realized that the joy I had sought in you was not only secreted within you, but breathed around me everywhere, in the speeding street sounds, in the hem of a comically lifted skirt... I realized that the world does not represent a struggle at all, or a predaceous sequence of chance events, but shimmering bliss..."
La Veneziana, page 97
"He sensed the onset of an auditory hallucination that had afflicted him since childhood. When in a meadow, or, as now, in a quiet, already duskening wood, he would involuntarily begin to wonder if, through this silence, he might perhaps hear the entire, enormous world traversing space with a melodious whistle, a bustle of distant cities, the pounding of sea waves..."
Cloud, Castle, Lake, page 431
"the inexpressible and unique harmoniousness of its three principal parts, in its smile, in some mysterious innocence it had, my love!, my obedient one! - was something so unique, and so familiar, and so long-promised..."
Lik, page 461
"go to live in that castle, and, moreover, find himself in a world of ineffable tenderness - a bluish, delicate world where fabulous adventures of the senses occur, and unheard-of metamorphoses of the mind...
Here these sense-perceptions clearly emerge now as pathological lapses or promptings into a delusional state:
1.A Nursery Tale, page 164:
"Nothing," said Frau Monde. "Your feeling, your desire, are a command in themselves. However, in order that you may be sure that the deal stands, I shall have a sign given to you every time - a smile, not necessarily addressed to you, a chance word in the crowd, a sudden patch of color - that sort of thing. Don't worry, you'll know."
2.Terror, page 176
"I stepped out into the center of an incidental city, and saw houses, trees, automobiles, people, my mind abruptly refused to accept them as "houses," "trees," and so forth - as something connected with ordinary human life. My line of communication with the world had snapped, I was on my own and the world was on its own, and that world was devoid of sense. I saw the actual essence of all things... I was no longer a man, but a naked eye, an aimless glance moving in an absurd world."
..........................................................................
Anthony Stadlen: Quoting: "can anyone explain the pattern of names: Mrs. Sol (the next door neighbor?) and Dr. Solov (family's doctor) surrounding, in the story line, Soloveichik"
Jansy Mello: V.E.Alexandrov mentioned various poets in connection to Nabokov and one of the names was Vladimir Soloviev. Could the family doctor's name and the Soloveichicks indicate a particular work by Soloviev?
Mensagem de e-mail verificada por Spyware Doctor (5.5.0.212)
Versão do banco de dados: 5.09700
http://www.pctools.com/br/spyware-doctor/
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