Subject
Re: SIGNS: why "deranged in his mind" and "unreliable narrators".
From
Date
Body
A. Stadlen comments on Rilke's stories about an omniscient God once so absent-minded that he couldn't return a lost bird to its original forest. He explains that God, in the Torah, puts the rainbow in the sky to remind himself not to flood the world again...So even on the traditional belief that God is the narrator of the Torah (the five books of Moses), God the narrator explicitly describes himself as in need of the reader even to remind him of his own name. He is some way short of omniscient. He is not Aristotle's unmoved mover. Rabbi Abraham Heschel calls him the most moved mover...So why should even a narrator who does not use the first person be thought of as omniscient, if God doesn't claim to be?
Jansy Mello: I'm almost certain that I understand Nabokov's hints about "postustoronnost" ( "the other-world") and enjoy how they gained literary expression in his various works. Your quote about God as "the most moved mover" is very beautiful and also revelatory of your vision. I believe in psychoanalysis, but I don't see the point of discussing Freud when I know VN might have invented "unconscious motives and symbols" as a trap constructed with the information he had at that time about Freud.
In a way I could say that my faith lies in the "omniscient narration" that is peculiar to the unconscious... Nevertheless, it seems that we can agree about the vagueness of label such as "omniscient narrator", specially when he speaks in a singular first person.
In "Signs and Symbols" Nabokov allied two strategies. We know that realistic stories are most often open and leave the reader wondering about "what will happen next". In these the world of the story coincides with the world we experience. Fantastic stories take us to a world with unknown rules and codes and we frequently learn beforehand about "future" ( the story is closed, as VN once wrote about "Lolita"). In such circumstances the reader is left wondering about "what is actually happening now". In S&S we are puzzled about real life and a third phone-call while, simultaneously, we are invited to investigate a present event that seems to elude us. We may thus experience from the inside a "mysterious dimension" and inhabit two worlds, while firmly planted in the one we still have faith in.
If we move towards Signs and Symbols, Part 2, we find in the first chapter: "When they emerged from the thunder and foul air of the subway, the last dregs of the day were mixed with the streetlights. She wanted to buy some fish for supper, so she handed him the basket of jelly jars, telling him to go home. He walked up to the third landing and then remembered he had given her his keys earlier in the day." and in the second chapter: "In silence he sat down on the steps and in silence rose when some ten minutes later she came, heavily trudging upstairs, wanly smiling, shaking her head in deprecation of her silliness. They entered their two-room flat[... ] he ate the pale victuals that needed no teeth. She knew his moods and was also silent."
After I selected pieces from various paragraphs besides the two mentioned above I noticed something:
part one: "She waited for her husband to open his umbrella and then took his arm."
part two:"he had given her his keys earlier in the day" ; "They entered their two-room flat"
part three:"He returned in high spirits, saying in a loud voice: I have it all figured out. We will give him the bedroom. Each of us will spend part of the night near him and the other part on this couch".
Most of the initiatives seem to be the woman's. When she realized she'd forgotten about the keys she immediately rushed home and, probably, without buying the fish she intended to cook for dinner.
After taking off his dentures her husband ate "pale victuals" prepared for a toothless mouth ( what kind of colourless, mushy food is implied? Would he eat it every night?)
The thunder and foul air reminds the reader of the rain outside the underground shelter: noise and discomfort outside and inside...
These sentences also bring up the dire circumstances in which they live (only one set of keys, perhaps only one umbrella, a two-room flat with one bed and a couch) and their closeness. There is no special place in their flat for a son and, should they keep him at home, they would have be separated in turns to keep him under surveillance during the night. Still, this rotatory shift is quite peculiar:
Why couldn't one of the parents stay with the boy all night long?
In such a small apartment, why would it be necessary to sleep with him in the same bed and not let him use the couch?
Why was a special surveillance needed during the night? What happened at night that would be so exausting to those that were lying at his side that they had to be relieved of duty after some time?
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
Jansy Mello: I'm almost certain that I understand Nabokov's hints about "postustoronnost" ( "the other-world") and enjoy how they gained literary expression in his various works. Your quote about God as "the most moved mover" is very beautiful and also revelatory of your vision. I believe in psychoanalysis, but I don't see the point of discussing Freud when I know VN might have invented "unconscious motives and symbols" as a trap constructed with the information he had at that time about Freud.
In a way I could say that my faith lies in the "omniscient narration" that is peculiar to the unconscious... Nevertheless, it seems that we can agree about the vagueness of label such as "omniscient narrator", specially when he speaks in a singular first person.
In "Signs and Symbols" Nabokov allied two strategies. We know that realistic stories are most often open and leave the reader wondering about "what will happen next". In these the world of the story coincides with the world we experience. Fantastic stories take us to a world with unknown rules and codes and we frequently learn beforehand about "future" ( the story is closed, as VN once wrote about "Lolita"). In such circumstances the reader is left wondering about "what is actually happening now". In S&S we are puzzled about real life and a third phone-call while, simultaneously, we are invited to investigate a present event that seems to elude us. We may thus experience from the inside a "mysterious dimension" and inhabit two worlds, while firmly planted in the one we still have faith in.
If we move towards Signs and Symbols, Part 2, we find in the first chapter: "When they emerged from the thunder and foul air of the subway, the last dregs of the day were mixed with the streetlights. She wanted to buy some fish for supper, so she handed him the basket of jelly jars, telling him to go home. He walked up to the third landing and then remembered he had given her his keys earlier in the day." and in the second chapter: "In silence he sat down on the steps and in silence rose when some ten minutes later she came, heavily trudging upstairs, wanly smiling, shaking her head in deprecation of her silliness. They entered their two-room flat[... ] he ate the pale victuals that needed no teeth. She knew his moods and was also silent."
After I selected pieces from various paragraphs besides the two mentioned above I noticed something:
part one: "She waited for her husband to open his umbrella and then took his arm."
part two:"he had given her his keys earlier in the day" ; "They entered their two-room flat"
part three:"He returned in high spirits, saying in a loud voice: I have it all figured out. We will give him the bedroom. Each of us will spend part of the night near him and the other part on this couch".
Most of the initiatives seem to be the woman's. When she realized she'd forgotten about the keys she immediately rushed home and, probably, without buying the fish she intended to cook for dinner.
After taking off his dentures her husband ate "pale victuals" prepared for a toothless mouth ( what kind of colourless, mushy food is implied? Would he eat it every night?)
The thunder and foul air reminds the reader of the rain outside the underground shelter: noise and discomfort outside and inside...
These sentences also bring up the dire circumstances in which they live (only one set of keys, perhaps only one umbrella, a two-room flat with one bed and a couch) and their closeness. There is no special place in their flat for a son and, should they keep him at home, they would have be separated in turns to keep him under surveillance during the night. Still, this rotatory shift is quite peculiar:
Why couldn't one of the parents stay with the boy all night long?
In such a small apartment, why would it be necessary to sleep with him in the same bed and not let him use the couch?
Why was a special surveillance needed during the night? What happened at night that would be so exausting to those that were lying at his side that they had to be relieved of duty after some time?
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