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Re: balsam - Balsamo - Cagliostro
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I had always been intrigued by the title "in Aleppo once" and my curiosity was satisfied after I read, somewhere, that the title was a reference to Shakespeare. To Othello, I think. Unfortunately, in the middle of my muddle I lost the indication and forgot its source. Does any one know?
After I said: Thank you, Alexey, for your patience, A.Sklyarenko inquired back: What patience, Jansy? Or do you mean that by forming new words from the same letters I'm indulging in a kind of card patience (solitaire)?
JM: Now that you ask, Alexey, I must think about why not only I thanked you, but added "patience". The game "solitaire" had not crossed my mind at any time, but you have a point.
Nabokov often stimulates in those readers that speak more than one language, those that have a particular love for geography, history ( entomology, philosophy, childhood reminiscences, literary production...) into pursuing an almost solitary quest. Sharing such moments of "wild research" with the VN- List is comforting and I think this must have been what I meant: thank you for sharing and, in a way, inviting a commentary into that quest.
Anthony Stadlen [answering "A real scientist would search for other numerical references ( twelve, fourteen, twenty, ninety-two...) ... A terrible woman aged forty, or a man? Forty diamonds, forty lies, forty thieves?] added another example of "forty" from "Signs and Symbols" and promised a feed-back about the meeting held in London with the final disclosure about this short-story: Yes, brother Isaac was "a real American of almost forty years standing." This is one of the peculiarities of Nabokov's style. It plays with what in Gestalt theory is called "closure effect": when people tend to remember information that remains incomplete, vague, expecting it to "close". In VN it almost never closes, but for me this knowledge is useless because the allusion keeps rebounding and gaining momentum with every casual reference that returns to the "incomplete" or "unresolved" issue. Those sparse items ( the "forty" in this case) are repeated at random in various contexts, recurring like a musical Leitmotiv that often (in VN's case) announces any particular entrance or character but engender a sensation of volume and increasing sonority.
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After I said: Thank you, Alexey, for your patience, A.Sklyarenko inquired back: What patience, Jansy? Or do you mean that by forming new words from the same letters I'm indulging in a kind of card patience (solitaire)?
JM: Now that you ask, Alexey, I must think about why not only I thanked you, but added "patience". The game "solitaire" had not crossed my mind at any time, but you have a point.
Nabokov often stimulates in those readers that speak more than one language, those that have a particular love for geography, history ( entomology, philosophy, childhood reminiscences, literary production...) into pursuing an almost solitary quest. Sharing such moments of "wild research" with the VN- List is comforting and I think this must have been what I meant: thank you for sharing and, in a way, inviting a commentary into that quest.
Anthony Stadlen [answering "A real scientist would search for other numerical references ( twelve, fourteen, twenty, ninety-two...) ... A terrible woman aged forty, or a man? Forty diamonds, forty lies, forty thieves?] added another example of "forty" from "Signs and Symbols" and promised a feed-back about the meeting held in London with the final disclosure about this short-story: Yes, brother Isaac was "a real American of almost forty years standing." This is one of the peculiarities of Nabokov's style. It plays with what in Gestalt theory is called "closure effect": when people tend to remember information that remains incomplete, vague, expecting it to "close". In VN it almost never closes, but for me this knowledge is useless because the allusion keeps rebounding and gaining momentum with every casual reference that returns to the "incomplete" or "unresolved" issue. Those sparse items ( the "forty" in this case) are repeated at random in various contexts, recurring like a musical Leitmotiv that often (in VN's case) announces any particular entrance or character but engender a sensation of volume and increasing sonority.
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/