Subject
Re: balsam - Balsamo - Cagliostro
From
Date
Body
Re: [NABOKV-L] balsam - Balsamo - CagliostroStan Kelly-Bootle [ on Stadlen's "I swear that I am not trying to tantalise [...] please do not expect anything remotely like "closure"and JM's "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"] writes:
"surely the "almost forty years" here is not a matter of "incomplete" or "vague" data. Isaac's "standing" as a "real American" is not something that can be dated more precisely. Rather, one envisages periods of gradual "acculturation" that vary from émigré to émigré. All VN is projecting, I suggest, is that Isaac's assimilation progressed earlier and more successfully than that of his brother and sistet-in-law.
JM: Right, "almost forty years" is neither incomplete nor vague, but my sentence was!
I meant VN's big list of items under "forty this and forty that", not the particular example about Isaac.
The underlying question was why "forty" and then why, after having just read S&S with attention to detail did I forget the sentence Anthony brought up while I displaced my failed recollection onto other examples dealing with "forty" (and, unlike A.S-B, I surmised Isaac had been in America long before his relatives finally fled from Nazi Europe)
To Alexey: it just occurred to me that "turf" in English corresponds to "torf" ( peat, swamp, manure, decay) and to green lawns and horse-races as well.
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/
"surely the "almost forty years" here is not a matter of "incomplete" or "vague" data. Isaac's "standing" as a "real American" is not something that can be dated more precisely. Rather, one envisages periods of gradual "acculturation" that vary from émigré to émigré. All VN is projecting, I suggest, is that Isaac's assimilation progressed earlier and more successfully than that of his brother and sistet-in-law.
JM: Right, "almost forty years" is neither incomplete nor vague, but my sentence was!
I meant VN's big list of items under "forty this and forty that", not the particular example about Isaac.
The underlying question was why "forty" and then why, after having just read S&S with attention to detail did I forget the sentence Anthony brought up while I displaced my failed recollection onto other examples dealing with "forty" (and, unlike A.S-B, I surmised Isaac had been in America long before his relatives finally fled from Nazi Europe)
To Alexey: it just occurred to me that "turf" in English corresponds to "torf" ( peat, swamp, manure, decay) and to green lawns and horse-races as well.
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/