Subject
[NABOKOV-LIST] [THOUGHTS] Gogol's "fourth dimension"; a "gory
trophy"
trophy"
From
Date
Body
To Alexey: following your line of associations, I remembered the "gory trophy" ( you mentioned both gory, torfu and trophies in your last postings...) that was carried by a dachshund and which uncle Dan innocently ( freudianly?) saw as being the consequence of a "guillotined" thumb, and not, quite probably, the bloody trophy (?) for Ada's loss of her maidenhead.
To J. Aisenberg, here are several extracts from VN's Gogol, illustrating tactics also found in ADA through Bout,Blanche, etc:
"Note how the newborn Anonymous Vlassovich manages to grup up and live a whole life in the space of a second" (page 47) ..."This secondary world, bursting as it were through the background of the play, is Gogol's true kingdom [...] all these creatures whose lively motion constitues the very material of the play, not only do not interfere with what theatrical managers call"action" but apparently assist the play to be eminently playable[...] Not only live cr eatures swarm in that irrational background but numerous objects are made to play a part as important as that of the characters..." (page 52) Gogol's "genius deals not in the intrinsic qualities of computable chemical matter ( the "real life" of literary critics) but in the mimetic capacities of the physical phenomena produced by almost intangible particles of recreated life" (page 56)
Underside of the weave, the hidden "real" story in Gogol, as described by VN: (page 144)..."This is all in the way of plot, but of course the real plot ( as always with Gogol) lies in the style, in the inner structure of his transcendental anecdote(sic) " or (pg 148) "A piece of most important information, the main structural idea of the story is here deliberately masked by Gogol ( because all reality is a mask).".."in Gogol's books the real plots are behind the obvious ones" (page 152)
Here we also find what will become, in Pale Fire, Gradus' movements in conformity with the development of John Shade's poem:
"The peripheral characters of his novel are engendered by the subordinate clauses of its various metaphors, comparisons and lyrical outbursts[...]mere forms of speech directly giving rise to live creatures" (page 78)
Btw, if anyone should feel stirred by this extraneous cutting, I now offer another curious tidbit on numbers 1000 and 999 (Pale Fire:length of poem through a glass, darkly; Lolita: Quilted Quilty's persecution and paper-chase; E.O, Ada or TT's references to translation,aso):
"I sometimes think that these old English 'translations' are remarkably similar to the so-called Thousand Pieces Execution which was popular at one time in China. The idea was to cut out from the patient's body one tiny square bit the size of a cough lozenge, say, every five minutes or so until bit by bit ( all of them selected with discrimination so as to have the patient live to the nine hundred ninety ninth piece) his whole body was delicately removed".
(unfortunately I couldn't find the description and page references, to the metmorphosing carriage, in VN's text on Gogol, to compare it to a similar transmorphing in ADA)
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/
To J. Aisenberg, here are several extracts from VN's Gogol, illustrating tactics also found in ADA through Bout,Blanche, etc:
"Note how the newborn Anonymous Vlassovich manages to grup up and live a whole life in the space of a second" (page 47) ..."This secondary world, bursting as it were through the background of the play, is Gogol's true kingdom [...] all these creatures whose lively motion constitues the very material of the play, not only do not interfere with what theatrical managers call"action" but apparently assist the play to be eminently playable[...] Not only live cr eatures swarm in that irrational background but numerous objects are made to play a part as important as that of the characters..." (page 52) Gogol's "genius deals not in the intrinsic qualities of computable chemical matter ( the "real life" of literary critics) but in the mimetic capacities of the physical phenomena produced by almost intangible particles of recreated life" (page 56)
Underside of the weave, the hidden "real" story in Gogol, as described by VN: (page 144)..."This is all in the way of plot, but of course the real plot ( as always with Gogol) lies in the style, in the inner structure of his transcendental anecdote(sic) " or (pg 148) "A piece of most important information, the main structural idea of the story is here deliberately masked by Gogol ( because all reality is a mask).".."in Gogol's books the real plots are behind the obvious ones" (page 152)
Here we also find what will become, in Pale Fire, Gradus' movements in conformity with the development of John Shade's poem:
"The peripheral characters of his novel are engendered by the subordinate clauses of its various metaphors, comparisons and lyrical outbursts[...]mere forms of speech directly giving rise to live creatures" (page 78)
Btw, if anyone should feel stirred by this extraneous cutting, I now offer another curious tidbit on numbers 1000 and 999 (Pale Fire:length of poem through a glass, darkly; Lolita: Quilted Quilty's persecution and paper-chase; E.O, Ada or TT's references to translation,aso):
"I sometimes think that these old English 'translations' are remarkably similar to the so-called Thousand Pieces Execution which was popular at one time in China. The idea was to cut out from the patient's body one tiny square bit the size of a cough lozenge, say, every five minutes or so until bit by bit ( all of them selected with discrimination so as to have the patient live to the nine hundred ninety ninth piece) his whole body was delicately removed".
(unfortunately I couldn't find the description and page references, to the metmorphosing carriage, in VN's text on Gogol, to compare it to a similar transmorphing in ADA)
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/