Subject
Re: Fwd: TT-20 Ajar doors, beams of light, and misprints
From
Date
Body
Dear Don and E. Naiman
Since the reference to a slip of light through a door was mentioned in its
special relief along VN´s several texts - and although I cannot find the
exact quotation at the moment - I´d like to refer E.Naiman to "Speak,
Memory" and to the Mademoiselle chapter ( but I´m not sure!) where VN
describes his suffering with insomnia and the consoling light that came from
the slanted light under her door and the terror he experienced after she put
out the light and went to sleep.
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2005 4:41 PM
Subject: Fwd: TT-20 Ajar doors, beams of light, and misprints
> from E. Naiman
>
> Going over a few of the chapters I had not spent much time on last
> fall.
> It is worth noting that in Armande's last words to Hugh "she murmured
> something about the light." Hugh has come into the room: Did that wake
> her? Yes, it did, hazily, or at least teased a hole in the hay, and she
> murmured something about the light."
> Immediately afterwards we read: "Actually
> all that impinged on the darkness was an angled beam from the living room,
> the door of which he had left ajar. He now closed it gently as he groped
> his way to the bed."
> If in many ways TT is a parodic reversal of VN's greatest hits, (recall
> Hugh and Armande on the couch, a scene where Lolita knows exactly what she
> is doing, indeed it is the way SHE can best experience sexual pleasure),
> here is another one -- the end of Bend Sinister, where Krug is wakened in
> his cell:
> It was at that moment, just after Krug had fallen through the bottom of
> a confused dream and sat up on the straw with a gasp --and just before his
> reality, his remembered hideous misfortune could pounce upon him -- it was
> then that I felt a pang of pity for Adam and slid towards him along an
> inclined beam of pale light -- causing instantaneous madness, but at least
> saving him from the senseless agony of his logical fate."
> Note how the scene in TT is similar -- but completely ineffective in
> "saving" either Hugh or Armande. Hugh goes mad and in madness kills
> Armande rather than escaping from a nightmare. The inclined beam of light
> isn't an escape hatch -- rather the light from the room of the living is
> closed off -- here the door of doom does not stay ajar (cf. Pnin).
> Finally, look at the misprint later corrected by Hugh:
>
> "that he would have to consult an ophthalmologist sometime next
> mouth. He substituted an 'n' for the wrong letter and continued to scan
> the motlep proof into which the blackness of closed vision was not
> turning."
>
> Bend Sinister, of course, ends with the classic, uncorrected "misprint", a
> misprint that, uncorrected, with N NOT substituted for the wrong letter,
> is part of the affirmation of the "IMPRINT we leave in the intimate
> texture of space." In TT the misprint is corrected as if it were
> meaningless -- and Hugh and Armande plunge into tragedy.
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----