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Re: VN & Sherlock; Haze/Blaze (fwd)
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From: Jennifer Parsons <jdparsons@home.com>
Thank you to Mark Bennet for very Nabokovian find indeed, on
miracles/coincidence (mimesis?), in Chesterton. It's easy to imagine
now, that Nabokov was indeed influenced, when young, at least
subliminally, by those words in the passage you kindly quote from "The
Blue Cross" - so much do they sound like his own views - later
expressed, on coincidence.
(The on record comment you refer to, I believe is this one, from Strong
Opinions. VN says: "I used to enjoy tremendously the romantic
productions - romantic in the large sense - of such people as Conan
Doyle, Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Chesterton, Oscar Wilde and other authors
who are essentially writers for very young people..." )
Galya Diment wrote:
>
> From: Mark Bennett <mab@straussandasher.com>
>
> Since the group has been investigating, with Sherlock-like zeal,
> those ripples and echoes of A.C. Doyle's stories that may be found in VN's
> fiction, perhaps it is appropriate to examine what effect, if any, the
> stories of another eccentric English sleuth may have had on VN"s work and
> thought. I refer, of course, to C.K. Chesterton and his umbrella-toting,
> crime-solving cleric, Father Brown. I recently came across this passage in
> an early Father Brown story, "The Blue Cross":
>
> The most incredible thing about miracles is that they
> happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of
> one human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey
> in the exact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen
> both these things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in the
> instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder
> a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short,
> there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on
> the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the
> paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.
>
> This passage is not only a nice statement of one aspect of VN's
> metaphysics, but the prose itself, except for the last sentence, has a near
> Nabokovian cadence. I believe VN is on record as stating that in his youth
> he avidly read a great deal of popular British fiction, including Doyle and
> Chesterton; however, I don't recall reading any public statement of VN's
> opinion regarding Chesterton's work. Of course this confession will
> probably prompt several replies directing me to sources in which VN
> discusses Chesterton's work in general, and the Father Brown stories in
> particular, contemptuously and at great length; but, after all, that is why
> one subscribes to such a list. In any event, speaking of elfin coincidence,
> a thread from last week discussed the possibility that Dolores Haze's true
> last name was Blaze (along with other possibilities). I haven't looked into
> the matter, but I do hope the Blaze conjecture is correct, because we can
> then savor the delightful coincidence (?) that the actress Lolita Davidovich
> played the title role in the 1989 movie "Blaze".
Thank you to Mark Bennet for very Nabokovian find indeed, on
miracles/coincidence (mimesis?), in Chesterton. It's easy to imagine
now, that Nabokov was indeed influenced, when young, at least
subliminally, by those words in the passage you kindly quote from "The
Blue Cross" - so much do they sound like his own views - later
expressed, on coincidence.
(The on record comment you refer to, I believe is this one, from Strong
Opinions. VN says: "I used to enjoy tremendously the romantic
productions - romantic in the large sense - of such people as Conan
Doyle, Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Chesterton, Oscar Wilde and other authors
who are essentially writers for very young people..." )
Galya Diment wrote:
>
> From: Mark Bennett <mab@straussandasher.com>
>
> Since the group has been investigating, with Sherlock-like zeal,
> those ripples and echoes of A.C. Doyle's stories that may be found in VN's
> fiction, perhaps it is appropriate to examine what effect, if any, the
> stories of another eccentric English sleuth may have had on VN"s work and
> thought. I refer, of course, to C.K. Chesterton and his umbrella-toting,
> crime-solving cleric, Father Brown. I recently came across this passage in
> an early Father Brown story, "The Blue Cross":
>
> The most incredible thing about miracles is that they
> happen. A few clouds in heaven do come together into the staring shape of
> one human eye. A tree does stand up in the landscape of a doubtful journey
> in the exact and elaborate shape of a note of interrogation. I have seen
> both these things myself within the last few days. Nelson does die in the
> instant of victory; and a man named Williams does quite accidentally murder
> a man named Williamson; it sounds like a sort of infanticide. In short,
> there is in life an element of elfin coincidence which people reckoning on
> the prosaic may perpetually miss. As it has been well expressed in the
> paradox of Poe, wisdom should reckon on the unforeseen.
>
> This passage is not only a nice statement of one aspect of VN's
> metaphysics, but the prose itself, except for the last sentence, has a near
> Nabokovian cadence. I believe VN is on record as stating that in his youth
> he avidly read a great deal of popular British fiction, including Doyle and
> Chesterton; however, I don't recall reading any public statement of VN's
> opinion regarding Chesterton's work. Of course this confession will
> probably prompt several replies directing me to sources in which VN
> discusses Chesterton's work in general, and the Father Brown stories in
> particular, contemptuously and at great length; but, after all, that is why
> one subscribes to such a list. In any event, speaking of elfin coincidence,
> a thread from last week discussed the possibility that Dolores Haze's true
> last name was Blaze (along with other possibilities). I haven't looked into
> the matter, but I do hope the Blaze conjecture is correct, because we can
> then savor the delightful coincidence (?) that the actress Lolita Davidovich
> played the title role in the 1989 movie "Blaze".