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Re: RES: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: Signs and Symbols
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We've been through all, or much, of this about ten years ago, in 2004. See
my lengthy comments in the NABOKV-L archives, summarised in Yuri Leving's
book on 'Signs and Symbols'. And also see Sandy Drescher's paper on the
subject. Both he and I, independently of each other, argued that the third
telephone call could be from the living son. I questioned the readiness of
people -- e.g. Alexander Dolinin -- to believe in a telephone call provoked by
a dead son in an "otherworld" rather than in a living son able to pick up
(and dial) a phone, simply because of an unreliable narrator's would-be
psychiatric clichés about what a hopeless case the boy was.
Anthony Stadlen
In a message dated 10/03/2014 23:16:04 GMT Standard Time,
franassa@HOTMAIL.COM writes:
Jansy, I didn't conclude that the son is necessarily dead. If the dead
can send messages, why not the living?
____________________________________
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 10:27:45 -0300
From: jansy.nabokv-L@AETERN.US
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] RES: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: Signs and Symbols
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Jansy Mello: Following the short description sent by Y.Leving
[http://bloomsburyliterarystudies.typepad.com/continuum-literary-studie/2012/05/anatomy-
of-a-short-story-nabokovs-puzzles-codes-signs-and-symbols.html] I
extracted the following: “Why, we wonder, fruit jellies for a ‘deranged’ son?
Given the story’s title, naturally we might take a seemingly random detail like
fruit jellies to symbolize something greater in the story.”
Frances Assa went after this greater hidden sense: “I think none of us
can get away from the sense that there is a message imbedded in the names of
the jellies in “Signs and Symbols.” The mistaken telephone call for “
Charlie” and the mother’s response (turn 0 not O) gives us more clues[ ]The
correspondence between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson show that both were
intensely interested in the “beat” of words. Morse code is also a kind of beat.
Using an on-line Morse Code translator I entered the dot or dash sound of
the beat of each jelly. (http://morsecode.scphillips.com/jtranslator.html)
Thus, for the word "apricot" the "a" syllable, the "pri" syllable and the
"cot" syllable of "apricot" can be sounded out as three longish equal beats
(dash dash dash) or possibly three short equal beats (dot dot dot). 3
dashes translates from Morse to English as the letter O, while 3 dots
translates as S. If we heed the mother in the story the O should cancel out to
zero, leaving only the S option. Similarly, “grape” translates to either T
(dash) or E (dot). “beech plum” , as dash dot becomes N “quince” as dot
becomes E, as dash, T “crab apple” , dash dot dot, is D, or as two words,
crab is O which cancels out, leaving Apple which is I. One obvious reading
of these 5 letters is "I SENT."
What an amazing result: “I sent” - since it seems to fit perfectly into
the young man’s illness: his communication is absolutely self-referential
and it brings no other message besides the message. The (1964) phrase by
Marshall McLuhan that “the medium is the message” is perfectly rendered in
this case (and, in part, also in “The Vane Sisters” and in many other
Nabokov writings)…
Y.Leving’s excellent link proceeds as follows: “As Nabokov’s tale
unravels, it is revealed that the son is in the sanatorium for his “Referential
mania,” an invented term described by a fictional doctor as causing a
patient to imagine “that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to
his personality and existence.” For a person suffering Referential mania, “
Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns representing in some awful
way messages which he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of
everything he is the theme.” Nabokov’s inclusion of an illness symptomatized by
over-analysis calls to mind the reader’s search for deeper meaning and
symbolism in literature. Are we, as careful readers searching for the meaning in
a detail like “fruit jellies,” suffering from our own literary form of
Referential mania, the search for symbolic meaning in everything around us? [
] Nabokov leaves it up to us to determine the outcome of the call,
whether we decide the follow his symbols, and how symbols in the text may or may
not be interpreted depending on our own degree of ‘Referential mania’.”
Prompted by E. Hyman’s conjectures relating S&S and “The Vane Sisters,” I
was led to the impression that, if there are any spiritual messages in
S&S, these must not be searched as signals between the son and his parents.
Now, after reading the paragraphs reproduced above, I was even more convinced
about that. Few commentators stress the fact that ‘referential mania’ is
“an invented term described by a fictional doctor.” But it was this fact
that convinced me that readers shouldn’t at all suffer from “different
degrees of it” in their interpretation, unless they were unduly absorbed into
the author’s short-story (thereby suffering from a “literary form of
referential mania”…).
Besides, the author is quite insistent that this illness (as in the
delusions of persecution) forces the patient to interpret everything by placing
himself in the central point of the entire universe. If we are after
indications of spirit communication from the afterlife, this boy wouldn’t be our
wisest choice to start our investigation – unless we change our perspective.
Instead of considering that he is dead and sending messages to his parents
from the spirit world (although “synchronicity” can explain the ringing
phone at the time of his death), we might examine what might have been true
spiritual manifestations among the signs and symbols that plagued him in
his illness.
What do you, Fran, and other Nablers think about this suggestion?
Jansy Mello
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my lengthy comments in the NABOKV-L archives, summarised in Yuri Leving's
book on 'Signs and Symbols'. And also see Sandy Drescher's paper on the
subject. Both he and I, independently of each other, argued that the third
telephone call could be from the living son. I questioned the readiness of
people -- e.g. Alexander Dolinin -- to believe in a telephone call provoked by
a dead son in an "otherworld" rather than in a living son able to pick up
(and dial) a phone, simply because of an unreliable narrator's would-be
psychiatric clichés about what a hopeless case the boy was.
Anthony Stadlen
In a message dated 10/03/2014 23:16:04 GMT Standard Time,
franassa@HOTMAIL.COM writes:
Jansy, I didn't conclude that the son is necessarily dead. If the dead
can send messages, why not the living?
____________________________________
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 10:27:45 -0300
From: jansy.nabokv-L@AETERN.US
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] RES: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: Signs and Symbols
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Jansy Mello: Following the short description sent by Y.Leving
[http://bloomsburyliterarystudies.typepad.com/continuum-literary-studie/2012/05/anatomy-
of-a-short-story-nabokovs-puzzles-codes-signs-and-symbols.html] I
extracted the following: “Why, we wonder, fruit jellies for a ‘deranged’ son?
Given the story’s title, naturally we might take a seemingly random detail like
fruit jellies to symbolize something greater in the story.”
Frances Assa went after this greater hidden sense: “I think none of us
can get away from the sense that there is a message imbedded in the names of
the jellies in “Signs and Symbols.” The mistaken telephone call for “
Charlie” and the mother’s response (turn 0 not O) gives us more clues[ ]The
correspondence between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson show that both were
intensely interested in the “beat” of words. Morse code is also a kind of beat.
Using an on-line Morse Code translator I entered the dot or dash sound of
the beat of each jelly. (http://morsecode.scphillips.com/jtranslator.html)
Thus, for the word "apricot" the "a" syllable, the "pri" syllable and the
"cot" syllable of "apricot" can be sounded out as three longish equal beats
(dash dash dash) or possibly three short equal beats (dot dot dot). 3
dashes translates from Morse to English as the letter O, while 3 dots
translates as S. If we heed the mother in the story the O should cancel out to
zero, leaving only the S option. Similarly, “grape” translates to either T
(dash) or E (dot). “beech plum” , as dash dot becomes N “quince” as dot
becomes E, as dash, T “crab apple” , dash dot dot, is D, or as two words,
crab is O which cancels out, leaving Apple which is I. One obvious reading
of these 5 letters is "I SENT."
What an amazing result: “I sent” - since it seems to fit perfectly into
the young man’s illness: his communication is absolutely self-referential
and it brings no other message besides the message. The (1964) phrase by
Marshall McLuhan that “the medium is the message” is perfectly rendered in
this case (and, in part, also in “The Vane Sisters” and in many other
Nabokov writings)…
Y.Leving’s excellent link proceeds as follows: “As Nabokov’s tale
unravels, it is revealed that the son is in the sanatorium for his “Referential
mania,” an invented term described by a fictional doctor as causing a
patient to imagine “that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to
his personality and existence.” For a person suffering Referential mania, “
Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns representing in some awful
way messages which he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of
everything he is the theme.” Nabokov’s inclusion of an illness symptomatized by
over-analysis calls to mind the reader’s search for deeper meaning and
symbolism in literature. Are we, as careful readers searching for the meaning in
a detail like “fruit jellies,” suffering from our own literary form of
Referential mania, the search for symbolic meaning in everything around us? [
] Nabokov leaves it up to us to determine the outcome of the call,
whether we decide the follow his symbols, and how symbols in the text may or may
not be interpreted depending on our own degree of ‘Referential mania’.”
Prompted by E. Hyman’s conjectures relating S&S and “The Vane Sisters,” I
was led to the impression that, if there are any spiritual messages in
S&S, these must not be searched as signals between the son and his parents.
Now, after reading the paragraphs reproduced above, I was even more convinced
about that. Few commentators stress the fact that ‘referential mania’ is
“an invented term described by a fictional doctor.” But it was this fact
that convinced me that readers shouldn’t at all suffer from “different
degrees of it” in their interpretation, unless they were unduly absorbed into
the author’s short-story (thereby suffering from a “literary form of
referential mania”…).
Besides, the author is quite insistent that this illness (as in the
delusions of persecution) forces the patient to interpret everything by placing
himself in the central point of the entire universe. If we are after
indications of spirit communication from the afterlife, this boy wouldn’t be our
wisest choice to start our investigation – unless we change our perspective.
Instead of considering that he is dead and sending messages to his parents
from the spirit world (although “synchronicity” can explain the ringing
phone at the time of his death), we might examine what might have been true
spiritual manifestations among the signs and symbols that plagued him in
his illness.
What do you, Fran, and other Nablers think about this suggestion?
Jansy Mello
____________________________________
(http://www.avast.com/)
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Antivírus_ (http://www.avast.com/) está ativa.
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) _Contact_ (mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu)
_the Editors_ (mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu) _NOJ_
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Search the archive_ (https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L)
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All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
_Google Search _
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_the Editors_ (mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu) _NOJ_
(http://www.nabokovonline.com/) _Zembla_
(http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm) _Nabokv-L _ (http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm)
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_NSJ Ada Annotations_ (http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html) _L-Soft
Search the archive_ (https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L)
_VN Bibliography Blog_ (http://vnbiblio.com/)
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
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/