Subject
Re: Nablering on Field...metaphors and similes to express time
From
Date
Body
Field's description of ADA as an essay on the nature of time in which the metaphors gradually become a story is at least partially based on VN's TV interview. I believe that what it ends up describing is the eventual Part 4 of the novel.
________________________________
From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2012 5:18 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Nablering on Field...metaphors and similes to express time
Field mentions Ada, in 1967Â as "by far the most important
forthcoming work...and is to be in large degree an artistic expression and
exploration of the precise meaning of time. Time has occupied an important place
in almost all of Nabokov's major fiction, although it has most often been
contained withing the context of the theme of memory." He next mentions The Gift, Time and Ebb and Lance. In the 1944 short-story
there's probably a hint for Ada's Lettrocalamity...For him, in Time
and Ebb 'a memoirist writes about the time before the 'stupendous
discoveries' of the 1970's, which are evidently connected with time and
immortality:'
"Elementary allobiotic phenomena led their so-called
spiritualists to the silliest forms of transcendental surmise and made so-called
common sense shrug its broad shoulder in equally silly ignorance. Our
denominations of time would have seemed to them 'telephone numbers'. They played
with electricity in various ways without having the slightest notion of what it
really was - and no wonder the chance revelation of its true nature came as a
most hideous surprise..."
From the Gift "Our mistaken feeling of
time as a kind of growth is a consequence of our finiteness which, being always
on the level of the present, implies its constant rise between the watery abyss
of the past and the aerial abyss of the future... The theory I find most
tempting - that there is no time, that everything is the present situated like a
radiance outside our blindness - is just as hopeless a finite hypothesis as all
the others."Â Â Â
Field understands, from Nabokov's description of his new novel, that "it is
to be a scholarly sort of essay on the nature of time in which the metaphors and
similes (without which, according to Nabokov, it is very difficult to speak of
time at all ) gradually start to live and assume the guise of a story, after
which they start "to bleed and fall apart," trailing off into the same recondite
essay with which the novel begins...."
Personally, I'm as puzzled as ever by how certain reiterated
 Nabokov analogies and metaphors are built.* In Ada, as I understand
it, Mascodagama´s tricks serve to excise the
excess of “verbal body” from his work ("We think not in words
but in shadows of words. James Joyce […] gives too much verbal body to his
thoughts” [SO, 30]) by placing Van´s bodily
inversions side by side with his project of inverting metaphors I cannot shake
off the idea that for Nabokov tropes are somehow bound to
physical space and may be flicked over, like
Mascodagama's maniambulations but deep down I know that I'm wrong. Field's
commentary added a new level of mystery to
my blind images.Â
Thoughts?Â
........................................................
*: It starts already with the 2005 article "Time Before and Time After
in Nabokov's Novels" in The Nabokovian 55
Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
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/
________________________________
From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, January 3, 2012 5:18 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Nablering on Field...metaphors and similes to express time
Field mentions Ada, in 1967Â as "by far the most important
forthcoming work...and is to be in large degree an artistic expression and
exploration of the precise meaning of time. Time has occupied an important place
in almost all of Nabokov's major fiction, although it has most often been
contained withing the context of the theme of memory." He next mentions The Gift, Time and Ebb and Lance. In the 1944 short-story
there's probably a hint for Ada's Lettrocalamity...For him, in Time
and Ebb 'a memoirist writes about the time before the 'stupendous
discoveries' of the 1970's, which are evidently connected with time and
immortality:'
"Elementary allobiotic phenomena led their so-called
spiritualists to the silliest forms of transcendental surmise and made so-called
common sense shrug its broad shoulder in equally silly ignorance. Our
denominations of time would have seemed to them 'telephone numbers'. They played
with electricity in various ways without having the slightest notion of what it
really was - and no wonder the chance revelation of its true nature came as a
most hideous surprise..."
From the Gift "Our mistaken feeling of
time as a kind of growth is a consequence of our finiteness which, being always
on the level of the present, implies its constant rise between the watery abyss
of the past and the aerial abyss of the future... The theory I find most
tempting - that there is no time, that everything is the present situated like a
radiance outside our blindness - is just as hopeless a finite hypothesis as all
the others."Â Â Â
Field understands, from Nabokov's description of his new novel, that "it is
to be a scholarly sort of essay on the nature of time in which the metaphors and
similes (without which, according to Nabokov, it is very difficult to speak of
time at all ) gradually start to live and assume the guise of a story, after
which they start "to bleed and fall apart," trailing off into the same recondite
essay with which the novel begins...."
Personally, I'm as puzzled as ever by how certain reiterated
 Nabokov analogies and metaphors are built.* In Ada, as I understand
it, Mascodagama´s tricks serve to excise the
excess of “verbal body” from his work ("We think not in words
but in shadows of words. James Joyce […] gives too much verbal body to his
thoughts” [SO, 30]) by placing Van´s bodily
inversions side by side with his project of inverting metaphors I cannot shake
off the idea that for Nabokov tropes are somehow bound to
physical space and may be flicked over, like
Mascodagama's maniambulations but deep down I know that I'm wrong. Field's
commentary added a new level of mystery to
my blind images.Â
Thoughts?Â
........................................................
*: It starts already with the 2005 article "Time Before and Time After
in Nabokov's Novels" in The Nabokovian 55
Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive
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/