I am immensely grateful to Dr. Staden for his comments on my article.
When I discuss "Signs and Symbols" with my American students,
they often raise similar questions about Shabbat and Saturday as the
"sixth day" of the week. It seems to me that the details
noticed by Dr. Staden (the woman buys and cooks fish when it
is already dark, whereas a traditional Jewish woman would have prepared
the Sabbath meal long before dusk, etc) show that the couple are
non-practicing Jews who had actually lost their religion. It
is a phenomenon typical for educated Russian Jews of their generation. My
grandfather who was born in 1880 in a shtetl left his Jewish community
beyond the pale when he was about 20 years old, studied abroad and in St.
Petersburg, got his University degree and eventually became a
free-thinker with very strong connections to Russian culture and customs.
He never rejected (or tried to hide) his Jewish ethnic origins and
because of that was a target of numerous anti-semitic attacks in the USSR
but the Jewish religion didn't mean anything for him: he would never
celebrate Shabbat and his calendar was Christian and/or secular. Most of
the Jews Nabokov knew in the emigration, I think, belonged to the same
type and, portraying the Jewish couple in "Signs and Symbols,"
he was true to reality.
Alexander Dolinin
At 09:54 AM 12/2/04 -0800, you wrote:
EDNOTE. Dr. Stadlen is a prominent
psychoanalyst and academic. He offers a novel
angle here that I don't recall seeing before, although Maxim Shrayer has
done a
lot of work on Nabokov and Jewish issues.
----- Forwarded message from STADLEN@aol.com -----
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 06:21:01 EST
From: STADLEN@aol.com
Alexander Dolinin's essay on "Signs and Symbols" seems to me a
real
breakthrough.
Just one point troubles me here, continuing something that always
troubled me
in the story. This Jewish couple don't behave as if Friday evening
(and
Saturday until dusk) is the Sabbath. The woman buys fish when it is
already
dark,
whereas a traditional Jewish woman would have prepared the Sabbath meal
long
before dusk. True, they have a festive midnight tea which is a real
celebration
of their loving transcendence of hopelessness, and this is in the spirit,
if
not the letter, of Shabbat.
But I have always wondered whether Nabokov meant his readers to
register
this. If he was simply unaware of it, or overlooked it, it seems
insensitive;
and
that does not seem like him. I suspect that this a further problem he
is
setting for the reader. Is their assimilation and apparent alienation
from
religious roots part of the story?
Despite the brilliance of Alexander Dolinin's pioneering interpretation,
it,
too, "jarred" with me when he apparently casually,
unreflectingly, called
Saturday the "sixth day" rather than the seventh (see
below).
I am deeply grateful to him for making such sense of this short story
that
has puzzled me so long. But I just wonder if this apparent treatment of
the
Jewish seventh day as if it were merely the Christian or post-Christian
secular
sixth is another deliberate device of Nabokov's intended to disconcert
the
reader into discovering a different dimension.
Anthony Stadlen
<< In the context of "Signs and Symbols," with its
emphasis on numerical
sequences and patterning, the transmitted six acquires several
meaningful
connections and implications. It should be noted at once that the
ciphered
message
comes after midnight, when Saturday, the sixth day of the week, has
already
begun. The Holocaust background of the story suggests an association with
the
Star
of David, a six-pointed symbol that signifies a union of man with a
divine
principle. The cipher obviously alludes to the photo of the boy
"aged six <...>
when he drew wonderful birds with human hands and feet and suffered
from
insomnia like a grown-up man," which not only evokes his dream of a
flight and a
bird-headed Sirin, but also echoes the old man's insomnia during the
immediate
present of the narration. What is even more significant, though, is the
relation
of the sixth slot on the ten-digit telephone dial to the set of ten jars
and,
by implication, to the future of the boy and his parents. It parallels
the
sixth, unread "eloquent label" of the series that comes after
"crab apple" and
presumably promises a sweeter continuation21--the next stage of
metamorphosis
that will follow the misery of madness, persecution, old age, and
despair. The
cipher seems to tell the old woman (and the reader) that her fears (and
ours)
for "the fate of tenderness" and love in the world are
premature, and that her
thinking of death as "monstrous darkness" is shortsighted. In
other words, it
informs her (and the reader) of the central event of the fabula--the
eventual
death of the boy, though not as annihilation, the meaningless and empty
zero,
but as transformation, the mystery of rebirth (hence the motive of
birthday
and the "conspicuous" birthmark in the final paragraph), the
meaningful, albeit
unnamed "sixth step" in the open, incomplete, unfolding
sequence. >>
----- End forwarded message -----
Alexander Dolinin's essay on "Signs and Symbols"
seems to me a real breakthrough.
Just one point troubles me here, continuing something that always
troubled me in the story. This Jewish couple don't behave as if Friday
evening (and Saturday until dusk) is the Sabbath. The woman buys fish
when it is already dark, whereas a traditional Jewish woman would have
prepared the Sabbath meal long before dusk. True, they have a festive
midnight tea which is a real celebration of their loving transcendence of
hopelessness, and this is in the spirit, if not the letter, of
Shabbat.
But I have always wondered whether Nabokov meant his readers to register
this. If he was simply unaware of it, or overlooked it, it seems
insensitive; and that does not seem like him. I suspect that this a
further problem he is setting for the reader. Is their assimilation and
apparent alienation from religious roots part of the story?
Despite the brilliance of Alexander Dolinin's pioneering interpretation,
it, too, "jarred" with me when he apparently casually,
unreflectingly, called Saturday the "sixth day" rather than the
seventh (see below).
I am deeply grateful to him for making such sense of this short story
that has puzzled me so long. But I just wonder if this apparent treatment
of the Jewish seventh day as if it were merely the Christian or
post-Christian secular sixth is another deliberate device of Nabokov's
intended to disconcert the reader into discovering a different
dimension.
Anthony Stadlen
<< In the context of "Signs and Symbols," with its
emphasis on numerical sequences and patterning, the transmitted six
acquires several meaningful connections and implications. It should be
noted at once that the ciphered message comes after midnight, when
Saturday, the sixth day of the week, has already begun. The Holocaust
background of the story suggests an association with the Star of David, a
six-pointed symbol that signifies a union of man with a divine principle.
The cipher obviously alludes to the photo of the boy "aged
six <...> when he drew wonderful birds with human hands and
feet and suffered from insomnia like a grown-up man," which not only
evokes his dream of a flight and a bird-headed Sirin, but also echoes the
old man's insomnia during the immediate present of the narration. What is
even more significant, though, is the relation of the sixth slot on the
ten-digit telephone dial to the set of ten jars and, by
implication, to th e future of the boy and his parents. It parallels the
sixth, unread "eloquent label" of the series that comes after
"crab apple" and presumably promises a sweeter
continuation21--the
next stage of metamorphosis that will follow the misery of madness,
persecution, old age, and despair. The cipher seems to tell the old woman
(and the reader) that her fears (and ours) for "the fate of
tenderness" and love in the world are premature, and that her
thinking of death as "monstrous darkness" is shortsighted. In
other words, it informs her (and the reader) of the central event of the
fabula--the eventual death of the boy, though not as annihilation,
the meaningless and empty zero, but as transformation, the mystery of
rebirth (hence the motive of birthday and the "conspicuous"
birthmark in the final paragraph), the meaningful, albeit unnamed
"sixth step" in the open, incomplete, unfolding sequence.
>>