> The woman buys fish when it is already dark, whereas a traditional Jewish woman would have prepared the Sabbath meal long before dusk

>> but the Jewish religion didn't mean anything for him: he would never celebrate Shabbat and his calendar was Christian and/or secular

For the sake of the truth (which is a remote form of ‘reality’) let me comment that educated Jewish people of Russian origin have more then ‘zero’ connection with Jewish Religion. The characterization ‘didn’t mean anything’ may apply to some (in Academia?)  but it is not typical – significant number of ‘educated Jews from Russia’, celebrate High Jewish Holidays and Passover quite diligently, – especially as Soviet years wear out. Thanks to Soloveichik connection we know 1) that Sols are from Byelorussia were entire communities were annihilated by Germans and local population in 1941-1942, 2) that Sol’s are probably Soloveichiks themselves and daughter of Rebecca Borisovna married into Sol’s family. Let’s not be too harsh on Mr. and Mrs. Sol. They did not desecrate anything. Especially since, quite fittingly, VN placed in quotes reality – not the truth.

-----Original Message-----
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 4:28 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Dolinin reply to Staden re "Signs & Symbols"

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. >>