Word Droppings and
Tesselation
(1) (
S.O.Ch.3,1964, pages 29/30) Asked to read a few random notes from a work in progress, VN replied:
" This box contains index cards
with some notes I made at various time...and discarded when writing Pale
Fire. It's a little batch of rejects. Help yourself... "Time without
consciousness -lower animal world; time with consciousness-man; consciousness
without time- some still higher state"...
Kinbote's Foreword: As a rule, Shade destroyed drafts the moment he ceased to need
them...But he saved those twelve cards because of the unused felicities
shining among the dross of used draftings...
Shade's poem Pale Fire, lines
507-510: "You and I,/ And she, then a mere
tot, moved from New Wye/ To Yewshade, in another, higher
state"
(2)(SM,
1947, Ch.3, page 77)
" A sense of security, of well-being,
of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the
present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the
room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be,
nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die."
(Bend Sinister, preface,
1963)
"Krug, in a sudden moonburst of
madness, understands that he is in good hands: nothing on earth really matters,
there is nothing to fear, and death is but a question of style, a mere
literary device, a musical resolution. And as Olga's rosy
soul...bombinates in the damp dark at the bright window of my
room..."
(Bend Sinister,1947, last
sentence)
Twang. A good night for
mothing.
(3) On
"terminal initials"
Pale Fire: Comments on line
502, IPH: " Its terminal initials, HP,
provide its students with the abbreviation Hi-Phi, and Shade neatly parodies
this in his IPH, or If, combinations"
Transparent Things: Ch.1: "Hullo, person!", Ch. 2: " As the
person, Hugh Person...extricated his angular bulk from the
taxi..." .... (IF???? IPH???
Peut-être/potato?)
LATH: It has taken him
time--even if only a few moments--to cover distance HP in
thought. By the time he reaches P he has accumulated
duration, he is saddled with it! Why then is it so
extraordinary that he cannot imagine himself turning on his heel? Nobody can
imagine in physical terms the act of reversing the order of time.
Time is not reversible. (252)
Jansy: quotations about art
and science ( that I should have posted yesterday):
SO, ch.1,1962:
" "the passion of science and the patience of poetry...the specific detail to
the generalization, images to ideas, obscure facts to clear
symbols".
SO, Ch2, 1962:
" a kind of merging between two things, between the precision of poetry and the
excitement of pure science"..." a good combination should always contain a
certain element of deception"..."I just like composing riddles with elegant
solutions".
SO, Ch 6,1967
: "There is no science without fancy, and no art without
facts."
SO,ch3, 1964:
Lolita... "composition of a beautiful puzzle - its composition and its
solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on
the way you look"...."imagination without knowledge leads no farther than the
back yard of primitive art...Art is never simple."