Dear List,
Alexey said that "the jinn was let
out of the bottle, it is difficult to coop him up again. I hope Jansy will
pardon me for sharing with the List the following anagramatic combination"
[ on Cagliostro, Caligula, California, Caligari..."]
Why the tease, Alexey? Nabokov engenders a
kind of fascination that often lies beyond his
own words! This is why I am thankful to
Matt Roth who took the trouble to write: On an unrelated note, many thanks
to Jansy for finding all of those fours and forties. I don't know what they
mean, but I'm intrigued."
In relation to "Signs and Symbols",
A.Stadlen wrote: "I swear that I am not trying to
tantalise. Jennifer [ Jenefer] Coates, my new-found neighbour who was
the "mystery" speaker ...did make a contribution to a possible answwer
to the question of what Nabokov meant by the "inside" story of "Signs and
Symbols"... I shall be writing a little about the seminar soon... please do not
expect anything remotely like "closure." and I'm glad to learn that the mystery speaker is Jenefer
Coates who has already contributed to the VN-List in the
past.
Sandy quoted Nabokov: "I saw a rose in a glass on
the table [...] There was no note pinned to the pillow, nothing at all in the
room to enlighten me, for of course the rose was merely what French rhymesters
call une cheville." - to emphasize VN's reference
to "cheville". Drescher started his very interesting
article, found in "Zembla" with C.Doyle's: "Holmes, why is
the rose une cheville?" / "For the same reason, my dear Watson, that the request
is denied!". He then explained that "in French, a "cheville" is
any sort of peg or bolt. In the 2nd Edition of Webster's New International
Dictionary, the peg is that of a stringed instrument, from which the primary,
literary meaning derives by metaphor. Robert Louis Stevenson explains and
extends the meaning in On Some Technical Elements of Style." before he made
Holmes conclude: "It is not the rose that is the cheville, but the entire
paragraph."
Umberto Eco [Sulla Letteratura (2002)] connects
"cheville" to the sense given to it by VN and RL Stevenson in connection
to rethorical resources such as the "zeppa", an element which serves
to patch up or artificially hold together a text. For U. Eco the criteria for
establishing the "zeppa" ( the Italian word for the
"ancilla" or the "cheville" in Latin and in French) varies from
time to time: it may be considered negligible in the eyes of
certain art-critics but it may become an essential element for others.
The "ancillary turn" implies an imperfection in a written text
that arises, for example, when characters are in a dialogue and this forces
the writer to explain "he said, he thought, she answered, she sighed" (etc) to
fill in directions about their conversation...) And
here is one more loose connection: cheville & ancilla,
servants & sexuality in art!
For Nabokov not only introduced "the cheville" ( as Drescher
analyses in "...that in Aleppo once" in connection betrayal and
jealousy), but he considered sexuality as "ancillary" to art
( sex is but a servant, “an ancilla of
art” )
......................................................................