An endless enjoyable task: read and re-read
Nabokov's shadows and foreshadows. Then read and re-read notes and commentaries
about N's books. Today, from Boyd into ADA istelf. In this novel we find
examples about how Nabokov's
sentences reveal his mathematical frame of mind, similar to the
one that has been brought up here quite recently [ the equation:
Darwin or Gauss were as deeply and rapturously involved in their work as
Browning or Joyce.] In this case the reader is invited to forward his
own interpretation, with no guarantees concerning the truth of his
conclusion.
The same, again, in relation to Einstein and Engelwein
(cf. BB's Nabokov's ADA, the Place of Consciousness, note 2 to chapter 11 on
pages 330-331) or, as Boyd points out, in: "He assaults linear notions of
time as motion in one irreversible direction" but "Paradoxically, Van
attacks the idea of time as direction while giving his treatise the form of a
journey." (pages 189 and 187).
As I understand, VN is expressing the actuality of an
idea whose meaning is not in the content of the sentence, but on how it is
stylistically rendered.
Take Forest Fork and Van's notes about "time forks"
with its events foreshadowing others to be equally foreshadowed
next. I lost count but the sensation
of "fairy-tale three times" remained, while VN's
characters established their "future
recollections".
The "three" appears in the "Three Swans" ( Les Trois
Cygnes- Signe/Signs/Swans), discussed in older postings.
B.Boyd had mentioned one scene: "Would she look up? All her flowers
turned up to him, beaming, and she made the royal-grant gesture of lifting and
offering him the mountains, the mist and the lake with three
swans." These swans had been "foreshadowed" by: In the lounge, as seen through its entrance, the huge memorable
oil — three ample-haunched Ledas swapping lacustrine impressions — had been
replaced by a neoprimitive masterpiece showing three yellow eggs and a pair of
plumber’s gloves on what looked like wet bathroom tiling". These are
perhaps the three yellow eggs from which three
swans were hatched, or a triplicate mythical mother, Leda, after
being seduced by a "Jupiter Olorinus" (mentioned very early as a Baron in
the flavita series?).
But three
swans foreshadow other dates in ADA: "He put up
there at his usual hotel, Les Trois Cygnes [...]
in the early afternoon, Dorothy, ‘frantically’ trying to ‘locate’
Ada (who after her usual visit to the Three Swans was spending a couple of
profitable hours at Paphia’s ‘Hair and Beauty’ Salon) left a message for Van,
who got it only late at night when he returned from a trip to
Sorcière[...]Then the friendly Fates took a day off ( the three moira?
Sorcières?). Or they may bring up a constitutive past
event:"...looking at their watches when Marina in a black cloak slipped into Demon’s
arms and swan-sleigh.", in a scene that juggles with spacetime and the
reality of
fiction.
Also in ADA a play with logic: "During the next few days, Dorothy used her leisure to spy upon
Ada. The woman
was sure of three things: that Ada had a lover in
Switzerland; that Van was her
brother; and that he was arranging for his irresistible sister secret trysts
with the person she had loved before her marriage. The delightful phenomenon of
all three terms being true, but making nonsense when hashed, provided Van with
another source of amusement.The Three Swans overwinged a bastion. Anyone who called, flesh or
voice, was told by the concierge or his acolytes that Van was out, that Madame
André Vinelander was unknown, and that all they could do was to take a
message."
We see that Dorothy
was sure of three things and that, "all three terms being true",
were "nonsense when hashed".
This
sequence reminded me of Freud's comments [
Cf. S.
Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900, SE vol. IV,
describing the joke in which a man, accused of having damaged the teapot a
neighbor had lent, expounded his innocence by warranting that: (1) he had
returned the teapot in perfect condition; (2) the teapot was already
damaged when he borrowed it; (3) he had never borrowed his neighbor's teapot in
the first place. Freud shows that each isolated explanation
is acceptable - not the hashed three when simultaneously presented.
This anedocte is also mentioned in 1905, on Freud's book on "Jokes and the
Unconscious" (ch.II, sec.8 on double-meanings that give rise
to false sophisms.)
]
JM