Stan K-B addresses Chaz/JA/JM: it is quite strange that certain words sound ugly to certain ears
without upsetting others. Is it the combination of sound and meaning that
grates? Recall Saussure’s key notion that the mapping from signifier to
signified is quite arbitrary...It’s fine to indulge in puns and word games as
long as you don’t start attaching mystical significance to accidental resonances
and anagrams... Judging sounds as sweet or sour is very much a cultural
exercise...So, why does sex sound ugly while the same sibilants and gutturals in
exciting (literally) sound so exciting? Is there a lurking puritanical objection
to the sex act itself? Exactly!
JM: A puritanical objection seems to
be present in V's remark:the very sound of the word 'sex' with its hissing vulgarity and
the 'ks, ks' catcall at the end, seems so inane to me that I cannot help
doubting whether there is any real idea behind the word.
And
yet, I slowly realized that he must have had a motive, one quite similar to
Nabokov's own, to object ( judging him, a young man that is quite
inexperienced in sex, speaking here as a "puritanical", now became
meaningless) V. states that he believes that "granting 'sex' a special situation when tackling a human problem,
or worse still, letting the 'sexual idea', if such a thing exists, pervade and
'explain' all the test is a grave error of reasoning.", now
returning to the expression "sexual idea",
thereby dispelling what seemed to be a prudish sulking mood.
What is, indeed, a "sexual idea"? Certainly not related to the juicy
and seldom gentle genital conjunctio?
Horizontal and vertical semiotics are usually
at war in VN's texts: he cultivates the modern mirroring
and self-referentiality of the
first - without giving up the incantatory power of
words or, as V. states, their "undulations and resonances".
Matt Roth: brings up Carasik, Michael.
"Transcending the Boundary of Death: Ecclesiastes Through a Nabokovian Lens."
Biblical Interpretation 14.5 (15 Oct. 2006): 425-443.[ ...Ch. 12 of
Ecclesiastes depicts a scene that combines elements of the death of a
person with others that describe the death of an entire world. Vladimir
Nabokov’s novel Invitation to a Beheading ends with a similar scene...] and
notes that "Carasik does a fine job exploring his thesis. He
does not argue that Nabokov was influenced by Ecclesiastes; rather he concludes
that the writer of Ecclesiastes and Nabokov are both dealing with similar
problems and have found similar solutions....Moreover, both writers expressed
this idea artistically by allowing a higher-order reality to appear in their own
works as the result of an apparent death in the lower-order reality of the world
they had created with words."
J.A.: ...I
myself have always wondered at precisely how one could be "laughingly alive" in
books as well, which are just words, but I think this literalizes an idea of
N.'s.[...] I supose he means that the best and truest part of Sebastian is his
artistic output.[...] Is Sebastian really a great writer? [ Goodman
didn't believe he was...] The quotes certainly bristle with
tons of style, but the works as described by V. sound like arch parodies of
Nabokov's work.[...] As to V.'s opinion that he's not able to imitate
Sebastian's style, that's patently false--the quotes from the books[...] sound
exactly the same as V.
JM: An exercise in style, then. Who
wrote these titillating born-again idioms and
alusions, quoted below? A Russian with little experience
of the English?
p.7: "far too easy to talk of a
dead author behind the backs of his books";
p.9: " he felt satisfaction at
having got the upper hand in his dealings with
destiny";
p.12 ( on sharing the same mistress): "It's nobody's fault that you and I were in the same boat
once";
p.15 (Hamlet) "prompted by
the desire to get one's book into the market while the flowers on a fresh grave
may still be watered with profit";
p.40 (Mariane Moore, "a real toad in an imaginary
garden") " repellent bulldog type of man, getting fatter in
a world of photographic backgrounds and real front gardens" if we
compare with p.154 Mme Lecerf's "frog-faced, wheezing, black
bulldog" (btw it is also a commentary on "laughingly alive in
books")
p.53: "I intended to follow his
life stage by stage without overtaking him"; ( as announced
by a firm of undertakers: "we'll be the last to let you down")
p.61: "One critic even went as far
as to take his hat off to Mr. Goodman - who, let it be added, had used his own
merely to talk through it"
p.99 "can't you see that
happiness at its very best is but the zany of its own
mortality?"
p.99: "even the door is as dead as
its nail"