Matt Roth: ... with regard to the
question of fugal structure in VN's work, I would like to recommend Gerard de
Vries's article from Cycnos, "Nabokov's Pale Fire, Its Structure and the Last
Works of J.S. Bach." I think it's accessible here:
http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1052
JM:
Some time in the past there was a reference to Douglas Hofstadter's book
on Bach & The Art of the Fugue. My copy is at my office and I couldn't
manage List-googling to recover a posting in which Dmitri Nabokov expressed his
opinions about Hofstadter.
I only found my own message posted on August
03, 2003 12:16 PM with the subject: Editor's Notes on Sebastian Knight -
another approach?
Here is the text:
Hi, Don
There is a very
interesting book by Douglas Hofstadter ( " Escher, Gödel and Bach, the eternal
golden braid") where he discusses the hypothesis that BACH died after he wrote a
fugue using the musical notes that corresponded to his name and created a
self-referential theme.
Jansy
This reference to Bach's death after
including in his last Fugue the notes BACH (in the German
notation) might fit in with MR's interest in fugal themes and Kinbote's
suicide.