Dear Stan,
Many thanks for your kind words and even kinder
offer, but I must warn you that my "discovery" of links between LATH and MMZ
isn't worth much. At least, I'm not as sure about them as I am about
anagrammatical games in ADA (Baron Klim Avidov, Vivian Darkbloom, Flavita,
Alfavit, etc.). To my non-mathematician's uncomputerized mind the plain
obvious fact that the characters in the Russian phrase §ð§ß§í§Û §®§Ú§Ý§î§ä§à§ß
(young Milton) can be reshuffled in such a way as to form the phrase §Þ§Ú§Ý§í§Û
§¯§î§ð§ä§à§ß (dear Newton) still retains its magic. Note that, like Milton (Abraham
Milton, the founder of Amerussia, and Milton Abraham, who helped Aqua to
organize a Phree Pharmacy in Belokonsk: 1.3), Newton is mentioned in ADA
(Part Four). As you may know, the first Russian
poet who mentioned Newton (he spelled the name §¯§Ö§Ó§ä§à§ß to rhyme it
with §±§Ý§Ñ§ä§à§ß, Plato*) was M. V. Lomonosov. Lomonosov = Solomonov
(of/belonging to [king] Solomon). As to Milton, one of Pushkin's last articles
was on Chateaubriand's translation of Paradise Lost (paradise = Ardis +
ape). Speaking of Pushkin and my adding/subtracting
characters:
Suvorin + Peshkov + u = Suvorov + Pushkin + e
Alexey Suvorin was Chekhov's friend and publisher;
Alexey Peshkov was the real name of Maxim Gorky (another friend of A. P.
Chekhov). I trust the names Aleksandr Suvorov and Aleksandr Pushkin are familiar
to everybody. The name Peshkov comes from §á§Ö§ê§Ü§Ñ (pawn, in chess) and reminds one
of Petushkov, a character in Eugene Onegin. The readers of VN's
commentary to EO know that §á§Ö§ä§å§ê§à§Ü means "cockerel".
*§Ú §ã§Þ§à§Ø§Ö§ä §ã§à§Ò§ã§ä§Ó§Ö§ß§ß§í§ç §±§Ý§Ñ§ä§à§ß§à§Ó
§Ú §Ò§í§ã§ä§â§í§ç §â§Ñ§Ù§å§Þ§à§Þ §¯§Ö§Ó§ä§à§ß§à§Ó
§²§à§ã§ã§Ú§Û§ã§Ü§Ñ§ñ §Ù§Ö§Þ§Ý§ñ §â§à§Ø§Õ§Ñ§ä§î.
"the quick-witted Newtons" indeed!
More later, when I have more
time.
p. s. Good luck to Liverpool FC in tomorrow's match
with Benfica!
best,
Alexey
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2010 9:11
PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Dostoevski and
psychoanalysis
Alexey: Ha §ã§Ý§Ñ§Óy! Your discovery of links between LATH
and Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko do merit a reward, and if my current email
negotiations with the Royal Nigerian Bank bear fruit, I promise to express my
gratitude with a hard-monetary gesture. Your clever anagrammatical games,
however, do little to advance Nabokovian understanding and scholarship.
Indeed, our enjoyment of VN¡¯s own wordplays may well suffer from seeing how
easy it is to juggle characters! You magnify the pointlessness by introducing
the trick of adding then subtracting selected characters to achieve the
desired equation. You must know that computers have taken all the mystical,
gemiatric ¡°fun¡± out of such manipulations: see, especially, Don Knuth¡¯s latest
volume in his Art of Computing series, devoted to Combinatorics where N-letter
Word Golf problems succumb to a few mouse-clicks. The creativity has moved
from trial-and-error manual juggling to the clever sods who program these
divine algorithms. I single out Knuth (quod googlet) because he has pioneered
¡°literary¡± programming, in the sense that good code should have the attributes
we associate with good writing. You (after due apprenticeship!) can (re-)read
the text of well-structured programs (none of that goto-infected ¡°spaghetti¡±
code seen in barbaric Basic) with Nabokovian delight.
An analogy worth
pondering: suppose the VN-list received regular examples of
reader-devised cryptic crosswords and chess-problems, rather than
reader-devised anagrams and wordplays? I claim the former might provide
more insights into VN¡¯s remarkable mind. Both Cryptic Crosswords and Chess
problems can gain much help from computers (both setting and solving) but
retain an irreducible human-creativity challenge. E.g., after many years of
analysis and computer-scrutiny by Kasparov and others, Raymone Keene reports a
startling move that would have changed the classic Capablanca-Reshevsky
game.
Re-Grigoriy Perelman: his story (scandale!) was aired on this
list a few years ago. It¡¯s well-nigh impossible for non-mathematicians to
fathom his glorious achievement (proof of Poincar¨¦ Conjecture for
3-dimensional spheres). I studied under Stephen Smale (who proved the Poincar¨¦
Conjecture in 1961 for dimensions greater than 3*!!) and under Ren¨¦
Thom (who threw spanners into earlier non-proofs for dimension 3!!) yet cannot
claim to follow all the diabolical subtleties of Perelman¡¯s proof (published
first in outline then refined with the detail needed to convince his peers).
It took the experts some time to verify, and then for the Fields Medal and $1
million Clay Prize to be awarded. And declined! It¡¯s no secret that many
mathematicians were peed off by Perelman¡¯s rejection of these honours, not so
much the giving up of the cash rewards, but the implied insult to a community.
Perelman¡¯s proof rested on the previous hard-won results of many
mathematicians. Rather than Newton¡¯s modest claim of standing on giants¡¯
shoulders, Perelman¡¯s rejection seems more like ungratefully treading on
giants¡¯ toes! Still, weirdly ¡°beautiful minds¡± are well-known in the arts and
sciences! We mortals forgive John Nash, Alexander Grothendieck (Alexey: he
makes Perelman seem boringly normal!), Kurt Go:del, Paul Dirac, Wolfgang
Pauli, more.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
* The earthly-surface spheres we are used
to are 2-dimensional manifolds embedded in our familiar 3-dimensional space.
The 3-dimensional sphere embedded in 4-dimensions is tougher to visualize, yet
represents a plausible model for the very cosmos we INHABIT! That the
conjecture was proved first for even higher dimensions (4-d spheres embedded
in 5 dimensions, etc) must puzzle outsiders! Cases d = 0, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7
.... trivial or proven, but why should d = 3 turn out to have been so
intractable until Grigoriy? It¡¯s a moot point to what extent VN appreciated
the mathematical, as opposed to the mystical, properties of these higher
dimensions. See VN¡¯s struggle with Einstein¡¯s (3+1)-d spacetime in The
Quill and the Scalpel: Nabokov's Art and the Worlds of Science (Stephen
Blackwell).
On 25/03/2010 08:32, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark05@MAIL.RU>
wrote:
Pity that no one has offered me a
million-dollar prize for my "discoveries" (whatever they are worth). This
would allow me to pay for the Internet services and write to Nabokv-L till
the end of my days.
On the other hand, I know that Perelman (a genius
and a freak in his own right) is not particularly happy to be so popular
with the media.
Alexey Sklyarenko
All private
editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.