Julian Connolly: Re Lilith and Lolita: see, inter
alia, Julian Connolly, "Why Are Nymphets 'Demonic'? Remarks on the Cultural
Roots of Nabokov's Lolita," in The Real Life of Pierre Delalande:
Studies in Russian and Comparative Literature to Honor Alexander Dolinin,
Part 2, ed. David M. Bethea, Lazar Fleishman, Alexander Ospovat (Stanford,
2007): 674-86.
JM: Thank you for the indication.
Barrie Karp [to SB: "On Nabokov and Music, the top
authority is Boris Katz. Unfortunately...the things that have come out are
in Russian. They need to be translated--or everyone needs to learn Russian
(I vote for number 2!..." ] Does this authority on VN & music
know and take jazz into account? improvisation, humor, high wit (and not just
modernist jazz).
JM: Barrie, you raised an important point,
although jazzistic "improvisation, humor, high wit" may also be found
in various other artistic realms and are not a specific
trait that serves to connect Nabokov and music. You stimulated me
to contrast Nabokov's careful textual "chess moves" and emphasis
on structure (that doesn't exclude the whisperings muses) -
with "improvisation."
For one thing, his interviews (as we get them in SO or on tape) are
never "spontaneous," but spontaneity is not the same as "improvisation," which
comes closer to intuition and inspiration (if you can agree with
that!). I'd like to challenge you to find us an example of an
exhilarating moment of improvisation in Nabokov (I'm sure there are
many)... We might also explore synesthesia. I just read Isaac Asimov's "Cal"
(the robot who wanted to become a writer, but was hemmed by the three laws of
robotics which hindered him from being cruel to the readers - and a
lot more), and I'd like to quote one sentence from it, after a technician
installed in him a special "spelling dictionary and a grammar." Cal wrote:
"I had never been able to read easily before, but now as soon as I looked at
the words, I could her them in my ear...I couldn't imagine how I had been unable
to do it before." How puzzling! That's not how I "hear" Nabokov,
inspite of being eerily affected by his use
of signifiers...