In an old (28 Feb 2007) posting on “Blue reality” there’s an exchange that mentions Bishop Berkeley:
CHW: "…there might be some philosophical distinction between the independent existence of “blue” and the Juniper tree in the quad, when there’s no-one around to see it. There seems to me a difference between the human perception of colours and the perception of concrete objects..." [ ] .."that could mean that Zembla also has reality, since it is so vividly perceived by Kinbote, and therefore also by God. Most fiction is, and most people in fiction are, I suppose, much more real than the nameless multitudes who have led “real” lives."
JM: Charles must have been quoting Bishop Berkeley ( "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it really fall?")
Long before (date unavailable) Berkeley also came up in a posting by Carolyn Kunin:
CK: The names and relations between Violet Knox and Ronald Oranger have always intrigued me. [ ] I may have stumbled on at least part of the solution. I think VN is referring to Monsignor Ronald Knox. From the Wikipedia article I noticed his associations with Sherlock Holmes & G K Chesterton that could link him to interests of VN. But they aren't sufficient to explain his "appearance" in Ada, if that it be. Therefore, I suspect it's the monsignor's famous limerick that holds the key. Here is the limerick which was Knox's humorous comment on the pre-existential philosopher Berkeley's concerns about perceptions and reality:
There was a young man who said "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one
About in the quad."
"Dear Sir, your astontishment's odd,
I am always about in the quad;
And thefore the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by
Yours faithfully, God."
My guess is that Oranger is an anglicism of "orangier" (orange tree) and refers to Berkeley's Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous:
Philonous: Ask the gardner why he thinks yonder cherry tree exists in the garden, and he shall tell you, because he sees and feels it; in a word, because he perceives it by his senses. Ask him, why he thinks an orange tree not to be there, and he shall tell you, because he does not perceive it.
I chose to bring up those old postings because, during my “ninety minutes” reading of Paul Strathern’s booklet on “Berkeley,” I came across an interesting information about the Irish philosopher and his friend, Jonathan Swift.
Apparently Esther Vanromrigh, Swift’s beloved “Vanessa”*, left three thousand pounds in her will to Swift’s friend George Berkeley who, at that time, was planning to move to America, after his disenchantment with Great Britain (Cf. “An Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain” and a prophetic poem “Westward the Course of Empire Take Its Way”). **
Berkeley’s theories about his inability to form “abstract ideas,” instead of particularizing every perceived or imagined object, might have interested Vladimir Nabokov in his dissatisfaction with “symbols,” as it’s well illustrated in his examples addressed to Rowe: “The fatal flaw in Mr. Rowe's treatment of recurrent words, such as "garden" or "water," is his regarding them as abstractions, and not realizing that the sound of a bath being filled, say, in the world of Laughter in the Dark, is as different from the limes rustling in the rain of Speak, Memory as the Garden of Delights in Ada is from the lawns in Lolita.” VN’s proximity to the theories of “intelligent design” (in his paper about mimicry) seem to suggest Berkeley’s conclusion about “esse est percipi” and God’s role in “sustaining” the existing material world. The motivation related to Bishop Berkeley’s move to America might also have struck VN.
Would Nabokov have been familiar with Berkeley’s philosophy and chosen to refer to him, only indirectly, through his mention of J.Swift and the Vanessas, in Pale Fire?
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* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Vanhomrigh
Esther Vanhomrigh (known by the pseudonym Vanessa; c. 1688 – 2 June 1723), an Irish woman of Dutch descent, was a longtime lover and correspondent ofJonathan Swift. Swift's letters to her were published after her death. Her fictional name “Vanessa” was created by Swift by taking Van from her surname, Vanhomrigh, and adding Esse, the pet form of her first name, Esther.
She was fictionalized as “Vanessa” in Swift's poem Cadenus and Vanessa (1713) [ ] Their relationship was fraught. It was broken up after 17 years by Swift's relationship with another woman, Esther Johnson, whom he called "Stella", in 1723. Swift had known Stella since about 1690, when she was a little girl in the household of his employer Sir William Temple; their relationship was intense and it is possible that they had secretly married in 1716. Esther is thought to have asked Swift not to see Stella again, and he apparently refused, thus putting an end to their relationship. Esther never recovered from his rejection and died on June 2 of that year, probably from tuberculosis contracted from nursing her sister Mary; some accused Swift of inadvertently causing her death. Her father had left her well provided for, but she was burdened by debts accumulated by her mother and spendthrift brother Bartholomew. In her will, she named Robert Marshall and George Berkeley co-executors and joint residuary legatees of her estate, although she knew neither man particularly well. Due to the debts, a protracted lawsuit ensued and a large part of the estate was lost in the legal costs. It was widely reported that she had made it a condition of the inheritance that they publish all her correspondence with Swift, but in fact no such stipulation seems to have been made.
** - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley
In 1723 following her violent quarrel with Jonathan Swift, Esther Vanhomrigh ("Vanessa") named Berkeley her co-heir along with the barrister Robert Marshall; her choice of legatees caused surprise since she did not know either of them well, although Berkeley as a very young man had known her father. Swift said generously that he did not grudge Berkeley his inheritance, much of which vanished in a lawsuit in any event[ ] In 1725, he began the project of founding a college in Bermuda for training ministers and missionaries in the colony, in pursuit of which he gave up his deanery with its income of £1100.. In 1728, he married Anne Forster…He then went to America on a salary of £100 per annum. He landed near Newport, Rhode Island, where he bought a plantation in Middletown, Rhode Island – the famous "Whitehall". It has been claimed that "he introduced Palladianism into America by borrowing a design from [William] Kent's Designs of Inigo Jones for the door-case of his house in Rhode Island [Whitehall]". He also brought to New England John Smibert, the British artist he "discovered" in Italy, who is generally regarded as the founding father of American portrait painting. Meanwhile, he drew up plans for the ideal city he planned to build on Bermuda.[9] He lived at the plantation while he waited for funds for his college to arrive. The funds, however, were not forthcoming and, in 1732, he left America and returned to London.