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December 2008: Vladimir Nabokov: Speak, Memory

Is Nabokov showing off or enriching us with his wide-ranging vocabulary? Just in Chapter 5, I pick out

hyperborean
ecchymotic
susurrous
xanthic
enuretic

I have a sense from the context or from their roots what they must mean, enuretic especially. I don't interrupt my reading to look them up, but continue on, a little challenged perhaps.

Sometimes I suspect Nabokov makes words up. After all, Shakespeare did. Discarnate. Out of the body? Free of the body?
 
silverseason said:
Is Nabokov showing off or enriching us with his wide-ranging vocabulary? Just in Chapter 5, I pick out

hyperborean
ecchymotic
susurrous
xanthic
enuretic

I have a sense from the context or from their roots what they must mean, enuretic especially. I don't interrupt my reading to look them up, but continue on, a little challenged perhaps.

Sometimes I suspect Nabokov makes words up. After all, Shakespeare did. Discarnate. Out of the body? Free of the body?
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I don't look them up either .if I did I would not be done through chapter 2...:whistling:

The only one I do know from your list is xanthic,and only because in Greek it means blond and I guess it means some kind of yellow hue.

Discarnate:without a physical body; incorporeal

and what about the French in there,lol,for someone who has no idea,they would have a dictionary and a translation...
 
silverseason said:
Is Nabokov showing off or enriching us with his wide-ranging vocabulary? Just in Chapter 5, I pick out

hyperborean
ecchymotic
susurrous
xanthic
enuretic
Click to expand...

Enriching us- no doubt. Nabokov is one of those rare authors that can pull off such vocabulary "derring do". I generally look them up.
 
I do have this book on my to-do list, but of his other books...I always keep a pen on hand and keep a word list on my bookmark whenever I read Nabokov. Some words require immediate investigation; ancillula, bloviate, etc.

He helps create very interesting word lists. So does Martin Amis.:)
 
He talked very affectionately about his father,very touching words:

"And behind it all there was yet a vey special emotional abyss that I was desperately trying to skirt,lest I burst into tears,and this was the tender friendship underlying my respect for my father..."

and about his child:

"You remember the discoveries we made(supposedly made by all parents):the perfect shape of the miniature fingernails of the hand you silently showed me as it lay,stranded starfishwise,on your palm;the epidermic texture of limb and cheek..."

I finished the book last night. He saw ,smelled.sensed evey bit of detail that someone else would not notice. He made every sound,color,emotion come to life like in a childs book and the imagination of a child.
 
oskylad said:
Congratulations on finishing the book. I'm still stuck with the butterflies.
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It was a vey rewarding read,I am thinking of getting one of his novels,but not Lolita,I will try something else.

Once you get through the butterflies...it get's better. There was a quote somewhere from a lady friend of his about a scientist seeing and a poet feeling,if you find it let me know,I forgot to write it down and I liked it.
 
I got through the tedium of flittering with the butterflies, and loved the train ride in Chapter 7-1 with its remembrance of the valise, the "hardiest survivor" of his Russian heritage, the imagery of the six black wires that in a "triumphant swoop of pathetic elation" were about to reach the top of the window, only to be repeatedly brought low by the "lightning blows" of the telegraph poles, and especially the vision of "a parallel rail line all at once committing suicide by anastomosis" and "a bank of nictitating grass rising, rising, rising".

Too bad about Osip, shot by the "pedantic Bolsheviks" because he "appropriated our bicycles instead of turning them over to the nation". What a stunning parenthesis in an otherwise joyful journey.
 
joderu95 said:
Can anyone speak their memory to me about a chess problem that Nabokov poses in the book?
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"I have before me the sheet of paper upon which that night in Paris,I drew the diagram of the problems position.

White:King on a7,(meaning first file,seventh rank),Queen on b6,Rooks on f4 and h5,Bishops on e4 and h8,Knights on d8 and e6,Pawns on b7 and g3;Black:King on e5,Rook on g7,Bishop on h6,Knights on e2 and g5,Pawns on c3,c6 and d7.

White begins and mates in two moves.The false scent,the irresistable "try" is: Pawn to b8,becoming a Knight,with three beautiful mates following in answer to disclose checks by Black; but Black can defeat the whole brilliant affair by NOT checking White and making instead a modest dilatory move elsewhere on the board."
 
oskylad said:
I got through the tedium of flittering with the butterflies, and loved the train ride in Chapter 7-1 with its remembrance of the valise, the "hardiest survivor" of his Russian heritage, the imagery of the six black wires that in a "triumphant swoop of pathetic elation" were about to reach the top of the window, only to be repeatedly brought low by the "lightning blows" of the telegraph poles, and especially the vision of "a parallel rail line all at once committing suicide by anastomosis" and "a bank of nictitating grass rising, rising, rising".

Too bad about Osip, shot by the "pedantic Bolsheviks" because he "appropriated our bicycles instead of turning them over to the nation". What a stunning parenthesis in an otherwise joyful journey.
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When I see a "valise" in antique shop,I always think of where this valise has been.Where were its travels,and the story they could tell.

What about the freind he had who liked watching beheadings and so forth?:confused:

and the school where he was attending,feeling an outsider and the teachers not being very helpful but adding to him feeling as an outsider.
 
Libra said:
"I have before me the sheet of paper upon which that night in Paris,I drew the diagram of the problems position.

White:King on a7,(meaning first file,seventh rank),Queen on b6,Rooks on f4 and h5,Bishops on e4 and h8,Knights on d8 and e6,Pawns on b7 and g3;Black:King on e5,Rook on g7,Bishop on h6,Knights on e2 and g5,Pawns on c3,c6 and d7.

White begins and mates in two moves.The false scent,the irresistable "try" is: Pawn to b8,becoming a Knight,with three beautiful mates following in answer to disclose checks by Black; but Black can defeat the whole brilliant affair by NOT checking White and making instead a modest dilatory move elsewhere on the board."
Click to expand...

All the subtleties, orchestration, misdirection and false sense of security generated by a good game of chess. Thanks Libra, you relieve my addiction, if only for a moment.
 
I was surprised to see mention of last month's BOTM, Uncle Tom's Cabin in Chapter 8-4. I had no idea this book about an essentially American problem and written in an essentially American style would be known to a teenager in Russia.

In same paragraph Nabokov mentions "the unforgettable handwriting, all thorns and bristles (the like of which I have seen only in the letters from madmen, that, alas, I sometimes receive since the year of grace 1958)". This is a sly reference to the publishing of the American edition of Lolita in 1958 after it had been banned in France and Britain.
 
oskylad said:
I was surprised to see mention of last month's BOTM, Uncle Tom's Cabin in Chapter 8-4. I had no idea this book about an essentially American problem and written in an essentially American style would be known to a teenager in Russia. .
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The best part of that imo:"In the course of our very first colloquy(a conversational exchange; dialogue)*checked the meaning*he casually informed me that Dickens had written Uncle Tom's Cabin,which led to a pounce bet on my part ,winning me his knuckle-duster.After that he was careful not to refer to any literary character or subject in my presence"(He was a bit of a comic?or a bit of arrogance?)



oskylad said:
In same paragraph Nabokov mentions "the unforgettable handwriting, all thorns and bristles (the like of which I have seen only in the letters from madmen, that, alas, I sometimes receive since the year of grace 1958)". This is a sly reference to the publishing of the American edition of Lolita in 1958 after it had been banned in France and Britain.
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Thanks for that,I didn't know.:)
 
I have enjoyed the comments here, especially the remarks about memory and Nabokov's power to use it and evoke it.

In a few weeks I will be leading the discussion of this book for our senior learning group. These readers bring varied backgrounds to the discussion and enjoy being stirred up a bit by provocative comments. They like receiving some historical background or biographical information about the author, but I try to avoid telling them what the book is "about" (assuming that I think that I know), but try to get them to tell me what the book is about for them.

Any suggestions for discussion starters?
 
I especially enjoyed Nabokov's remembrance of his father in Chapter 9. Nabokov refers to "the tender friendship and underlying respect" for his father, and that comes through in every word of the chapter.

In an earlier post, I commented on Nabokov's looking through the "magic glasses" with the sun breaking into "geometrical gems after passing through rhomboids and squares of stained glass" where "f one looked through blue glass, the sand turned to cinders while inky trees swam in a tropical sky. The yellow created an amber world infused with an extra strong brew of sunshine. The red made the foliage drip ruby dark upon a pink footpath. The green soaked greenery in a greener green."

Nabokov uses somewhat the same imagery when he remembers his father's political activities in Chapter 9-4. His teachers were using the example of his father's activities to urge him to get involved with extra-curricular groups. Nabokov stubbornly refused, saying "as often happens with the children of famous fathers, I viewed his activities through a prism of my own, which split into many enchanting colors the rather austere light my teachers glimpsed."
 
oskylad said:
I am reminded of the question "Why did God invent time?" The answer: "So that everything doesn't happen at once." A corollary question is "Why did God invent space?" The answer: "So that everything doesn't happen to me."
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I was delighted to find Nabokov come back to the question of time and space in Chapter 11. He takes the somewhat humorous concept I set out above several steps further by suggesting that "while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time" in which the poet "is the nucleus". Perhaps everything that happens in that split second does happen to the poet.

It would seem both the scientist, by exploring one point in space, and the poet, by exploring one point in time, are touching in very limited ways the essence of the universe created by God. There is a third type of person, one who is called not so much to explore the essence of the universe created by God, but to explore God himself. While the scientist "sees" and the poet "feels", the person seeking God has been thought of as "tasting" God or "hearing" his word. But, like the scientist or the poet who is limited in his or her understanding of the universe created by God, the person seeking God is also limited in his or her understanding of a God who exists both within and beyond space and time.
 
Libra said:
There was a quote somewhere from a lady friend of his about a scientist seeing and a poet feeling,if you find it let me know,I forgot to write it down and I liked it.
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oskylad said:
I was delighted to find Nabokov come back to the question of time and space in Chapter 11. He takes the somewhat humorous concept I set out above several steps further by suggesting that "while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time" in which the poet "is the nucleus". Perhaps everything that happens in that split second does happen to the poet.

It would seem both the scientist, by exploring one point in space, and the poet, by exploring one point in time, are touching in very limited ways the essence of the universe created by God. There is a third type of person, one who is called not so much to explore the essence of the universe created by God, but to explore God himself. While the scientist "sees" and the poet "feels", the person seeking God has been thought of as "tasting" God or "hearing" his word. But, like the scientist or the poet who is limited in his or her understanding of the universe created by God, the person seeking God is also limited in his or her understanding of a God who exists both within and beyond space and time.
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That's the quote.This book deserves a second read eventually.Nice analyzation Oskylad.:)
 
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