NPPF - Nabokov & Time

[David Morris]

http://moshkow.isurgut.ru/koi/NABOKOW/Inter10.txt

Q:  The following two quotations seem closely  related:  "I
confess  I  do  not  believe  in  time. I like to fold my magic
carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part  of
the  pattern  upon  another. " (Speak, Memory) and "pure
time, perceptual time, tangible time,  time  free  of  content,
context and running commentary-- this is my time and theme. All
the  rest  is  numerical  symbol or some aspect of space. "
(Ada). Will you give me a lift on your magic carpet to point
out bow time is animated in the story of Van and Ada? 

VN:   In his study of time  my  creature  distinguishes  between
text  and  texture, between the contents of time and its almost
tangible essence. I ignored that distinction  in  my  Speak,
Memory  and was mainly concerned with being faithful to the
patterns of my past. I  suspect  that  Van  Veen,  having  less
control over his imagination than I, novelized in his indulgent
old age many images of his youth.

Q:   You  have  spoken  in  the past of your indifference to
music, but in Ada you  describe  time  as  "rhythm,  the
tender intervals between Stresses. " Are these rhythms musical,
aural, physical, cerebral, what? 

VN:   Those  "intervals"  which  seem to reveal the gray gaps of
time between the black bars of space are much more  similar  to
the  interspaces between a metronome's monotonous beats than to
the varied rhythms of music or verse.


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