NPPF Preliminary - Time and Design

[Jasper Fidget]

"One of the central themes of Nabokov's work has always been that Time, if
we could return to it endlessly, might disclose evidence of a richness and
design obscured by the crowdedness of passing mortal time." (Brian Boyd,
_Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years_, 467).

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our
existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of
darkness."(_Speak Memory_)

"Nature expects a full grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and
aft, as stolidly as he accepts the extraordinary visions in between.
Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and immature, should be
limited.  In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.  I rebel
against this state of affairs."  (_Speak Memory_)

"Over and over again, my mind has made colossal efforts to distinguish the
faintest of personal glimmers in the impersonal darkness on both sides of my
life. That this darkness is caused merely by the walls of time separating me
and my bruised fists from the free world of timelessness is a belief I
gladly share with the most gaudily painted savage. I have journeyed back in
thought -- with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went -- to remote
regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the
prison of time is spherical and without exits." (_Speak Memory_, 14)

"Nabokov's are emotional and spiritual exiles, turned back upon themselves,
trapped by their obsessive memories and desires in a solipsistic 'prison of
mirrors' where they cannot distinguish the glass from themselves (to use [a]
prison trope, drawn from the story "The Assistant Producer" [1943], in
_Nabokov's Dozen [1958])." (Alfred Appel Jr., Introduction to the 1970
Random House edition of _Lolita_, page xxi).

"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.
Let visitors trip." (_Speak Memory_, 139).

"I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art.
Both were a form of magic, both were a game of enchantment and deception
[...]  Coincidence of pattern is one of the wonders of nature. The wonders
of nature were beginning to impress me at that early age." (_Speak Memory_).

Patterns act as linkage between nature and art.  Art, fueled by acts of the
creative imagination, enables a connection "beyond death" to form a "new
relation to time." (_Speak Memory_, 319).

"The a-novelistic components of _Pale Fire_ -- Foreword, Poem, Commentary,
and Index -- create a mirror-lined labyrinth of involuted cross-references,
a closed cosmos that can only be of the author's making, rather than the
product of an 'unreliable narrator'." (Alfred Appel Jr., Introduction to the
1970 Random House edition of _Lolita_, page xxx).

"The spiral is a spiritualized circle.  In the spiral form, the circle,
uncoiled, unwound, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free.  I
thought this up when I was a schoolboy, and I also discovered that Hegel's
triadic series (so popular in old Russia) expressed merely the essential
spirality of all things in relation to time.  Twirl follows twirl, and every
synthesis is the thesis of the next series.  If we consider the simplest
spiral, three series may be distinguished in it, corresponding to those of
the triad: We can call "thetic" the small curve or arc that initiates the
convolution centrally; "antithetic" the larger arc that faces the first in
the process of continuing it; and "synthetic" the still ampler arc that
continues the second while following the first along the outer side.  And so
on." (_Speak Memory_, 275).

"It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game" 
("Pale Fire", ln 811-813)

"I remember one particular [chess] problem I had been trying to compose for
months.  There came a night when I managed at last to express that
particular theme.  It was meant for the delectation of the very expert
solver.  The unsophisticated might miss the point of the problem entirely,
and discover its fairly simple, "thetic" [see above] solution without having
passed through the pleasurable torments prepared for the sophisticated one.
The latter would start by falling for an illusory pattern of play based on a
fashionable avant-garde theme (exposing White's King to checks), which the
composer had taken the greatest pains to 'plant' (with only one obscure
little move by an inconspicuous pawn to upset it).  Having passed through
this "antithetic" inferno the by now ultrasophisticated solver would reach
the simple key move (bishop to c2) as somebody on a wild goose chase might
go from Albany to New York by way of Vancouver, Eurasia and the Azores.  The
pleasant experience of the round-about route (strange landscapes, gongs,
tigers, exotic customs, the thrice-repeated circuit of a newly married
couple around the sacred fire of an earthen brazier) would amply reward him
for the misery of the deceit, and after that, his arrival at the simple key
move would provide him with a synthesis of poignant artistic delight."
(_Speak Memory_ pg 301).

"Nabokov plainly intends us to take this particularly successful problem as
an analogy to the aims of his most successful fiction.  In his fiction he
offers all readers a straightforward, accessible reading, which nevertheless
itself requires *some* imaginative problem-solving to arrive at the 'fairly
simple, ''thetic'' solution,' just as life itself offers its own kind of
problems and rewards to the unintellectual.  He then places greater demands
on his more sophisticated readers, subjects them even to the 'pleasurable
torments' of the 'antithetic inferno,' an unexpected tour of the world of
the work or the problem that is its own 'ampl[e] reward,' before they can
reach the ultimate solution in 'a synthesis of poignant artistic delight,'
just as life itself sets before the inquiring mind the additional challenge
of attempting to wrest out its secrets and sense and the additional reward
of the thrill of discovery." (Brian Boyd, Introduction to _Pale Fire: The
Magic of Artistic Discovery_ pg 11).