How the past possesses the present in Signs and Symbols

  Ahhh Nabokov, we meet again. I thought I was done baffling in the intricate details that seem to point in so many different directions, but here I am again. As I have mentioned before I read this piece the first time for a Mythologies class last semester. My past, the first reading of this short story, has once again collided with my present, this class. So here I go...

First I shall (following Dante's four levels of interpretation discussed in class) look at this story literally. Literally Signs and Symbols is about a unnamed, older couple with a teenage son who suffers form referential mania. The parents decide upon a seemingly harmless gift to give the boy for his birthday, 10 jars of fruit jellies in assorted colors, and make their way to the insane asylum. The couple encounters much trouble in their journey (it says "That Friday, their son's birthday, everything went wrong.") and when they arrive the nurse tells them that their son had tried to commit suicide for the second time. Discouraged, the couple returns home after noticing several odd things along the way; "a tiny unfledged bird was helplessly twitching in a puddle" and "a girl with dark hair and grubby red toenails-- was weeping on the shoulder of an older woman." When they get back to the apartment the woman goes out to buy some fish leaving the man locked out. They eat dinner, read the Russian-language newspaper and the man goes to bed. The woman looks through photo albums and sees pictures of the boy, "a German maid they had had in Leipzig," and "Aunt Rosa." She reflects on the boy and her life until the man comes out crying that he can't sleep because he is dying. He says it is very important that they get the boy out "Otherwise, we'll be responsible." The woman agrees and then receives two phone calls from someone looking for "Charlie." After explaining what the caller was doing wrong and hanging up, the phone rings a third time.
Literally this is a sad odd sort of story about an older couple with lots of specific details. That's it.

Next I'm going to dive in to the more complex of Dante's levels of interpretations allegorical/spiritual, moral, and analogical. I am not completely confident in my own definitions of his levels so bear with me if I confuse them.

Next the allegorical... There are lots of potential allegories in Signs and Symbols so I will only give a few. One example of an allegorical interpretation is that the "tiny unfledged bird (that) was helplessly twitching in a puddle" is actually the boy drowning in a sea of insane ciphers he must interpret. Also the "girl with dark hair and grubby red toenails... weeping on the should of an older woman" might be a representation or foreshadowing of the woman after her son's presumed suicide. The woman mentions "beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer" which might be an allegory for life and death; the "beautiful weeds" being those with mental problems specifically, or people in general, and the farmer being death who ultimately kills the weeds. One last example would be the final kind of fruit jelly that the father examines before the third phone call: crab apple. Apples have stereotypically been associated with the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good an evil in the garden of Eden. Knowing this one could say that the crab apple jelly represents a fall, a gaining of knowledge, a death, which alludes to the presumed successful suicide of the boy.  

My moral interpretation of Signs and Symbols is that the story is telling us NOT to do exactly what I am doing now; reading in to this. I think Nabokov is clever in writing a story with so many seemingly significant details that can be interpreted in to telling us not to try and interpret the world too far. In the story the boy's condition of referential mania is described by saying in his world "everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme." In essence, the boy thinks everything in the world has some hidden meaning that pertains to him. By the end of this story it becomes clear what happens to people who live life this way (death, or suicide), so clearly this is a warning against such a lifestyle.

In class we talked about a couple anagogical interpretations while in class. The one we discussed last year in mythologies what that this story is actually a displacement of the story of Icarus. The boy wants to "tear a hole in the world and escape" and "thought he was learning to fly" both which can be linked to how Icarus and his father were trying to escape from the city by flying away. We also talked about how this could be a displacement of the story of Job in the Bible. In the Bible Job looses everything in his life while still holding on to his belief in God. The story says "That Friday, their son's birthday, everything went wrong." The couple runs in to a series of bad things that day, ending with the death of their son. Just like Job, they lost their family. Both of these interprtations fit the story and there are probably many others. 

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Is this the end? Have I reached the beginning? I know more now about the illusions behind Nabokov's Signs and Symbols than I did after my first reading and class that used this short story but I hesitate to say that I am at the end of my exploring. There must be more secrets that Nabokov is hiding. For now I will leave those unseen signs and symbols for another day.

Displacement- John Huevo

The night lights of Chicago shown far below James Huevo’s penthouse suite. It was a beautiful view, on that could hardly be topped anywhere in the city. James spent many an hour staring out over the city contemplating his life. James hadn’t always lived in such a fancy apartment so high about his favorite city; he grew up in the slums and as a kid spent most of his time wandering the streets. His father had left before he was born and his mother worked hard but barely made ends meet.

On his 18^th birthday everything changed. James hadn’t expected any sort of gift; his mother didn’t have the money to spare. To his surprise, upon arriving home after work, he found a note and a birthday card on the kitchen table. It said “I had to go in and work the late shift tonight James. I’m sorry we couldn’t celebrate your birthday together. There is chocolate cake on the counter and I hope you like your present. Just maybe you will get lucky. Love you lots- Mom”

James opened the card and found a lotto ticket inside. Smiling at his mom’s thoughtfulness, he tucked the ticket away and cut the cake.

The next day it was all over the news: a winning lotto ticket had been sold at a gas station just blocks from the Huevo’s home. After checking his numbers on the TV screen James sat in shock. The birthday ticket had won him over 3 million dollars.

                Ten years had passed and James was now an extremely successful stock broker. He had invested his winnings well and nearly doubled his money. James had never expected to live the high life but now knew nothing but. He had a fancy car, a luxurious pent house apartment, and a stock portfolio to last him a very long time. Happy with his life James lay down on his feather bed and went to sleep.

RRRRRIIINGGG………… RIIINNNNG…………… RRIIIINNNG………

The telephone on his bedside table jarred James awake. Glancing at the clock he realized it was already nine in the morning; he had overslept.

“Hello?” James said with a yawn.

“Hello sir, this is Madison. We have a problem sir.” It was the voice of his assistant on the other end.

“Problem? What kind of problem?” He asked.

“The bank called. There was a breach of security last night. Sir. Someone stole 10 million dollars from the bank, all electronically. They took everything, investments, stocks, and cash. Sir. It’s all gone.”

There was a silence for a moment as James sat there stunned. “Madison, you mean to tell me I’m broke?”

Her voice was pained. “Yes, I’m sorry sir.”

James hung up aghast. His life was over. He had nothing. He couldn’t even afford to support his aging mother let alone the lifestyle he had become accustom too. He stood in front of the clear glass pane and looked down at the city, his city, or at least it had been his until now.

Frantically, no thought in his mind but his own pain James grabbed the 50 pound weight for his bench press machine and hurled it out the window.  The glass shattered and left a gaping hole in the living room. He stood on the edge, looked out, and jumped.

The obituary in the paper said James Huevo had jumped 20 stories from his apartment window was pronounced dead on the screen.

Read Books- If only I had the TIME

In class last week, while talking about tracing things back to their mythic origins, Dr. Sexson left us with a statement (order? challenge? suggestion?). He told us to read books.
Just that. "Read books."

I wrote down a couple things in my notes that day under that heading:
 "Stories of your culture make you who you are."
 "If you don't read, you don't live."

Now my first reaction to these statements was one of happiness! For those of you who don't know me well I'm an English Education major so reading books is right up my ally. I grew up reading and actually don't remember a time far enough back when I couldn't read. Finally someone was telling me to do something I already love to do instead of telling me I am wasting my intelligence and life by studying English (note the sarcastic tone that I usually am met with in this declaration).

My second reaction was one of slight guilt: I'm an English major and look at all of the things I haven't read yet. In this class we are reading stories that can be traced back to myths and classic works of literature, the only problem being I haven't read nearly enough of them. Yes, I was in honors English all through high school and took AP Lit, but even through all of these classes I still feel like there are a lot of classics I just haven't ever read.

The obvious solution to my problem is to do exactly what Dr. Sexson said: read books. My problem of course is time. There is only so much of it and mine always seems to be filled with other obligations (which tend to go by the wayside when I get engrossed in a novel). This problem of time and reading took on a new meaning recently when I started reading Eliade's book Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries.

Eliade talks in the first chapter about the function of reading in society. He says "Reading replaces not only the oral folk traditions, ... but also the recital of the myth in the archaic societies" (Eliade, p. 36). In essence he is talking about the shift from a oral culture to a written one. Before the invention of writing people had to memorize stories and then retell them, much like theater today. Now those experiences are locked away in to a book that can be pulled out at any moment and one can dive in to the world inside the pages.

Eliade also talks about how the view of time has changed over the centuries. He states "It is only in modern societies that man feels himself to be the prisoner of his daily work, in which he can never escape from Time" (Eliade, p. 36). This quote really stuck home with me because there are moments- more so in the summer when I work long hours doing menial labor- when I feel like a prisoner of the daily grind. It feels like there should be more to life than working a 9-5 (or 8-7 more accurately) job and coming home each night exhausted. I want the very thing that Eliade describes: an "escape from time" (Eliade, p.36).

Reading, of course, is  what Eliade calls "the supreme distraction" (Eliade, p.36) because it allows us to be consumed by a world that moves at a much faster pace. We begin a book and can travel to far off countries, experience youth and old age, fall in love, fight mythical creatures, and anything else you can imagine all in the same day. It changes the pace of time allowing for more leeway of experience in a single lifetime. To those who would argue that you are not really experiencing those thing but only reading about them, I leave you with the words of Albus Dumbledore:

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”"

So I guess what I really need is some time to escape from Time.

The Magus

After everything Dr. Sexson said about the Magus by John Fowles I had to start the book. Amazon had not yet delivered my own copy much to my disappointment. After a frantic trip to the MSU library where I was severely disappointed, I biked to the public library to check out one of two tattered copies of the novel. I started, read the first 150 pages, couldn't put it down, and now... now I've finished it.

I am currently at a loss to accurately express both my feeling for, and interpretation of, this novel. I have been for the last two weeks on a confusing and exhilarating roller coaster unable to discern truth from deception, and sometimes even the essential difference between the two. And yet it seems to me that somehow that is what John Fowles intended. He purposefully confuses reality and the "play," the theater reality which Conchis creates, and the reader is left with the feeling that there is a very blurry line between "reality" and "deception."

My attempts to trace this novel to it's mythic roots also has become a jumbled mess. When Dr. Sexson said that he choose this novel because it contains everything he wasn't kidding. There are references to, illusions to, and out right discussions of many different classic tales and myths. The one I found to be the most reoccurring (though I hesitate to call it the operate myth in the novel because of the complexity of the story) story is that of Shakespear's The Tempest. Conchis takes on the roll of the Prospero, the magician, the Magus. He manipulates the world and the lives of Miranda, or Lilly or June or whatever her real name is, as well as everyone else on the island. There are direct references to The Tempest and times where Nicholas mentions Conchis as Prospero.

Outside of this, in just the courtroom at "Nicholas' trial" there are symbols of Neolithic gods (Herne the Hunter), a man with the head of a stag (possibly the Celtic god Cernunnos),  a witch, a man with a crocodile head (possibly Sobek a ancient Egyptian god), a vampire, a sexless African nightmare, a fish-woman-bird presumably eight months pregnant (maybe a weird mother earth symbol? Not sure on this one), a man wearing a black cloak with white astrological symbols holding a staff with a snake eating it's own tail (possibly a magician, though the snake is called the Ouroboros) and a man with a goat head (that Nicholas thinks might be sacrificed as a Christ figure). In essence even in this one scene the number of possible tracings and allusions are numerous. 

I know most people have not finished reading this book so I will wait to further dissect the details of possible tracings and the end of the novel (which is driving me crazy!). I am very curious to know other peoples opinions of the book and if my guess at an operate myth is at all close. 

 

 

Attention and Ideas

After reading Sven Birken's article "The Art of Attention" I was reminded strongly a short story I read several years ago. The story was called "Stationary Bike" by Stephen King and was published again in his recent book Just After Sunset. The short story is about a man named Richard Sifkitz who was told by his doctor that his cholesterol is too high and should begin exercising. The doctor uses and analogy to describe his metabolism as construction crew cleaning out the junk food he is eating. When the metaphorical crew gets tired the junk builds up causing his heart trouble. To combat this Richard buys a stationary bike. He places the bike in his basement facing a wall where he hangs a map of the United States so that he can imagine traveling across the country on his bike as he rides. Richard becomes obsessed, consumed by, the idea of these men cleaning out his arteries and after several of his workouts he paints an eerie fantastical landscape containing the workers in place of the map. While biking Richard falls in to a kind of trance watching the landscape change and the workers move around like a movie. The exercise helps him loose weight but the story takes a bizarre twist when Richard watches one of the workers commit suicide in front of him. Now thoroughly confused and afraid of what is happening, Richard decides to dismantle the bike but finds himself taking one “last ride.”  He is thrown back in to his trance world where his directly confronted by the rest of the crew after nearly being hit by a truck. The crew threatens him, saying he is running their lives by putting them out of a job, and convince him to be less strict on his diet and exercise routine.  Richard then steps back in to reality with little memory of the weird visions he was experienced.

Though the King’s short sort has little to do with actually learning to pay close attention to the details of life or better yet, learning to let our attention be captured, I was struck with the similarities between the two. Richard’s attention was captured by an idea and it consumed him. He became so captured by it that his mind created an entire world around it (even if it was a dark and eerie one).  The idea became his reality.

 

 To quote the movie Inception: “She was possessed by an idea, this one, very simple idea, that changed everything.”  Ideas, as we find out in the movie, are an extremely powerful thing. In Inception Mal kills herself for an idea. In “Stationary Bike” Richard creates a world out of an idea. In Vladimir Nabokov’s short story the boy presumably kills himself over an idea as well. 

I am at an advantage having already read and discussed Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” so will not give any spoilers as to what it can be traced back to. Instead all I will say is that the idea that consumed the poor boy with referential mania is that he wanted “to tear a hole in his world” and fly away.  

Introductory Dream

In my dream I am traveling with my family in Dubai. I recognize the desert landscape and the blazing heat the wafts off the sand dunes. I am walking through the sand away from the city when on the horizon when I notice what looks like a power plant off in the distance in a haze. The power plant seems innocent enough until it suddenly explodes producing a huge mushroom cloud and a shockwave that I can feel despite the distance.
My family comes to the realization that is is a nuclear power plant and that the explosion  must be producing high levels of radiation that will surely kill us. Though I recognize my own impending death I don't feel panic or fear but only a sense of sorrow that I won't be able to say goodbye to my boyfriend, Phil. All of the other people in the world that I truly  care  for are here except for him.
In a last ditch effort before the radiation overtakes my ability to function I make a phone call. He answers. After explaining the situation and having our sweet goodbyes I tell him not to live a lonely depressed life but to be happy we had time together and find someone else to be happy with. Phil assures me that I would be fine! I am very confused by his statement , thinking he doesn't understand the current situation, but he goes on to explain...
"You will be fine! My dad's got connections with the the government through his work and he is sending someone to come get you! When the men in helicopters get here go with them! They will take you to the moon!"
Though unsure how this will save my life I agree and then awake from my dream.