I chose to write about the short Nabokov story because I'll be talking about Adrienne Rich plenty in class and I'd never read this story before.
First off, I'm still puzzling about the title of this story. I'm not sure what the "symbols and signs" are supposed to represent in this story. Now, I know that the title of a story does not have the be obviously represented in a story, but Nabokov must have had some reason to name this work what he did. Does anyone else have an idea?
Other than my wondering at the choice of title (and not really in spite of it or anything), I really enjoyed this story. It made me sad though, which sounds very shallow outside of my brain. The entire tone of the piece to me seemed very perfunctory and even ordinary. It seemed as thought Nabokov thought to emphasize a feeling of ordinariness even though there was nothing truly ordinary about this family. Crazy son, immigrant parents who had faced much hardship in the "old country" but getting up, riding multiple forms of public transportation to visit their institutionalized son only to be told he's recently attempted suicide (again) so he's unfit for a visit is something they simply do. It's part of their life, their routine, and so it is ordinary for them.
For me, that's one of the most interesting parts of "the ordinary." No matter how truly out of the ordinary something may seem to you at first or someone looking into your life from the outside, if you do it long enough or encounter it long enough, it becomes ordinary and no longer seems odd or different.
Just to puzzle you even further, I'll add that the story was originally published in The New Yorker as "Symbols and Signs," but when Nabokov reprinted it later, he changed it to "Signs and Symbols" and insisted that this was the original and correct title.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you note how something can become ordinary over time, no matter how extraordinay it may initially seem. Do you think this is always the case-- that every first experience of something is extraordinary-- or do you think we sometimes encounter completely novel yet somehow still ordinary things? This is tangential, but I'm discussion leader, so I can do whatever I want.
No, I don't think that every thing we encounter for the first time is completely extraordinary because, unfortunately, I feel as though there are few things left in life that are completely "unknown" to us. Technology has made it easier to experience things easier and faster than ever before. For instance, you no longer have to go to Rome to see Rome. Hell, you can go on Google Earth or whatever and basically walk the streets. Am I comparing visiting Rome in reality with looking at it on a computer? No, but I do believe if you do both, the reality will be (even slightly) less extraordinary.
ReplyDeleteI also think that ordinary and novel as both very relative terms. For instance, living in an apartment without a TV is completely ordinary to me but I have friends who come to spend the night and are completely baffled. There is nothing truly out of the ordinary about not having a TV (more and more people do it) but it can still be extraordinary for others.
Everything in the poem can be taken as a metaphor for something. The types of jam, the lanky man illuminated by the light in his private apartment, the phone calls, the crowded journey to see him, being turned away from the sanatorium and the fact that he trained professionals are thieves and untrustworthy. That's what I think the title of the story means anyways.
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