On "A Matter Of Chance"

     This flash fiction piece of Nabokov's resonates the style of O'Henry. It has multiple unrelated characters that gradually become intertwined in their respective pasts, heading towards indistinct futures.

     The plot follows a russian man, Alek Luzhin, who has taken work on a berlin-to-paris diner train, and the narrative bounces back and forth between this man's actions and the passengers in one of the train cars. His past occupations are detailed, symbolizing the day to day struggle involved in making a living as a commoner. From the start, the text has an existential flavor. Another characteristic of note is the fact that he is addicted to pharmaceutical cocaine, which leads him to spend his evenings after work scribbling out imaginative plans to reunite himself with his wife, lost in the tumult of a recent political upheaval.
     In Alek's present, however, he has lost the hope to find his wife in the throes of his morning come-downs, in which he reviews his writings and regularly finds them distasteful. This hope is replaced by the need to control the final days of his life. The particular method our protagonist chooses is deciding on a day and an hour to end his life. This is the bit of the text's anatomy in which its existential flavor is metabolized.
     We see in Luhzin a classic of the working man with a dream. When the vast improbability of that dream confronts the blight of reality, he is faced with the question of whether or not his life is meaningful. This arc in the character's story is paralleled by the up and down of his cocaine abuse. Nabokov applies lavish imagery to the high, and adopts a tone of neutrality with regards to the down, an accepting of the fate. In between, there are scenes of fiending for the substance, of Alek being distracted from his work by the urge. Thus, his characterization is also a compartmentalized study in the outward and inward appearance of an addict.
     As the protagonist calmly plots his death, a handful of passengers board the international car. One, we soon discover, is Alek's wife, for whom he has all too recently lost hope of finding. On the other hand, she who had written him off as dead has newfound optimism for reunion, as an acquaintance has recently assured her of his wellbeing.
      Very quickly, the story's titular events stack up. By chance, his wife boards with an older woman that was a past family friend of her husband. By chance, her husband bypasses his routine passing-out of dinner slips to the passengers by locking himself in a bathroom with his drug. When he does finally make it past her car, his wife is elsewhere and he cannot place the face of the other woman. On her way to dinner, Ms. Luhzin is sexually harassed by another passenger, causing her to return to her room early – all jarring foreshadows of the inevitable climax.
     The events unfold at an elegant pace, giving literary love to each detail and showcasing each pertinent human trait as either the nastiness it is, or as beautiful tragic hope. The author carefully balances labor and leisure, while also defining the median betwixt the two in the symbolism of drug addiction. Leisure, we see, is the ability to hope. Misguided human nature, however, has lead Alek to look to the drug for his escape, though through crafty context we soon see that this break from routine has become all too routine for our protagonist.
     The true juxtaposition of the piece, of course, remains that between hope and abandon. Besides the unavoidable nature of tragedy, we are left to question moral decisions and where we place importance. The progression of one's life, we are reminded, is always inches away from digression due to the chaotic nature of choice. Though the image of this is a helpless one, it is also implied that one may simply choose to be happy.

Pubescent tide moths,
The idle constructs of distance
And amplitude of crossed paths.

Passionless, their blip of exist,
As it stems from a fuck
Not a kiss

Yet entitled are we to beauty,
Nuance,
Tho capable
To be born of threesoms
And fisting
Not simple conception.

An era of misdirection
Dead erections 'less
Eight+ writhing bodies
Find presence on th' screen;
Cameos indeed,
Of leather and masks–
Piss-sodden baths.

Still it's found in most intellects,
Even in naivete,
To distinguish a man from a moth,
Passion from necessity.

Hard to see from this plane
That they're one and the same.

Don't trip.

Nabokov flash fiction analysis tomorrow, beginning drafts of an original short fiction piece.
Thoughts for maintaining direction with the existential-to-post-modern focus? I think we need to hash that out again relatively soon.
Yours truly.

Preguntas.

Do deaf kittens
mew with un-opposable paws?

Do signs,
like literature, slap?

How goes
honest evenings alone?

And is honesty yours
when your answer don't know?

"XIX", from Neruda's "Book Of Questions" 1973

Have they counted the gold

in the cornfields? 

Do you know that in Patagonia

in midday, mist is green?

Who sings in deepest water

in the abandoned lagoon?

At what does the watermelon laugh

when it's murdered?

     Neruda's Book Of Questions, published posthumously, is a curious work of simple aesthetic meandering. It is nonetheless impossible to withdraw much meaning from its pages. The first couplet here contains many possibilities. To me, it reflects an oversight of the relative wealth possessed by the farmsman.  With this interpretation, "the gold in the cornfields" may refer to the simple joys that the burden of labor contrasts in the common man's life. Historically, it could represent the longevity of heritage and culture in Latin America. Despite the many conquests that destabilized working systems of government, and despite the many riches that were seized, there is still a common humanity in things so arbitrary as cornfields. 

     The second couplet is mysterious. The text, overall, seeks a near childish simplicity in harmless images of surreal joy. On page XLIV, for instance, the author laments "where is the child I was? Still inside me or gone?". This is the theme I will suggest the second couplet corresponds to; A strive towards innocent wonder. 

     The third couplet is a reference to the sirens of greek myth. The text is rife with them. Aesthetically, it is an intense questioning of feminine mystery – futile as it receives no answer. There is much mythological reference in this work, perhaps harking to an imbedded spiritualism in its author. I tend to believe that in this broad array of questioning reference, the author also shakes his head at the conventional moral lock-down present in modern religion that often makes a point of stifling intellectual doubt. In a line from page XXV, he wonders " how do we know which is God/among the Gods of calcutta?". Perhaps he is also considering the unification of popular religion in post-conquest Latin America; Considering that loss of culture. 

     The final lines are a mental play on images – that of a sliced watermelon characterized into a post-mortal grin. The powerful composition counts on the reader's easy connection to the referenced shape, as well as the unusual thought – somewhat morbid – of being overjoyed with death. Beyond its base of structure, the image's full scope of reactive questionings suggests possibilities of absurdism. 

Waiting for Godot, Act II

     In its second half, the central themes of Godot spin together to form a cohesive structure that simultaneously critiques western religion, challenges the importance of possession, and addresses the problem of human monotony and methods of escapism with which to counter it. Act II, even more so than its predecessor, offers the honest light that casts the unfortunate shadows humanity possesses at its core.

     The scene starts with an image of Didi's panicked boredom, manifest in his frantic actions and repetition of a single verse regarding the life and death of a dog. There is much to read into here, but the base of this single compositional passage is to summarize the human condition of parallel loneliness and a lack of the profound. Didi is seen trying to remember his song (pg. 37), to which only the one repeated verse comes of his efforts. It could also be interpreted, seeing as no mention of memory is actually made, that Didi's "brood[ing]" over the mysterious excerpt is an attempt to strike a well of meaning somewhere within its words. This meta-analysis, of and within the character, is a fascinating structural and thematic possibility to consider. 

     The composition here goes deeper still, with the symbol of the dog as mankind interacting with the symbols of labor and/or sin (stealing the bread crust), as well as death (the tombstone and epitaph). Didi's passage exists structurally as a loop, which also serves to accent the themes of repetition in life, thus perhaps he is brooding over the merits and futilities of escapism. 

    Upon Gogo's arrival to the stage, it is edified that the cause of Didi's behavior is that of loneliness. 

The encounter is initially a negative one, however, as Estragon mimics the physical timidity and social cold-shouldering he offered Estragon in the previous act. Vladimir's attitude has only changed, if not subtly, from pondering to downright unsure. In this discrepancy, Beckett seems to ask "what makes a good day, and what makes a bad one?" Beyond the obvious answers, the themes of the text – Escapism, suffering, the search for profundity – seem to offer that days are determined by outlook more than actual events. Whether or not one's outlook is determined by the days events is of personal condition and consequence, upholding this statement's trueness is general.
     With respect to the equal trueness of personal outlook being muddled by perception of events, Gogo's statement that he has been beaten again is put forth as an explanation for his current disposition. This is a cry to the classic working-man's theme of being beaten down at the end of the day, harking back to the dynamic between Lucky and Pozzo in act I.
   As collective thought shifts from the situational, in which there is much similarity – i.e. monotony – to be found, the two settle on pondering thought itself. Page 41 witnesses a call and response session of base rhetoric as the duo attempts to get back to a sort of intellectual balance within themselves.With this scene and its content, Beckett gestures in the direction of age-old philosophical answers to these existential questions of monotony; That the ability to think and to perceive situations as deeper things brings freedom to the thinker. A specific excerpt illustrates this best, and the two agree to re-start their dialogue with Vladimir's inference that "When you seek, you hear . . . And that prevents you from finding", which is highly applicable seeing as the two are searching for meaning within the act of searching itself.
     The higher thought process at hand is soon distracted by the dynamic of egos that the duo possess, and discussion turns, repetitively, to Gogo's uncomfortable feet. After some banter regarding possible solutions, he jibes "we always find something, eh Didi? To give us the impression we exist?" (pg. 45). In this humor, there lie dark explorations of the simultaneous methodology and universality of escapism, and the urgent motives behind distracting oneself from the larger picture. Surely, to present these themes in such levity speaks to the modernity of the text.
     After the dark humor recesses, leaving only the true sentiment behind it, the two find themselves cold, and again, waiting. That their waiting for Godot and waiting for nightfall to meet Godot align closely in the dialogue on page forty six is no accident. The symbolism here, obvious yet potent in context, is that each man is stuck in his place, waiting to die – "[night] will fall all of a sudden, like yesterday" – and that each man is searching for profundity in either consideration of death, or an assumed afterlife. Especially given the subtext in the prior pages regarding said universality, this poisonously comic euphemism of life hits its audience hard.
     As the urgent pace of the play proceeds, the two work into a frenzy of mock human drama, further critiquing and pondering, in this way, the concepts of interaction most find arbitrary and par-for-the-course. In one moment, for example, they are seen hurling insults to and fro with vigor, and in the next handful of lines they are witnessed reconciling with a comic deliberation, poking fun at the routine chronology of such interactions; Estragon ends their volley of dated discourtesies by calling Didi a critic (meta-applicable terminology in this case), and he replies to his companion's resultant dismay with an artificially swift "Now let's make it up." (pg. 49). They return quickly from this exchange to methods of distraction.
     It is during an acute exclamation of "God have pity on me!" that Lucky and Pozzo enter, this time with roles and dispositions changed. This time, it is Pozzo crying for help, a far cry from the generous image-frenzied man from before. Historically, the dichotomy between Lucky and Pozzo might represent an extreme version of the laborer and the bourgeois elite, respectively. It seems clear to the audience that Pozzo's state is not quite as deserving of pity as, say, Lucky's, despite Pozzo's recent blinding. This would also seem to reflect a mockery of the well know personality type known in modern vernacular as the "attention whore". In the classist sense, it is very much similar to the way larger economics tends to make big bad news out of minor fluctuations in circumstance, while the burdens of the laborer go unaddressed, if not unnoticed, in this blindness.
     In Pozzo's shift of circumstance, from storied and affluent center of attention to axis of pity, Didi and Gogo also hold a new position. Much like the revolutionary spirit that exists in individuals beyond that of the most passive drone, the two use their perceived station to take advantage of this demoralized hierarch by demanding first for food before helping him to his feet (pg. 51).  This is exactly the basic system of relationships present in a worker's strike, in other words.
     Following consideration of more straightforward and honest solutions to Pozzo's incessant cries, and stressing additional themes of choice and the universal, Vladimir monologues – briefly – of duty. He says of the cries "To all mankind they were addressed . . . but at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us." (Pg. 51)
     When the two finally go to help, they find themselves on the ground in similar fashion as quickly as they have arrived. They, like Pozzo, seem unable to rise. Or, the negativity in Pozzo's intentions has brought them down and keeps them down. They call now at Pozzo, frantically crawling away, but receive no response. Gogo casts doubt on whether or not they have tied the correct moniker to the correct man. In a brief wordplay, wracked with Absurdism, Estragon offers "We might try him with other names." Didi: "I'm afraid he's dying." Gogo: "It'd be amusing." Didi: "What'd be amusing?" Gogo: "to try him with other names..."(pg. 54). This early modification of existential philosophy ties humor to the concept of death in artful literary form.
     Distractions aside, the two shortly make the decision to stand. "Child's play", says Estragon. They wonder at Pozzo; Didi and then Gogo: "He wants to get up."/"then why doesn't he?", reflecting another point of Absurdism; that the choice to live, itself, gives meaning and control to one's life.
-   -   -   -   -
     Bypassing the second interaction with Pozzo due to heavy repetition of themes, the wake of the interaction sees a familiar errand boy appear out of nowhere. He carries the message that the audience most anticipates at this point, that Godot will not be making an appearance. Didi asks: "But he'll come tomorrow . . . without fail?" to which the boy responds dutifully, "yes sir"(pg. 59). The blind faith in this statement sets the tone for their interaction with the boy.
     They question him of Godot's appearance, and his habits ("he does nothing, sir") and in Didi's frustration, the boy is scared off. In desperate longing for validity, they entertain the idea of suicide, yet again. They resolve to commence the joint hanging the following day, should Godot fail to arrive. As the two make farewell statements to each other, appearing to part, they do not move and the curtain draws; The punctuality here matching the pace for the entire text's incessant wordplay, social critiques, and philosophical questionings. The composition as airtight as the ideology it contains, one is left only with the feeling that one has been laughed at, only to find, as a study of the absurd and the larger picture in general, that simply everything is a laughable matter. 

Faith and Vanity.

Anxiet, spigoted honesty.
Unfortunate Anxietee,
Forgot their solemn place.

Of seldom name,
Of no appliance,
This forthwith zest
Of zephyr cloth:

Unwound by moths,
Soon tossed in violence
Upon crags of mindless shore,

Thoughts abhorred,
That canceled the logic
In simple beauties of silence,
Towards.