Through Pictures and Mirrors
Fictions 1860-1950
Abstract
In an illustrative, rather than conceptual way, this essay examines the motif of the picture (which fixes the image in space) and of the mirror (which shows the image changing with time). Melville, H. James provide examples. Wilde merges and reverses their role, followed by various writers. The wish or the urge to go through pictures and glasses, to find uncanny or reverse worlds, begins with Lewis Carroll and has its best examples again in H. James, then in Max Beerbohm, Borges, and Bioy Casares, among others. Such tendencies coalesce in Nabokov, addicted from the beginning to those reflected and refracted views of the world that are found in pictures and above all mirrors: an endless series of novels and stories, culminating in Lolita, bear witness of this predilection and obsession, for which a possible motivation is found in the condition of emigré writers.
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