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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
*3.75 stars*
Nabokov writes with such flourish and skill that is it easy to forgive that no answer to the questions posed in "Signs and Symbols" are given. Even so, the story itself is an answer- a problem to be solved. After a quick reread, I began to wonder if our main characters exist an all. Are they simply a symptom of the unnamed son's "Referential Mania?"
Nabokov writes with such flourish and skill that is it easy to forgive that no answer to the questions posed in "Signs and Symbols" are given. Even so, the story itself is an answer- a problem to be solved. After a quick reread, I began to wonder if our main characters exist an all. Are they simply a symptom of the unnamed son's "Referential Mania?"
"All this, and much more, she had accepted, for, after all, living does mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case, mere possibilities of improvement. She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the in visible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer."
I'm incurably in love with Nabokov. Novels, novellas, short stories, poesies, essays, speeches- there's nothing this man can't do.
I'm incurably in love with Nabokov. Novels, novellas, short stories, poesies, essays, speeches- there's nothing this man can't do.
All this, and much more, she had accepted, for, after all, living does mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case, mere possibilities of improvement.
'Signs and symbols' is about an old couple on their way to meet their son who’s in a sanatorium due to a rare mental illness known as ‘Referential mania’, in which the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence.
It wasn’t that impressive to me when I read it for the first time. But, after reading it multiple times with its analysis, I think I can appreciate the story.
You have to pay closer attention to the signs and symbols mentioned in the story in order to interpret and learn about the characters. It’s brilliantly written and it captures the suffering and hopelessness of the boy and his parents.
The story points to the defencelessness of the characters in the face of affliction and misery and in spite of that, the hope of the parents that things will turn around someday. The ending is open to interpretation.
'Signs and symbols' is about an old couple on their way to meet their son who’s in a sanatorium due to a rare mental illness known as ‘Referential mania’, in which the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence.
It wasn’t that impressive to me when I read it for the first time. But, after reading it multiple times with its analysis, I think I can appreciate the story.
You have to pay closer attention to the signs and symbols mentioned in the story in order to interpret and learn about the characters. It’s brilliantly written and it captures the suffering and hopelessness of the boy and his parents.
The story points to the defencelessness of the characters in the face of affliction and misery and in spite of that, the hope of the parents that things will turn around someday. The ending is open to interpretation.
I read the edition from The New Yorker May 15 1948 issue.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/05/15/symbols-and-signs
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1948/05/15/symbols-and-signs
"... she presented a naked white countenance to the faultfinding light of spring."