Mistake
Separating cleanly, cleaving the word into its two syllables - "miss" and "take" - the meaning seems more visible. I know what it is to Take, and I know what it is to Miss, though for some reason to have Missed a Take seems to contain a wonderfully loaded image that the two words on their own do not quite sparkle with. Take is linked so heavily with intention, and Missing is linked so heavily fate, but when paired there is this shining fissure of logic that forms in the mind similar to that which Fitzgerald describes ("The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.") Not to say that the first-rate intelligence is evident simply by way of having two opposing ideas in the mind, I'm anything but. But still. A "missed take". A "miss take". The word itself, stripped of definition, is so miraculous in its contrast. "I went to take that and I missed." Even in this expanded, expounded form the word's meaning leaks through just a bit simply by having the phonetic similarities within the phrase. A mistake: trying to grab and take, the end result is a miss.
Nabokov loves a mistake, or, rather, he loves setting the traps for his characters to fall into. They try to take, and miss, constantly. Even the knight, with all his shining armour, John Shade, bases his most prized thoughts on a misprint. Humbert, for all his cunning wit, confuses Our Glass Lake with Hourglass Lake. Mistakes abound, and in reading his discursive writings and interviews its plain to see his love of facts and his dispensing of them whenever someone's gone on the trail of a wrong one. It is laughable how frustrated the interviewers get (it is plainly palpable when reading even the most excerpted text) when the author corrects their mistaken citation, mistaken date of publication, mistaken character name, and so on. I find mistakes in print and in the world from time to time (typographical or otherwise) and feel a smiling bond with my favorite writer; much in the same way a 6 year old child fondly plays along with grandpa's stuff and feels even for an instant just like the man he admires. It must be the same way with a lot of his devout fans, plodding along a similar path he set out on: taking misses and missing takes, enjoying the confusion of confusion and crying and laughing at the same time when ensnared in one of these traps of fate. Its no surprise he was such a scientific man, there are lots of opportunities to not only make mistakes but to right those that others have made: he must have took great pride in correcting the pronunciation of his Lycaeides melissa samuelis .
A short but appropriate note without a home: the last sentence of one of his most widely-published books still gets accidentally corrected by editors even decades later. It reads "It was a perfect night for mothing." and it's that last word that always gets changed, by mistake, to "nothing." I remember when I first read the line (printed as it was written) it seemed like such a tiny shock at the end of the page, and at the end of the book. How much feeling is hinged upon such a tiny word, the last of a book; it is a strange and eerie miracle indeed.
Back to his butterflies: This article is pretty great. Of particular importance, to this entry at least, are the corrections that follow at the end. He'd have smiled at them, I'm sure.
And, to swing back to Fitzgerald's quote again: isn't a mistake exactly that? Two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time: John Shade mistakenly reading "fountain" instead of "mountain" and launching onto a path of thought that leads towards a single end though upon his discovering this mistake he must instantly backtrack down the wrong road only to then start on a new one with a flashlight of accuracy in his hand. A mistake is a chance for two opposing ideas to live simultaneously in the brain: right and wrong. "I've been under the impression this whole time that you were in love with me." While under this guise of love, the person hasn't a clue of the undercurrent of non-love that was running invisibly beneath his feet. It is only upon the dawning of actuality that he sees before his eyes the two roads converged into one: his mistake and his sad reality. He thought he was loved, he realizes he was not. Here, I believe, is where Scott Fitzgerald's functioning comes into play as these two opposing ideas can severely wreck the mind, body and spirit. Some mistakes, though, are deemed "happy accidents" and sometimes given the title of "blessing in disguise". Haven't we all been saved, at one time or another, by the life raft of a newly realized reality by way of rectifying a mistake for the positive? "I thought I was going to die, that was a close call." What a wonder it must be to hold in your head your own imminent and too-soon death only to be given the gift of mistake and live to recognize the blessing. What a Taking that was Missed with that one.
