Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017361, Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:05:14 -0200

Subject
Re: foot-noted afterthoughts about Borges et al.
From
Date
Body
George Shimanovich [on "South" is a story by Borges that somewhat resembles Nabokov's Lik (1939)] :...in both stories the authors drive neurotic protagonist through accidents of life to inevitable conclusion much differing from grandiose vision he intends to relive/re-die [...] In VN's story there is more contrast, more light, which sharpen the vision in reader [...] Dalman is derived from 'dale' - valley. To Borges, who had blood infection in 1938, resulting in eventual loss of sight, - words were the light.

JM: The original sentence GS quoted began: "As far as I know, "Zud" (zud is Russian for "itch," but in the story it happens to be the hero's name) was never translated to English. Interestingly, Zud sounds like the German word for "South," minus the umlaut. "South" is a story by Borges that somewhat resembles Nabokov's Lik (1939), the story that "Zud" parodies." I remembered that I'd recently found the word "itch" in VN's translated "Podvig" ("Glory"), so I checked the VN-List. Nabokov's comments fit in with another theme now being discussed (J.Aisenberg, S.K-Bootle) concerning a writer's "final achievement".

In 1970 Nabokov wrote that he didn't bestow any artistic talent on his hero before he adds "how cruel to prevent him from finding in art - not an 'escape' ( which is only a cleaner cell on a quieter floor), but relief from the itch of being!". But he also informed us that he'd considered another title, "Fulfillment" for it is "the fugal theme of his destiny; he is that rarity - a person 'whose dreams come true'."

Borges' character in "El Sur", Dahlmann, was a dreamer prone to postpone decisions and to trust the goodwill of "chance". Like Borges he suffered from a blow that led to a blood infection (septicemia). There is a sunset glow in the end. The decisive factor that led to the "duel" was his having been recognized and called by his (foreign) surname, instead of Flores ( I think this was his southern ancestor's surname, I've not "Ficciones" at hand now).

J. Aisenberg corrected the title I used to refer to McEwan's novel. Indeed, I should have written "Atonement". JA wrote:" I had never thought to associate the character Briony's "novel" ( in Mckewan's book ) as having much relationship to Nabokov's classic"[...] what's strange to me about both Proust and N. is that the narrators claim they're redeeming their stories, but instead structure them as vicious circles of loss and disillusionment; Mckewan on the other hand does have Briony change things ... In other words when Atonement has been consumed, it's over, without the vertiginous spiraling into a presumable endless void of echoing despair, Shakespeare's sound and fury; Nabokov's laughter in the dark.

JM: I didn't really associate Mckewan's book and VN's Lolita, Proust, Dante... I used it to illustrate "a malevolent turn" arising from the power a writer wields over past and future events that is "fetichistically, extreme."
Borges ( in Pierre Menard's Quixote) discusses how truth is engendered by the way History is written (material versus historical facts), or read... A "mash-up" kind of palimpsest over the centuries, perhaps?

A. Bouazza [replying to M.Roth's comments on "skoramis"] noted that:"When it came to rare words, VN was the first to acknowledge their source, like in the case of "mollitude" which he used in his Eugene Onegin translation (and later on in ADA, Glory and Ultima Thule), and defended by stating that Browning had used that word. In fact, Browning used the adjective "mollitious" in Sordello and The Ring and the Book."

JM: Impressive arguments and references! I wonder, though, if "mollitude" might have acquired different nuancings due to VN's expertise in words. For example, if it serves to indicate Joyce's "Molly"? Thanks to your indications I found out that, in Ada, VN uses it for "the luxury and mollitude of my first Villa Venus". But, when he criticizes "the transformation of souci d'eau (our marsh marigold) into the asinine "care of the water" - although he had at his disposal dozens of synonyms, such as mollyblob, marybud, maybubble, and many other nick-names associated with fertility feasts, whatever those are' - and following B.Boyd's link to Molly Bloom - I understood that the "mollyblob" indicated Joyce's Ulysses . Could mollitude and mollyblob, through "Venus/fertility feasts", be somehow playfully, or critically, related?

S K-B distinguishes the HH/Annabel and Dante/Beatrice "encounters":"First the ages: HH/A = 13-14/11-12 [?], D/B = 8/9 (which is saying much more than "both [pairs] were children!"). Second, and more significant: HH/A get mighty close to physical mutual consummation" [...] On the notion of self-imposed "literary constraint" he considers that writers, such as Nabokov, work "under carefully-reasoned, openly-acknowledged aesthetic "restraints," which can be roughly translated as "avoid inelegant didactic rubbish!"

JM: Right! The age difference clearly distinguishes "small children" from "nymphic aged" kids. Nevertheless, even if HH/A get "mighty close to physical mutual consummation", until HH met Lolita, he remained obsessed by his lost young lover just like Dante'd been by Beatrice.
You wrote that "Dante, as far as we know, kept his distance, pining away in sublimating verse" and HH, would not be "sublimatorily" inclined to channel his frustrated love into writing: he had to repeat or re-enact his fantasies until he found them "reborn" in another/the same pre-adolescent. Perhaps this process was the determining element for his recognition of an idealized, and yet very palpable "nymphet"?

Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en

Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com

Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/







Attachment