Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017430, Sun, 7 Dec 2008 11:06:05 -0500

Subject
THOUGHTS/ BIB: On VN and Borges
From
Date
Body
Nina Kressova writes:

Dear List,
Sorry for my bad English: don't have much opportunity to practice
speaking
o writing in English. I'd like to talk about Nabokov and Borges.

In summer of 2007 I defended the PhD Thesis “Under the sign of Proteos:
A
comparative study of the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov”
at
the University of Granada, Spain. My dissertation is in Spanish, but now

I’m working on an article, the most important of my thesis, about Time
in
Borges and Nabokov, which I pretend to translate into English.

I think that Brian Boyd is very right when he links “Osberg” to
“iceberg”.
Some acquaintances and critics of the borgesian work have defined it
as “cold”. Also, I could point out the possible Jewish origin of the
surname “Osberg” that may refer to the closer relation between Borges
and
the Jewish culture. Borges was a great admirer and defender of this. His

article “I’m Jewish”, written in 1934, became very famous at that time
(Megáfono, 3, Nº. 12, p. 60, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 1934, April). With

regard to the Cervantian traces, I want to add that Borges wrote some
essays about this Spanish author where he agreed with some of Nabokov’s
strong opinions about him and his work. I study this case in my
dissertation. Borges’ opinion that about any Man of Letters would have
improved any D.Q. page is well known; however Cervantes could create a
unique and mythical character of that strange knight matching the heroes
of
the antiquity. By the way, the first translation of “Pierre Menard,
Author
of the Quixote” was done into French and was published in 1939 in
“Mesures”
(“L’Approche du cache”, tr. by Nestor Ibarra). Then, about Viking traces

in “osberg”, the ancient Island culture was the other Borges’ great
passion. Some years before his complete blindness (1955) the Argentinean

started to study Islandic language and sagas and continued to do so
during
many years being blind… Could Nabokov know it? I don’t know, but it’s
possible.

Borges always denied reading Nabokov; however I have my doubts about
this.
Borges was such an avid reader and he was always up to date with the
literary news of the world (even after his blindness, because the whole
day
he had somebody reading for him). In 1944 the sisters Ocampo, good
friends
of Borges, published the translation of “The Visit to the Museum” (tr.
by
Vera Macarow) with a brief note about Sirin. It was the first official
presentation of Nabokov to the Argentinean audience. Then, some of
Nabokov’s novels were translated by Enrique Pezzoni (the best
translations
into Spanish, in my opinion), who was a good acquaintance of Borges too.
In
1959 the publishing house “Sur” of the sisters Ocampo published the
first
translation into Spanish of “Lolita”. Immediately the sale of this
edition
was prohibited by the Local Authority of Buenos Aires. Many Argentinean
intellectuals expressed their outrage with the measure. Borges was among

the people who demanded the return of the Nabokov’s novel (“Sur”, nº
260).

Finally, I could point out that Nabokov deleted the phrase about
“portico”
from that interview in “Strong Opinion”.

I like a lot the parallel between "The Secret Miracle" and "Invitation
to a
Beheading", I never thought about it, but I told about the concept of
eternity in this Borges' story and in "The Defense" (tick-tack of the
Luzhin's clock).

A brief Summary of my doctoral thesis:
My doctoral study is focused on the description of the similarities
between
Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov narratives, especially in their
conceptual analysis, and in the definition of their origin. The
innovation
of my research arises not only from the large amount of material that
has
been used, but also in the depth of the study achieved with the help of
an
exhaustive method of computer science analysis. According to my initial
hypothesis, the similarities that exist between Borges and Nabokov’s
texts
lies in the affinity of their thoughts and in their way of perceiving
the
world. First of all, such similarity can be noticed in the subject
matter
chosen by them.
The first part of my thesis is dedicated to the correlation study of
Borges
and Nabokov’s Biographies, and also to their likes and dislikes in their

readings. Furthermore, we try to define the contact that existed between

them.
In the second part the correlation between the different topics and
motives
is established. Topics such as time, reality, memory, heroism, and
motives
such as the mirror, the labyrinth, the chess, the blindness and the
search
of the key issues. The similarity that can be seen in the sort of topics

and motives that both authors use constitute a number of different lines
of
discussion, varying images, metaphors and symbols.
To my mind, the origin of the coincidences that can be observed between
both narratives must be searched in the upbringing, their reading
interests
and finally in the socio-cultural insertion. It could also be relevant
to
the topic the parallelism that is drawn in their biographies.

[EDNOTE. Here is a link to Nina Kressova's thesis. -- SES]

URL: http://0-hera.ugr.es.adrastea.ugr.es/tesisugr/1671023x.pdf


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