Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0012549, Thu, 13 Apr 2006 22:52:49 -0400

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VN, Joyce, and too much verbal body: bibliographical indications
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Dear List,

I forgot to furnish information about the quotes posted this morning. Here they are:

"we think not in words, but in shadows of words" : Strong Opinions, page 30. Vintage International,1990.

There is another quotation that closely resembles the idea: " Molly s final soliloquy(...) one can comment here that it exaggerates the verbal side of thought. Man thinks not always in words but also in images, whereas the stream of consciousness presupposes a flow of words that can be notated.'( page 289, Lectures on Literature, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1980 - where we also find J. Joyce s "association between sex and latrine" ( page 287). Here we also encounter: "Ulysses is a splendid and permanent structure, but it has been slightly overrated by the kind of critic who is more interested in ideas and generalities and human aspects than in the work of art itself." ( page 287)

Finnegans Wake, was described by VN as "a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book, a persistent snoar in the next room... Finnegans Wake's façade disguises a very conventional and drab tenement house, and only the infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations redeem it from utter insipidity". Strong Opinions, page 71

Nabokov maintained that the defect "in those otherwise marvelous soliloquies of his consists in that he gives too much verbal body to thoughts". Strong Opinions, page 30.

Jansy Mello

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