Subject
Fwd: Re: Mick Glynn: Dissertation-A novelist of Delusion:Vladimir
Nabokov's Bergsoni
Nabokov's Bergsoni
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Date
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EDNOTE. I blush to read parts of this informative item (and wish NABOKV-L
received more material like it). I am somewhat bemused at being designated a
pro-otherworlder although I suppose I am. Nabokov's underlying metaphysic can
be fitted into several conceptual frameworks. I say "bemused" because, as I
recall, from the discussion at Jane Grayson's Cambridge conference, I offered
the thought that supposing the various metaphysical frameworks were in fact
fantasies of the critics--would VN's work be any less brilliant. My lurking
suspicion is "no."
--------------------------------------------------------------
----- Forwarded message from MGLYNN@pcfe.ac.uk -----
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 10:50:06 +0100
From: MIck Glynn <MGLYNN@pcfe.ac.uk>
Reply-To: MIck Glynn <MGLYNN@pcfe.ac.uk>
---------------- Message requiring your approval (118 lines) ------------------
Hi Jerry,
Thanks for your interest.
As I stated earlier,I personally view Nabokov as an anti-Symbolist
writer. The observation that an orthodoxy obtains, an orthodoxy
presenting N as a kind of Symbolist writer, is hardly a controversial
one. Many respected scholars have engaged with the
Symbolist/Transcendental element in N's thought and work. In
Nabokov's World Volume 1 no less than three articles celebrate the
writer as a transcendentalist. In Dolorous Haze, for example, Priscilla
Meyer writes of Nabokov's "faith in emanations of the beloved
dead" and identifies Lolita and Pale Fire as texts in which
Nabokov's interest in spiritualism finds expression. D. Barton
Johnson also seeks to present Nabokov as a spiritualist and traces the
influence on his work of the "mystical probings" of Walter de la
Mare. In Prologue: The Otherworld, co-authored by Johnson and Brian
Boyd, the former again portrays Nabokov as a writer "whose work is
best understood in terms of the possible survival of the individual
consciousness (personality and memory) after death." Boyd concurs
in this view, maintaining that Nabokov's "metaphysics, his
otherworld, is a vitally important aspect of his work, and in some
senses its deepest level." These judgments are particularly
significant because Johnson and Boyd are arguably pre-eminent in the
field of Nabokov scholarship. Boyd's celebrated two volume biography
is an invaluable source of information on Nabokov's life and career
and, via its extensive critical assessments, has done much to shape
current notions of Nabokov as a metaphysician. D. Barton Johnson has
made an equally important contribution, not least for the fact that he
is, as you will be aware, founding editor of the academic journal
Nabokov Studies and also founder and moderator of this very NABOKV-L
website. In addition, Johnson is author of many works including
Worlds in Regression, an influential book that anatomises Nabokov's
engagement with "a higher order beyond our shadow world" and
discerns in the novels a sense of a "cosmic riddle" waiting to be
solved. Johnson's Worlds in Regression was in part anticipated by his
Belyj and Nabokov, in which article he discusses Nabokov's Symbolist
"two world cosmology," his sense that an imperfect world masks
an world of perfect forms. Elsewhere, Robert Grossmith, in an essay
which is perhaps more ingenious than persuasive, has sought to portray
Nabokov as a gnostic writer. Grossmith sees the characters in
Invitation to a Beheading as corresponding to "the tripartition of
humanity in gnostic anthropology." According to this theory,
Cincinnatus and his mother are "spiritual" or "pneumatic" and
assured of salvation, the librarian and Emmie are "soulish" or
"psychic" beings possessing free will, with the potential for
salvation should they elect to embrace it, whilst the remaining
characters are "purely carnal" or "hylic creatures devoid of
spirit." W.W. Rowe has sought to delineate the "complex pattern of
ghostly activity" lurking within Nabokov's work whilst, in an
equally transcendental vein, Brian Boyd, again, contends that Nabokov
removes the reader's earthly blinkers thereby permitting that reader
to "see through to other worlds beyond."
Noting the depth of critical interest in Nabokov and "higher
consciousness," Richard Borden argues that the author's revisiting
of childhood, in Speak Memory and elsewhere, is an expression of a
"spiritual and metaphysical nostalgia." Whilst Nabokov declared
his fundamental indifference to religion and whilst some readers might
themselves struggle to discern in his work significant objective
evidence of any religious impulse, Gennady Barabtarlo has conceived of
Nabokov's oeuvre in emphatically ghostly terms, finding it eloquent
of "a mysterious love for the invisible and the incomprehensible, an
inarticulate but insuperable faith in the principal Divinity of the
world." In a separate work, Barabtarlo assures us that "it is an
established fact that one of the main departments in Nabokov's
metaphysics is pneumatology. A trained eye can detect, in many of his
stories and novels, another dimension very delicately, almost
ephemerally inset into the text." Vladimir Alexandrov has also
argued at length for the centrality of the "otherworld" to
Nabokov's fiction. Alexandrov seeks to link Nabokov with the
Russian mystic P.D. Ouspensky and invokes no less an authority than
Vera Nabokov in support of his contention that the world beyond this
one forms the subject of Nabokov's fiction. When reading Nabokov,
not everyone will necessarily find the work to be eloquent of a
fundamental concern with the metaphysical in the way that Alexandrov and
others suggest. As I seek to demonstrate in my thesis, (and in a
forthcoming article in European Journal of American Culture: "The word
is not a Shadow, The Word is a Thing: Nabokov as Anti-Symbolist") the
most significant and compelling "otherworld" in Nabokov's novels
is not the transcendental realm but the material world of people and
things that the deluded mind is not able fully to apprehend. Note how
deluded Humbert engages not with the material reality that is Dolores
but with a spurious analogue, Lolita. I align N with Bergson and
Shklovsky because these two individuals (dissimilar in myriad ways) also
conceived of man as a deluded creature who ovwerlooked the material
reality of people and things. If you're interested, get hold of a copy
of my thesis available from the BL - it's very readable! Cheers, Mick
Glynn
>>> chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu 20/04/2005 15:59:20 >>>
Dmitri Nabokov commended my removal of "in effect a Symbolist
writer" from this sentence that I quoted from Mick Glynn's
dissertation:
"I shall preface my discussion of Nabokov's Bergsonian and
Shklovskyite affinities by countering the idea, now something of
a critical orthodoxy, that Nabokov was in effect a Symbolist
writer concerned with a transcendent, extra-mundane reality."
I was gratified to read Mr. Nabokov's comment, but I should make
it clear that I deleted those words to express my own view of
our author's concern with a transcendent, extra-mundane reality
(at least in _Pale Fire_) and not to criticize Dr. Glynn's
summary of critical orthodoxy, about which I know hardly
anything. I'd love to read something of how Dr. Glynn counters
that orthodoxy that I apparently share, though.
Jerry Friedman
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
received more material like it). I am somewhat bemused at being designated a
pro-otherworlder although I suppose I am. Nabokov's underlying metaphysic can
be fitted into several conceptual frameworks. I say "bemused" because, as I
recall, from the discussion at Jane Grayson's Cambridge conference, I offered
the thought that supposing the various metaphysical frameworks were in fact
fantasies of the critics--would VN's work be any less brilliant. My lurking
suspicion is "no."
--------------------------------------------------------------
----- Forwarded message from MGLYNN@pcfe.ac.uk -----
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 10:50:06 +0100
From: MIck Glynn <MGLYNN@pcfe.ac.uk>
Reply-To: MIck Glynn <MGLYNN@pcfe.ac.uk>
---------------- Message requiring your approval (118 lines) ------------------
Hi Jerry,
Thanks for your interest.
As I stated earlier,I personally view Nabokov as an anti-Symbolist
writer. The observation that an orthodoxy obtains, an orthodoxy
presenting N as a kind of Symbolist writer, is hardly a controversial
one. Many respected scholars have engaged with the
Symbolist/Transcendental element in N's thought and work. In
Nabokov's World Volume 1 no less than three articles celebrate the
writer as a transcendentalist. In Dolorous Haze, for example, Priscilla
Meyer writes of Nabokov's "faith in emanations of the beloved
dead" and identifies Lolita and Pale Fire as texts in which
Nabokov's interest in spiritualism finds expression. D. Barton
Johnson also seeks to present Nabokov as a spiritualist and traces the
influence on his work of the "mystical probings" of Walter de la
Mare. In Prologue: The Otherworld, co-authored by Johnson and Brian
Boyd, the former again portrays Nabokov as a writer "whose work is
best understood in terms of the possible survival of the individual
consciousness (personality and memory) after death." Boyd concurs
in this view, maintaining that Nabokov's "metaphysics, his
otherworld, is a vitally important aspect of his work, and in some
senses its deepest level." These judgments are particularly
significant because Johnson and Boyd are arguably pre-eminent in the
field of Nabokov scholarship. Boyd's celebrated two volume biography
is an invaluable source of information on Nabokov's life and career
and, via its extensive critical assessments, has done much to shape
current notions of Nabokov as a metaphysician. D. Barton Johnson has
made an equally important contribution, not least for the fact that he
is, as you will be aware, founding editor of the academic journal
Nabokov Studies and also founder and moderator of this very NABOKV-L
website. In addition, Johnson is author of many works including
Worlds in Regression, an influential book that anatomises Nabokov's
engagement with "a higher order beyond our shadow world" and
discerns in the novels a sense of a "cosmic riddle" waiting to be
solved. Johnson's Worlds in Regression was in part anticipated by his
Belyj and Nabokov, in which article he discusses Nabokov's Symbolist
"two world cosmology," his sense that an imperfect world masks
an world of perfect forms. Elsewhere, Robert Grossmith, in an essay
which is perhaps more ingenious than persuasive, has sought to portray
Nabokov as a gnostic writer. Grossmith sees the characters in
Invitation to a Beheading as corresponding to "the tripartition of
humanity in gnostic anthropology." According to this theory,
Cincinnatus and his mother are "spiritual" or "pneumatic" and
assured of salvation, the librarian and Emmie are "soulish" or
"psychic" beings possessing free will, with the potential for
salvation should they elect to embrace it, whilst the remaining
characters are "purely carnal" or "hylic creatures devoid of
spirit." W.W. Rowe has sought to delineate the "complex pattern of
ghostly activity" lurking within Nabokov's work whilst, in an
equally transcendental vein, Brian Boyd, again, contends that Nabokov
removes the reader's earthly blinkers thereby permitting that reader
to "see through to other worlds beyond."
Noting the depth of critical interest in Nabokov and "higher
consciousness," Richard Borden argues that the author's revisiting
of childhood, in Speak Memory and elsewhere, is an expression of a
"spiritual and metaphysical nostalgia." Whilst Nabokov declared
his fundamental indifference to religion and whilst some readers might
themselves struggle to discern in his work significant objective
evidence of any religious impulse, Gennady Barabtarlo has conceived of
Nabokov's oeuvre in emphatically ghostly terms, finding it eloquent
of "a mysterious love for the invisible and the incomprehensible, an
inarticulate but insuperable faith in the principal Divinity of the
world." In a separate work, Barabtarlo assures us that "it is an
established fact that one of the main departments in Nabokov's
metaphysics is pneumatology. A trained eye can detect, in many of his
stories and novels, another dimension very delicately, almost
ephemerally inset into the text." Vladimir Alexandrov has also
argued at length for the centrality of the "otherworld" to
Nabokov's fiction. Alexandrov seeks to link Nabokov with the
Russian mystic P.D. Ouspensky and invokes no less an authority than
Vera Nabokov in support of his contention that the world beyond this
one forms the subject of Nabokov's fiction. When reading Nabokov,
not everyone will necessarily find the work to be eloquent of a
fundamental concern with the metaphysical in the way that Alexandrov and
others suggest. As I seek to demonstrate in my thesis, (and in a
forthcoming article in European Journal of American Culture: "The word
is not a Shadow, The Word is a Thing: Nabokov as Anti-Symbolist") the
most significant and compelling "otherworld" in Nabokov's novels
is not the transcendental realm but the material world of people and
things that the deluded mind is not able fully to apprehend. Note how
deluded Humbert engages not with the material reality that is Dolores
but with a spurious analogue, Lolita. I align N with Bergson and
Shklovsky because these two individuals (dissimilar in myriad ways) also
conceived of man as a deluded creature who ovwerlooked the material
reality of people and things. If you're interested, get hold of a copy
of my thesis available from the BL - it's very readable! Cheers, Mick
Glynn
>>> chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu 20/04/2005 15:59:20 >>>
Dmitri Nabokov commended my removal of "in effect a Symbolist
writer" from this sentence that I quoted from Mick Glynn's
dissertation:
"I shall preface my discussion of Nabokov's Bergsonian and
Shklovskyite affinities by countering the idea, now something of
a critical orthodoxy, that Nabokov was in effect a Symbolist
writer concerned with a transcendent, extra-mundane reality."
I was gratified to read Mr. Nabokov's comment, but I should make
it clear that I deleted those words to express my own view of
our author's concern with a transcendent, extra-mundane reality
(at least in _Pale Fire_) and not to criticize Dr. Glynn's
summary of critical orthodoxy, about which I know hardly
anything. I'd love to read something of how Dr. Glynn counters
that orthodoxy that I apparently share, though.
Jerry Friedman
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----