Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0005166, Fri, 9 Jun 2000 08:04:38 -0700

Subject
Query-Fr. Pavel Florensky (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Arthur Glass <goliard@worldnet.att.net>

Rozanov's name does not appear in the index to Boyd's The Russian Years.
Nikolai Berdayev is mentioned as writing a letter of recommendation for VN
when the latter was exploring the prospects of teaching in England (Boyd,
506).




----- Original Message -----
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 12:58 PM
Subject: Re: Query-Fr. Pavel Florensky (fwd)


> From: Alphonse Vinh <AVinh@npr.org>
>
> This is fascinating stuff. I'm at work and don't have access to my
library!
> But I want to send a few notes. Fr Pavel Florensky was a polymath and has
> been called the "Russian Leonardo Da Vinci." Solzhenitsyn mentions Fr
Pavel
> in his Gulag work who is remembered by former zeks as carrying on his
> scientific experiments even whilst serving in a labour camp. The
> scholar-philosopher-priest was canonised several years ago by the Moscow
> Patriarchate. Fr Pavel published books and articles in fields such as
> theology, philosophy, art history, mathematics, and electrical
engineering.
>
> Something tells me Nabokov must have known about Fr Pavel Florensky given
> the latter's great importance during the Silver Age culture. Fr Pavel was
a
> friend of Vasilii Rozanov and participated with him in the Moscow
> Religio-Philosophical Society which included many distinguished members of
> the Russian secular and religious intelligentsia. I have read somewhere in
> one of Nabokov's lectures or interviews that he considered Rozanov a
"writer
> of genius."
>
> Former members of the MRPS settled in Berling after the Revolution
including
> Nikolai Berdiaev who was also friends with Rozanov. At various emigre
> functions in Paris, Berlin, or Prague, VN would have encountered some of
> these representatives of the intelligentsia who reconciled with Orthodoxy
in
> the decades before 1917.
>
> file://Alphonse
>
> Alphonse Vinh
> NPR
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Galya Diment [mailto:galya@u.washington.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 12:28 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Re: Query-Fr. Pavel Florensky (fwd)
>
>
> Had to re-check but here it is: Gene Barabtarlo in AERIAL VIEW makes
> several references to Florensky while discussing Nabokov's "Art and
> Metaphysics." See, for example, his discussion of PNIN, "A Resolved
> Discord," pp. 141-92.
>
> Galya Diment
>
> >
> >
> > From: sam schuman <schumans@mrs.umn.edu>
> >
> > Does anyone know if VN knew the work of, or possibly even might have
> > encountered in person, the priest, scientist and writer Pavel Florensky
> > (1882-1937)? Florensky, as I suppose most everyone but me knows, was
> > something of a genius, a saint and certainly a martyr. Fr. Pavel
writes:
> >
> > For within ourselves, life in the visible world alternates with life in
> the
> > invisible, and thus we experience moments...when the two worlds grow so
> > very near in us that we can see their intimate touching At such
fleeting
> > moments in us, the veil of visibility is torn apart, and through that
tear
> > - that break we are still conscious of at that moment - we can sense
that
> > the invisible world (still unearthly, still invisible ) is breathing:
and
> > that both this and another world are dissolving into ech other.
> >
> > Sam
> >
> > Samuel Schuman
> > Chancellor
> > The University of Minnesota, Morris
> > Morris, MN 56267
> > schumans@caa.mrs.umn.edu
> > 320-589-6015
> >
> >
> >
> >
>