Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0001293, Thu, 12 Sep 1996 07:24:22 -0700

Subject
C.S. Lewis & VN? (fwd)
Date
Body
From: dub@oz.net

----
Has there been anything written on these two estimable men? I am
collating some old notes and came across some quotes that sound
remarkably Nabokovian. One might argue, Surely, these opinions are
nothing new and it is no great surprise educated men would feel this
way. In any case:

C.S. Lewis--=20

On Teaching Literature

=93These well-meaning educationalists are quite right in thinking that
literary appreciation is a delicate thing. What they do not seem to see
is that for this very reason elementary examinations on literary
subjects ought to comfine themselves to just those dry and factual
questions which are so often ridiculed. The questions were never
supposed to test appreciation; the idea was to find out whether the boy
had read his books. It was the reading, not the being examined, which
was expected to do him good.=94

On Reading

=93We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the
curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid
asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is
like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants
cold wetness.=94

=93The re-reader is looking not for actual surprises (which can come only
once) but for a certain surprisingness.=94

=94There is no clearer distinction between the literary and the
unliterary. It is infallible. The literary man re-reads, other men
simply read.=94


On Writing

=93I see pictures...Keep quiet and watch and they will begin joining
themselves up. If you were very lucky (I have never been as lucky as all
that) a whole set might join themselves so consistently that there you
had a complete story; without doing anything yourself. But more often
(in my experience always) there are gaps. Then at last you have to do
some deliberate inventing, have to in these various places doing these
various things. I have no idea whether this is the usual way of writing
stories, still less whether it is the best. It is the only one I know:
images always come first.=94

--=20
dub@oz.net
Contraria sunt complementa (Opposites are complementary) --Niels Bohr