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MLA
Convention -08
The
International Vladimir Nabokov Society will be sponsoring two panels
at the MLA Convention this year:
1. Open
Session: Vladimir Nabokov
Papers
addressing any aspect of Nabokov's work. Please send 300-500 abstract
and a
brief bio. to Julian Connolly, Julian Connolly, jwc4w@virginia.edu.
2. Nabokov and
Repetition
After Clarence Brown deemed Nabokov’s work
"extremely repetitious," Nabokov responded with “he may have
something there. Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate
many
others, past and present. Artistic originality has only its own self to
copy.” In _The Gift_, Fyodor senses “one of those
repetitions, one of those thematic ‘voices’ with which, according
to all the rules of harmony, destiny enriches the life of observant
men.” In _Speak, Memory_, Nabokov has spoken openly about
following such “thematic designs” as the “true purpose of
autobiography.” In _The Real Life of Sebastian Knight_,
we learn,
however, that “[t]he only real number is one, [sic] the rest are mere
repetition."
And in _Bend Sinister_, this “pure Krugism,” not
voiced by Adam Krug, enriches the possibilities of this topic: “As
with
so many phenomena of time, recurrent combinations are perceptible as
such only
when they cannot affect us any more—when they are imprisoned so to
speak
in the past, which is the past just because it is disinfected.” While
some critics have seen in Nabokov’s repetitions a desire to escape his
century’s historical traumas by stamping a body of work with a unifying
and defiant image of himself, others have read the repetitious as the
return of
the repressed in Nabokov’s efforts to use writing as defense against
anxieties produced by personal rather than historical traumas. But it
is also
possible to reverse Kundera’s dictum that happiness is longing for
repetition and see in Nabokov’s repetitions a desire to preserve
happiness rather than an incantatory effort to evade unhappiness.
There are of
course many other possibilities. Please send abstracts of 300-500
words for papers
on any aspect of repetition within or across Nabokov’s works to Zoran
Kuzmanovich, zokuzmanovich@davidson.edu.
The deadline is March 15, 2008.
A brief bio always helps.