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Re: Vladimir Nabokov, whom Stoppard extravagantly admires ...
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Sandy Klein sent: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2011/03/stoppards-favorite-lines.html Stoppard’s Favorite Lines:: "In this week’s issue, Mark Singer writes about the revival of Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” on Broadway....A director who has staged several of his plays told me the other day, “You have to be foreign to write English with that kind of hypnotized brilliance.” An obvious comparison is with Vladimir Nabokov, whom Stoppard extravagantly admires. Stoppard said to me not long ago that his favorite parenthesis in world literature was this, from 'Lolita': 'My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three.'.”
JM: HH's description of his photogenic mother's death (picnic, lightining), brings to my mind another succint description. In HH's case it is not a report of an actual grief but, nonetheless, it remains emblematic for other real and unbearable sorrows. A writer's genius...
In his book "Jenseits des Lustpprinzips" Freud describes the adventures of his favourite daughter's son while he was playing with a spool with an attached thread. The child threw it away from his cradle exclaiming o-o-o ("Fort") and next he retrieved it with an exultant "a-a-a" ("Da"). Freud interpreted his grandson's effort to cope with his mother's absence:o-o-o ("Gone") a-a-a ("Back") as an attempt to gain symbolic control over an unfavourable loss. However, while Freud was in the process of writing his article, his daughter died from the flu. He acknowledged this fact in a pungent footnote, with its almost nonsensical parenthesis, and it still haunts me. "Now that she was really 'gone' ('o-o-o'), the little boy showed no signs of grief. ..."
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JM: HH's description of his photogenic mother's death (picnic, lightining), brings to my mind another succint description. In HH's case it is not a report of an actual grief but, nonetheless, it remains emblematic for other real and unbearable sorrows. A writer's genius...
In his book "Jenseits des Lustpprinzips" Freud describes the adventures of his favourite daughter's son while he was playing with a spool with an attached thread. The child threw it away from his cradle exclaiming o-o-o ("Fort") and next he retrieved it with an exultant "a-a-a" ("Da"). Freud interpreted his grandson's effort to cope with his mother's absence:o-o-o ("Gone") a-a-a ("Back") as an attempt to gain symbolic control over an unfavourable loss. However, while Freud was in the process of writing his article, his daughter died from the flu. He acknowledged this fact in a pungent footnote, with its almost nonsensical parenthesis, and it still haunts me. "Now that she was really 'gone' ('o-o-o'), the little boy showed no signs of grief. ..."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/