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Re: our old humbug & his bugaboos
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Carolyn Kunin: "In my pursuit of the Nabokovian soul... I have decided to take a deeper look at VN's pet peeves. So far acquaintance with those loathed ones has brought me nothing but pleasure and intellectual stimulation. Dr Freud of course is the big bugaboo... I have read his take on Moses and have found it very interesting ... And if VN, as I read somewhere in the archives, was really such a mandarine as to find Brodsky and Mandelshtam (Mandelshtam!!) unworthy, then I throw up my hands in despair. "
JM: One of such interesting points in Freud's "Moses and Monotheism" lies in how practical, for political, tactic or economic reasons, it is to crush cultural and individual differencesm by the establishment of a unified Godhead.
Nabokov was partial (ie, not "whole"*) to specific aesthetic ideals, which we don't need to share or understand in order to enjoy his writings. He was often ambiguous or contradictory. For example, he often spoke depreciatively about Cervantes' Don Quixote, but he read all its bits and pieces - and wrote a book about them, a loving sensitive book. Perhaps he denies his fascination with Cervantes' madman, one who wholeheartedly believed in valiant noble knights, because he himself (or one part of him) believed in theosophy, in Mme Blavatsky's or in other spiritualistic theories. He once wrote to his mother that he was certain that he'd meet his father in the "Hereafter." (it seems to me that, like Shade, he was unable to let this "faint hope" disappear, even while resorting to self-mockery).
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* I suggest a comparison between what we read in Nabokov's early The Enchanter, and what Fowlie describes about Baudelaire's idea of Beauty, for the poet "was always struck by the very special privilege given to beauty to survive moral deficiencies [...] a blasphemous idea in a line of poetry did not necessarily diminish the formal beauty of the line. He would accept the belief that beauty may continue within the realm of evil." ( Wallace Fowlie: introduction to Baudelaire's selected works). In Nabokov's early The Enchanter, his character states: "I have tried to catch myself in the transition from one kind of tenderness to the other, from the simple to the special, and would very much like to know whether they are mutually exclusive, whether they must, after all, be assigned to different genera, or whether one is a rare flowering of the other on the Walpurgis Night of my murky soul; for, if they are two separate entities, then there must be two separate kinds of beauty, and the aesthetic sense, invited to dinner, sits down with a crash between two chairs (the fate of any dualism)." (p.23, Picador,1987). However, later on Nabokov will affirm that "a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss" described as "a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness) is the norm." (AL, Afterword, p.314-15.)
When Nabokov says that he is an "indivisible monist," this probably indicates that he'd once felt closer to "Arthur"(the character in "The Enchanter"), and to Baudelaire, than to singling out the positive "states of being" which demand the exclusion of the ugly or corrupted.
In "Lolita" (somewhat contradictorily) he tries to deny what he's expressed in "The Enchanter" and, in "Pale Fire," this "aesthetic split" is almost complete, as we see in Kinbote's moralistic commentary:"His misshapen body [.]the bags under his lusterless eyes, were only intelligible if regarded as the waste products eliminated from his intrinsic self by the same forces of perfection which purified and chiseled his verse." ( Pale Fire, p.453. The Library of America.). Perhaps only a Godhead can be a true "indivisible monist" whereas we, poor humans, have to make choices and recognize (like Kinbote) that we are only able to see "through a glass, darkly."
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JM: One of such interesting points in Freud's "Moses and Monotheism" lies in how practical, for political, tactic or economic reasons, it is to crush cultural and individual differencesm by the establishment of a unified Godhead.
Nabokov was partial (ie, not "whole"*) to specific aesthetic ideals, which we don't need to share or understand in order to enjoy his writings. He was often ambiguous or contradictory. For example, he often spoke depreciatively about Cervantes' Don Quixote, but he read all its bits and pieces - and wrote a book about them, a loving sensitive book. Perhaps he denies his fascination with Cervantes' madman, one who wholeheartedly believed in valiant noble knights, because he himself (or one part of him) believed in theosophy, in Mme Blavatsky's or in other spiritualistic theories. He once wrote to his mother that he was certain that he'd meet his father in the "Hereafter." (it seems to me that, like Shade, he was unable to let this "faint hope" disappear, even while resorting to self-mockery).
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
* I suggest a comparison between what we read in Nabokov's early The Enchanter, and what Fowlie describes about Baudelaire's idea of Beauty, for the poet "was always struck by the very special privilege given to beauty to survive moral deficiencies [...] a blasphemous idea in a line of poetry did not necessarily diminish the formal beauty of the line. He would accept the belief that beauty may continue within the realm of evil." ( Wallace Fowlie: introduction to Baudelaire's selected works). In Nabokov's early The Enchanter, his character states: "I have tried to catch myself in the transition from one kind of tenderness to the other, from the simple to the special, and would very much like to know whether they are mutually exclusive, whether they must, after all, be assigned to different genera, or whether one is a rare flowering of the other on the Walpurgis Night of my murky soul; for, if they are two separate entities, then there must be two separate kinds of beauty, and the aesthetic sense, invited to dinner, sits down with a crash between two chairs (the fate of any dualism)." (p.23, Picador,1987). However, later on Nabokov will affirm that "a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss" described as "a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness) is the norm." (AL, Afterword, p.314-15.)
When Nabokov says that he is an "indivisible monist," this probably indicates that he'd once felt closer to "Arthur"(the character in "The Enchanter"), and to Baudelaire, than to singling out the positive "states of being" which demand the exclusion of the ugly or corrupted.
In "Lolita" (somewhat contradictorily) he tries to deny what he's expressed in "The Enchanter" and, in "Pale Fire," this "aesthetic split" is almost complete, as we see in Kinbote's moralistic commentary:"His misshapen body [.]the bags under his lusterless eyes, were only intelligible if regarded as the waste products eliminated from his intrinsic self by the same forces of perfection which purified and chiseled his verse." ( Pale Fire, p.453. The Library of America.). Perhaps only a Godhead can be a true "indivisible monist" whereas we, poor humans, have to make choices and recognize (like Kinbote) that we are only able to see "through a glass, darkly."
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/