Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0020353, Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:03:15 -0300

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Re: 1930s Berlin photographs
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Steve Norquist: The color stills communicate the tragedy, especially the deluded enthusiastic youngsters unaware of their own doom, in ways old History Channel footage and other media do not. By the old adage about a picture being "worth" 1000 words, these are at least a short novel.

JM: Thanks for the indirect correction ("enthusiastic").

Images are double-edged and the short-novel you mention has yet to be written (According to novelist John Fowles "images are eminently tyrannical." - unfortunately I cannot remember where he said that).
VN once stated: "Down, Plato, clown, good dog. An image depends on the power of association, and association is supplied and prompted by memory...When we speak of a vivid individual recollection we are paying a compliment not to our capacity of retention but to Mnemosyne's mysterious foresight in having stored up this or that element which creative imagination may want to use when combining it with later recollections and inventions. In this sense, both memory and imagination are a negation of time." (the present quote, omitting Fido, came from the internet, related to Nabokov's interview. (06) Wisconsin Studies [1967] -www.kulichki.com/moshkow/.../Inter06.txt - ) *

* Actually the sentence I was looking for (also related to Plato's Republic, I suppose, following another comment in S.O) is:
"I detest Plato, I loathe Lacedaemon and all Perfect States. I weigh 195 pounds." ( from The Nabokov-Wilson Letters: Correspondence between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson, 1940-1971, in a dramatic dialogue adapted by Terry Quinn from the texts of the collected letters Issue 157, Winter 2000, Paris Review. I have no access to the book (SO) right now, only internet unreliable or variant sources!

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