Subject
Re: THOUGHTS re: Stegner's "Escape" and RLSK
From
Date
Body
Query: After so many years since Stegner wrote about The Exploit this Russian novel, quite probably, has already been published, translated and appears under the same or another title, in this case it might even be one I'm already familiar with. What is it's actual title in Russian and in English?
EDNote: The Exploit is Podvig, in English changed to Glory because VN disliked the verbal meaning of "exploit" (see the foreword).~SB
JM: As it came out as the "Subject", Stegner's "Escape" contrasts with what I read in the indicated Foreword ( written in Montreux, 1970).
Here Nabokov confesses that he didn't bestow any artistic talent on his hero and adds "how cruel to prevent him from finding in art - not an 'escape' ( which is only a cleaner cell on a quieter floor), but relief from the itch of being!"
And yet, Stegner's idea, so it seems to me, doesn't consider art as a form of elaborated "escapist fantasies": he suggests that beauty and aesthetic pleasures were valued by Nabokov as a full-fledged religion. The full title of his book s Escape into Aesthetics. It seems to blend in with the entire project connected to "Glory". In VN's words: "my happiest thing"..."it soars to heights of purity and melancholy that I have only attained in the much later ADA". VN considered that " 'Fulfillment' would have been,m perhaps, an even better title for the novel". He chose the oblique "glory' for "the glory of high adventure and disinterested achievement; the glory of this earth and its patchy paradise; the glory of personal pluck; the glory of a radiant martyr."..."Fulfillment is the fugal theme of his destiny; he is that rarity - a person 'whose dreams come true'."
When VN wrote that "fulfillment is the fugal theme.." I don't think he was considering any kind of musical circular art of the fugue, but, by setting it in the "singular", he seems to be indicating a classic or renascentist ordering of perspective in painting. XXth Century art has "un-centered" this organization through artists like Cézanne, the Surrealists, Dada... aso and, inspite of "Podvig"'s romantic mood, it is formally closer to modern art than to "classicism". Can anyone ellucidate me about the meaning of VN's expression, then, his "fugal theme"?
A fugue ( as in "fugitive") carries us back into "escape"!
(btw Steve, I found no copy of "Glory", besides a Penguin frail and mouldy one, carrying the indicated "foreword". Is there any American edition you'd recommend?)
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/
EDNote: The Exploit is Podvig, in English changed to Glory because VN disliked the verbal meaning of "exploit" (see the foreword).~SB
JM: As it came out as the "Subject", Stegner's "Escape" contrasts with what I read in the indicated Foreword ( written in Montreux, 1970).
Here Nabokov confesses that he didn't bestow any artistic talent on his hero and adds "how cruel to prevent him from finding in art - not an 'escape' ( which is only a cleaner cell on a quieter floor), but relief from the itch of being!"
And yet, Stegner's idea, so it seems to me, doesn't consider art as a form of elaborated "escapist fantasies": he suggests that beauty and aesthetic pleasures were valued by Nabokov as a full-fledged religion. The full title of his book s Escape into Aesthetics. It seems to blend in with the entire project connected to "Glory". In VN's words: "my happiest thing"..."it soars to heights of purity and melancholy that I have only attained in the much later ADA". VN considered that " 'Fulfillment' would have been,m perhaps, an even better title for the novel". He chose the oblique "glory' for "the glory of high adventure and disinterested achievement; the glory of this earth and its patchy paradise; the glory of personal pluck; the glory of a radiant martyr."..."Fulfillment is the fugal theme of his destiny; he is that rarity - a person 'whose dreams come true'."
When VN wrote that "fulfillment is the fugal theme.." I don't think he was considering any kind of musical circular art of the fugue, but, by setting it in the "singular", he seems to be indicating a classic or renascentist ordering of perspective in painting. XXth Century art has "un-centered" this organization through artists like Cézanne, the Surrealists, Dada... aso and, inspite of "Podvig"'s romantic mood, it is formally closer to modern art than to "classicism". Can anyone ellucidate me about the meaning of VN's expression, then, his "fugal theme"?
A fugue ( as in "fugitive") carries us back into "escape"!
(btw Steve, I found no copy of "Glory", besides a Penguin frail and mouldy one, carrying the indicated "foreword". Is there any American edition you'd recommend?)
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/