Subject
THOUGHTS, if you can call them that (on misspellings,
accent marks, narcissism, metaphors)
accent marks, narcissism, metaphors)
From
Date
Body
J.F toJ.A.: when you spoke of homosexuality meant to be symbolic of narcissism (as you said incest was), did you mean Kinbote, or the homosexuality scene in /Ada/?[...]
J.A.to J.F: I did in fact mean Kinbote when I spoke of Homosexuality and had momentarily forgotten about Ada, with Van's "trying" the boy prostitute with dysentary at that floramor and the half-sister's constant whatsiz.
JM to J.A:Any modern ( not so modern, actually) text about psychology with whiffs of Freud connects a special kind of "narcisism" and "homosexuality" ( analogies,mirrors, reflective surfaces, incapacity to love except one's likeness etc). There is no "symbolism" or "symbolic reading", as I see it ( Yeah...define love, define metaphor, define symbol etc...) .
J.A to JM.: I disagree. And while I know Nabokov would vociferously disagree with me I think it's almost impossible not to see the sexuality of Kinbote as pretty much a conceit. Everything from how Kinbote picks up those boys to what exactly he does with them is vague, a vagueness Nabokov tries to cover over with bluster. Perhaps I should have said thematic rather than symbolic, that Kinbote's sexuality is an extension of the solipsism that fuels the entire contraption of the novel, and that there is no sensuous expressive reality to Kinbote's attraction to men (it's not even clear over the course of the novel whether he likes smooth effeminate little boys with curly lashes--when Nabokov has Kinbote describe those he likes in close up--or rugged masculine types--the various "tricks" and affairs which are merely brought up and quickly dispensed with). Because Kinbote's "condition" is basically dramatized as a giggly joke soaked in abstract academicality the effect in my opinion is to have the character's libido simply stand in for solipsism. Personally I think this weakens a book that is already so much of a stunt in terms of its structure that it doesn't need a cloudy "Freudian reek" to quote another Nabokov novel at the center of it, turning the book into a kind of racy word jumble. Lolita also had this symbolic use of sexuality with the same thematic meaning, but he dramatized all its implications (there are other structural reasons I think Pale Fire is also a back-(word) step in Nabokov's development, but I won't go into that here).
JM: I'm still confused by what you call "symbolic homosexuality". Are you isolating homosexual practices from homosexuality proper? Not every homosexual practices homosexual sex, of course, but this doesn't turn him into a "symbolic homosexual" - unless you mean literary allusions to solipsism or narcisism. Quoting you: a "symbolic use of sexuality with the same 'thematic' meaning" (?).
Kinbote, as a fictional character, sees the world "homosexually". Besides, he despises women or is unable to perceive them as such (VN's playfulness with freudian "reeks" seems to have made Kinbote dream "heterosexual dreams", though, as if he could have been a caricature of a repressed heterosexual). Perhaps VN's play with "bl" sounds as in "siblings" comes closer to what you consider this symbolic dimension. I still cannot see how this terminology can clarify literary issues, though. You wrote "the solipsism that fuels the entire contraption of the novel" , referring to Pale Fire and, perhaps, to Lolita - but Humbert's sexuality is a pervert's ( not fully unfolded ie immature): HH is solipsistic, not a homosexual. I prefer to think, as Alfred Appel Jr. has focused in his "Annotated Lolita", that solipsism ( symbolically and I agree with you here) is a device used as as a theoretical "self-referentiality", a mise-en-abîme kind of style with infinite regress as in D.B.Johnsons' "worlds in regression". Yes, in that sense solipsism "fuels" VN's novels... Recently I read one of Penelope Fitzgerald's characters ("The Blue Flower", in which we find her working with nymphic ideals and very young loves through the poet Novalis) mention: " language speaks only of itself and leaves out the external world" (distorted by memory, I didn't yet find the quote) and this made me conjecture if one of VN's insistent demonstrations is not aimed at exploring such a "solipsistic" ( if I may say so) aspect of language...
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J.A.to J.F: I did in fact mean Kinbote when I spoke of Homosexuality and had momentarily forgotten about Ada, with Van's "trying" the boy prostitute with dysentary at that floramor and the half-sister's constant whatsiz.
JM to J.A:Any modern ( not so modern, actually) text about psychology with whiffs of Freud connects a special kind of "narcisism" and "homosexuality" ( analogies,mirrors, reflective surfaces, incapacity to love except one's likeness etc). There is no "symbolism" or "symbolic reading", as I see it ( Yeah...define love, define metaphor, define symbol etc...) .
J.A to JM.: I disagree. And while I know Nabokov would vociferously disagree with me I think it's almost impossible not to see the sexuality of Kinbote as pretty much a conceit. Everything from how Kinbote picks up those boys to what exactly he does with them is vague, a vagueness Nabokov tries to cover over with bluster. Perhaps I should have said thematic rather than symbolic, that Kinbote's sexuality is an extension of the solipsism that fuels the entire contraption of the novel, and that there is no sensuous expressive reality to Kinbote's attraction to men (it's not even clear over the course of the novel whether he likes smooth effeminate little boys with curly lashes--when Nabokov has Kinbote describe those he likes in close up--or rugged masculine types--the various "tricks" and affairs which are merely brought up and quickly dispensed with). Because Kinbote's "condition" is basically dramatized as a giggly joke soaked in abstract academicality the effect in my opinion is to have the character's libido simply stand in for solipsism. Personally I think this weakens a book that is already so much of a stunt in terms of its structure that it doesn't need a cloudy "Freudian reek" to quote another Nabokov novel at the center of it, turning the book into a kind of racy word jumble. Lolita also had this symbolic use of sexuality with the same thematic meaning, but he dramatized all its implications (there are other structural reasons I think Pale Fire is also a back-(word) step in Nabokov's development, but I won't go into that here).
JM: I'm still confused by what you call "symbolic homosexuality". Are you isolating homosexual practices from homosexuality proper? Not every homosexual practices homosexual sex, of course, but this doesn't turn him into a "symbolic homosexual" - unless you mean literary allusions to solipsism or narcisism. Quoting you: a "symbolic use of sexuality with the same 'thematic' meaning" (?).
Kinbote, as a fictional character, sees the world "homosexually". Besides, he despises women or is unable to perceive them as such (VN's playfulness with freudian "reeks" seems to have made Kinbote dream "heterosexual dreams", though, as if he could have been a caricature of a repressed heterosexual). Perhaps VN's play with "bl" sounds as in "siblings" comes closer to what you consider this symbolic dimension. I still cannot see how this terminology can clarify literary issues, though. You wrote "the solipsism that fuels the entire contraption of the novel" , referring to Pale Fire and, perhaps, to Lolita - but Humbert's sexuality is a pervert's ( not fully unfolded ie immature): HH is solipsistic, not a homosexual. I prefer to think, as Alfred Appel Jr. has focused in his "Annotated Lolita", that solipsism ( symbolically and I agree with you here) is a device used as as a theoretical "self-referentiality", a mise-en-abîme kind of style with infinite regress as in D.B.Johnsons' "worlds in regression". Yes, in that sense solipsism "fuels" VN's novels... Recently I read one of Penelope Fitzgerald's characters ("The Blue Flower", in which we find her working with nymphic ideals and very young loves through the poet Novalis) mention: " language speaks only of itself and leaves out the external world" (distorted by memory, I didn't yet find the quote) and this made me conjecture if one of VN's insistent demonstrations is not aimed at exploring such a "solipsistic" ( if I may say so) aspect of language...
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/