Subject
[NABOKV - L] "Monumementos" in the Gift and in Despair:
self-judgements and promotion. Correction
self-judgements and promotion. Correction
From
Date
Body
Leafing thru an old copy of "The Gift" to check marginalia and sentences I'd
underlined before throwing it away, for its replacement had just reached me,
I was struck by wonder once again after finding among the highlighted lines
V.Nabokov's concise comment on his view of Tamerlane's lust for power,
vanity and the price paid for his conquests: "Gradually, as a result of all
these raids on the past of Russian thought, he developed a new yearning for
Russia (.)And while piling up knowledge, while extracting his finished
creation out of this mountain, he remembered something else: a pile of
stones on an Asian pass; warriors going on campaign each placed a stone
there; on the way back each took a stone from the pile; that which was left
represented forever the number of those fallen in battle. Thus in a pile of
stones Tamerlane foresaw a monument."(The Gift, Penguin ed.1981,p.188)
He will return to Tamerlane at least once again in "Pale Fire", when C.
Kinbote offers one of John Shade's posthumous poems (note to line 347):
"And when above the livid plain
Forked lightning plays, therein may dwell
The torments of a Tamerlane,
The roar of tyrants torn in hell."
And yet, through the searing irony about Tamerlane's monument, what first
held my attention was the reference to a future memento associated to
Fyodor's growing wisdom - and to the (physical) body of his work after
"raiding on the past of Russian thought," "piling up knowledge" and
"extracting his finished creation out of this mountain." But wait.by pulling
his novel out from the "pile of stones" it no longer belongs to any future
monument. Would Fyodor have been overtaken by modesty or self-doubt at some
point in time? Was he a raider like Tamerlane or a surviving warrior with no
other fame?
This quandary reminded me of one of VN's comments in the foreword of
"Despair" (in it there's the foppish Hermann forever condemned to despair*,
a young and relatively innocent author and himself, thirty years later,
relishing his present conquest over a past accomplishment)**. Beth Sweeney's
article "Had I Come Before Myself": Illegitimate Judgments of Lolita and
Despair, elucidates this situation: "Nabokov adds yet another chiasmus when
he imagines his younger self, in turn, approving the current revision: "I
also know how pleased and excited I would have been in 1935 had I been able
to foreread this 1965 version"[.] Nabokov speculates about chronologically
preceding himself in time. In this case, too, the conceptual blending
produces an impossible scene of self-judgment (since the younger Nabokov
could not have read the later version) which nevertheless asserts a specific
verdict (since the older Nabokov claims to know how the younger would have
responded)." Susan Elizabeth SWEENEY:
<http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1038>
http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1038.
..............................
* - Hermann like Tamerlane and unlike Humbert is condemned to a permanent
and uninterrupted stay in Hell: "Hermann and Humbert are alike only in the
sense that two dragons painted by the same artist at different periods of
his life resemble each other. Both are neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a
green lane in Paradise where Humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a
year; but Hell shall never parole Hermann." (Despair, Foreword)
**- [ cf.also, in "The Gift": "The real writer should ignore all readers but
one, that of the future, who in his turn is merely the author reflected in
time (Koncheyev to Fyodor) p.309/10]
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underlined before throwing it away, for its replacement had just reached me,
I was struck by wonder once again after finding among the highlighted lines
V.Nabokov's concise comment on his view of Tamerlane's lust for power,
vanity and the price paid for his conquests: "Gradually, as a result of all
these raids on the past of Russian thought, he developed a new yearning for
Russia (.)And while piling up knowledge, while extracting his finished
creation out of this mountain, he remembered something else: a pile of
stones on an Asian pass; warriors going on campaign each placed a stone
there; on the way back each took a stone from the pile; that which was left
represented forever the number of those fallen in battle. Thus in a pile of
stones Tamerlane foresaw a monument."(The Gift, Penguin ed.1981,p.188)
He will return to Tamerlane at least once again in "Pale Fire", when C.
Kinbote offers one of John Shade's posthumous poems (note to line 347):
"And when above the livid plain
Forked lightning plays, therein may dwell
The torments of a Tamerlane,
The roar of tyrants torn in hell."
And yet, through the searing irony about Tamerlane's monument, what first
held my attention was the reference to a future memento associated to
Fyodor's growing wisdom - and to the (physical) body of his work after
"raiding on the past of Russian thought," "piling up knowledge" and
"extracting his finished creation out of this mountain." But wait.by pulling
his novel out from the "pile of stones" it no longer belongs to any future
monument. Would Fyodor have been overtaken by modesty or self-doubt at some
point in time? Was he a raider like Tamerlane or a surviving warrior with no
other fame?
This quandary reminded me of one of VN's comments in the foreword of
"Despair" (in it there's the foppish Hermann forever condemned to despair*,
a young and relatively innocent author and himself, thirty years later,
relishing his present conquest over a past accomplishment)**. Beth Sweeney's
article "Had I Come Before Myself": Illegitimate Judgments of Lolita and
Despair, elucidates this situation: "Nabokov adds yet another chiasmus when
he imagines his younger self, in turn, approving the current revision: "I
also know how pleased and excited I would have been in 1935 had I been able
to foreread this 1965 version"[.] Nabokov speculates about chronologically
preceding himself in time. In this case, too, the conceptual blending
produces an impossible scene of self-judgment (since the younger Nabokov
could not have read the later version) which nevertheless asserts a specific
verdict (since the older Nabokov claims to know how the younger would have
responded)." Susan Elizabeth SWEENEY:
<http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1038>
http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1038.
..............................
* - Hermann like Tamerlane and unlike Humbert is condemned to a permanent
and uninterrupted stay in Hell: "Hermann and Humbert are alike only in the
sense that two dragons painted by the same artist at different periods of
his life resemble each other. Both are neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a
green lane in Paradise where Humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a
year; but Hell shall never parole Hermann." (Despair, Foreword)
**- [ cf.also, in "The Gift": "The real writer should ignore all readers but
one, that of the future, who in his turn is merely the author reflected in
time (Koncheyev to Fyodor) p.309/10]
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L