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Re: Switzerland, Poe, Circles, Lexicographers
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Matt Roth wrote:
The whole answer to [since VN continued to pay US taxes, why didn't he stay
in America?] is, of course, unknowable, but as I understand the chronology
of events, much of the decision to stay in Switzerland revolved around Dmitri.
In Boyd's LoA chronology, he says that VN returned to Europe in 1960 to be
near Dmitri. He intended at that time to return to America. But Dmitri soon
had his operatic debut--along with some guy named Pavarotti--and VN wanted to
be able to attend his performances in Italy. Soon after, in 1962, Dmitri
fell seriously ill and had to be hospitalized several times over the next two
years. Any parent would want to be close by. Then, after a brief trip to
Ithaca to pick up some things he'd left there, Vera had to be hospitalized for
appendicitis. So it would seem that VN stayed in Europe longer than first
planned, at least in part, because of family considerations. After that, he may
have found himself too comfortable, and getting too old, to pick up and
move across the ocean again.
Makes pretty reasonable sense, if not wholly conclusive. I did have DN’s
singing at the back of my mind, and I haven’t read Boyd carefully enough. Wrong,
of course, to draw any conclusions on anything, without knowing all the
facts. But who knows all the facts?
SES wrote:
Charles, I think that you may have accidentally confused dates and ages. Poe
was educated in England 1815-1820, from the ages of six to eleven (he was
born in 1809).
I have often speculated that some of the striking affinities in VN's and
Jorge Luis Borges's adult fictions may reflect the fact that they both read and
reread Poe, Stevenson, and Conan Doyle in English as children. (VN and
JLB--born in the same year--were similarly precocious,
fluent in English, and raised in Anglophile families.)
Sigh. Yes, the angel of senility is hovering nearby: I can hear the beating
of his wings. I am not puzzled, but simply confused after all. Six to eleven
is much more formative than fifteen to twenty. I found the same writers to be
formative for me (among others) which is perhaps why I respond so strongly
to Borges and VN.
Carolyn wrote:
She is, she tells me, deadly serious. You see she doesn't belong to any
"literary circles" (translating or otherwise) and so is allowed to form her
opinions unbowed by those of superior intellects.
If forced, I would give all the novels for these lines which I would add to
my Penguin Book of Russian Verse and be quite content.
p.s. My words were neither edited nor extracted. I simply prefer to keep it
short.
The literary translating circles I was thinking of are actually flat,
oblong, black and white, and read all over. The word “literary” was added in order
to distinguish between translation of literature and translation of a more
mundane kind: commercial, legal and so forth. The “parrot” verses crop up in
various publications not infrequently. Personally, I’d rather keep the novels
and ditch the verse, but we’re all entitled to our preferences. I felt I’d
perhaps incorrectly edited and extracted Carolyn’s words from her slightly
longer post, and was expressing the polite hope that I’d not twisted her words
to make a trap for anyone. Could my apologies perhaps be passed on to her?
A.Bouazza wrote:
Prepatory to anything else, is “disgustibus non disputanderum” a deliberate
garbling of the correct “de gustibus non est disputandum”?
I am resolved never to use this sign J --- which has always struck me as
both weak and condescending. But I acknowledge and admit the excessive
feebleness of the joke.
Of late it seems one cannot voice a favourable opinion on VN without CHW
swooping down on it like a hawk and ruffling it, especially when it concerns his
poetry/verse.
I also admit to a wicked desire to be provocative: it makes for more
stimulating and engaging conversation among discursive equals, imho, and even VN
himself (whom God preserve) might not totally disapprove this impulse. We are
not, I take it, restricted exclusively to uncritical hagiography?
“VN’s adjectival precision and aptness have no rival” raised some questions
--– first of all, I didn’t define what I exactly mean by that, and
secondly, needless to say, I did not include
the whole of English literature, and certainly not Milton and Johnson,
although I would like him (CHW) to provide examples of unrivalled adjectival
precision from these writers, and I would certainly like to see some
generalizations and pronouncements of Johnson thrown into the trash-can.
I cannot provide unrivalled examples of adjectival precision from anyone:
and that includes VN. Everyone has rivals, even VN. I go along with the general
sentiment that comparisons are odious, but I have to blame my good, sound,
middle-class education, as a versifier once put it, which drastically honed my
already obnoxious critical faculty, and obliged me to live with this odium.
I quoted Beckett’s “Critic!” as the ultimate insult in an earlier post.
I also fully go along with the perception that Samuel Johnson is one of the
most annoying writers that ever lived and wrote. He does seem to have, yes,
an unrivalled capacity for being simultaneously right and wrong in almost
every assertion he makes. If asked why he made such prejudiced and belittling
remarks about Mahometan literature, he would no doubt reply: “Ignorance, Sir,
pure ignorance.” Still, although he richly deserves ridicule for his
unfamiliarity with Firuzabady, he can hardly be rebuked for not foreseeing Zubaidy.
Charles
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