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Re: BOYD ON SCHIFF'S VERA
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** Below is another response to Brian Boyd's review of VERA. For
what it's worth, I would caution people that they should read VERA
before forming opinions about the book based on reviews so far. As these
reviews clealy show, it is really the case where reasonable people can
disagree -- and disagree strongly. Like Brian Boyd, I would have also
liked to know much more about Vera's early years, as well as about the
particulars of the family relationships -- her feelings for her
mother, her seemingly too-ready acceptance of her father's leaving her
mother for another woman with whom she became such a great friend. Her
statements about being Jewish also intrigue me -- and I would have
liked more analysis of this whole phenomenon of Russian/Eastern
European Jews raised on Russian culture coming to terms with
their Jewishness. But I felt the same way about Isaiah Berlin's recent
biography as well. As to the VN-VeN relationship, I suspect reasonable
people -- and people of different gender -- can disagree even more
strongly about Schiff's portrayal. I have to admit, some of it -- to
me -- is a painful reading. This "The Master-and-Vera" relationship,
no matter how great the Master, is hard to imagine if the genders had
been switched. True, something of this kind _was_ happening in the
Leonard and Virginia Woolf's relationship, where he played more of
Vera's role -- but this is rather an exception, and I cannot think of
any similar examples in Russian culture, while women-as-empty-vessels
until men fill them with their intellectual interests and thus provide
meaning to their lives, is a very common cultural myth. It would have
been great if Nora Joyce read more than two pages ("Including the
cover," as her husband used to say) of ULYSSES, but I have to admit that
reading about her in Brenda Maddox's NORA was, somehow, a more satisfying
experience, and I almost cheered her desire to remain her own woman rather
than becoming her husband's "Margarita" or Vera. So, for what it's
worth, here is my contribution to this discussion. What VERA made me want
to do was to go back to the archives and read everything concerning Vera
Slonim-Nabokov to see if I can form my own notion of who she really was.
and why.
GD**
From: "Bouazza, Abdellah" <Abdellah.Bouazza@COMPAQ.COM>
Some thoughts:
First of all, I haven't read Schiff's biography yet, but have read all the
reviews that the List so kindly forwarded to its members. All the reviews
have so far been praiseful, with the exception of Boyd's.
Reading Boyd's review, one is again reminded of Boyd's extraordinary
insights as biographer and critic (I wholly agree with Paul Braffort's
praise of Boyd in another context some time ago), and one wishes that Boyd
had written Vra's biography -no irony intended!
Abdellah Bouazza, The Netherlands.
what it's worth, I would caution people that they should read VERA
before forming opinions about the book based on reviews so far. As these
reviews clealy show, it is really the case where reasonable people can
disagree -- and disagree strongly. Like Brian Boyd, I would have also
liked to know much more about Vera's early years, as well as about the
particulars of the family relationships -- her feelings for her
mother, her seemingly too-ready acceptance of her father's leaving her
mother for another woman with whom she became such a great friend. Her
statements about being Jewish also intrigue me -- and I would have
liked more analysis of this whole phenomenon of Russian/Eastern
European Jews raised on Russian culture coming to terms with
their Jewishness. But I felt the same way about Isaiah Berlin's recent
biography as well. As to the VN-VeN relationship, I suspect reasonable
people -- and people of different gender -- can disagree even more
strongly about Schiff's portrayal. I have to admit, some of it -- to
me -- is a painful reading. This "The Master-and-Vera" relationship,
no matter how great the Master, is hard to imagine if the genders had
been switched. True, something of this kind _was_ happening in the
Leonard and Virginia Woolf's relationship, where he played more of
Vera's role -- but this is rather an exception, and I cannot think of
any similar examples in Russian culture, while women-as-empty-vessels
until men fill them with their intellectual interests and thus provide
meaning to their lives, is a very common cultural myth. It would have
been great if Nora Joyce read more than two pages ("Including the
cover," as her husband used to say) of ULYSSES, but I have to admit that
reading about her in Brenda Maddox's NORA was, somehow, a more satisfying
experience, and I almost cheered her desire to remain her own woman rather
than becoming her husband's "Margarita" or Vera. So, for what it's
worth, here is my contribution to this discussion. What VERA made me want
to do was to go back to the archives and read everything concerning Vera
Slonim-Nabokov to see if I can form my own notion of who she really was.
and why.
GD**
From: "Bouazza, Abdellah" <Abdellah.Bouazza@COMPAQ.COM>
Some thoughts:
First of all, I haven't read Schiff's biography yet, but have read all the
reviews that the List so kindly forwarded to its members. All the reviews
have so far been praiseful, with the exception of Boyd's.
Reading Boyd's review, one is again reminded of Boyd's extraordinary
insights as biographer and critic (I wholly agree with Paul Braffort's
praise of Boyd in another context some time ago), and one wishes that Boyd
had written Vra's biography -no irony intended!
Abdellah Bouazza, The Netherlands.