Subject
"Barbara Braun" in NEW YORKER's "Conclusive Evidence"
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Dieter E. Zimmer" <DEZimmer@compuserve.com>
*********************************
Dear Nabokovians of NABOKV-L:
I beg you! Surely looking for meaning in the names Nabokov chose for his
characters is fun. But the thing can be overdone. To me it is utter
nonsense to read a Nazi barbarian into "Barbara Braun".
What are the tangible facts?
Nabokov invented a reviewer for his "Conclusive Evidence" who somewhat
resembles John Ray: Unlike Nabokov, at least Nabokov on the rhetorical
level, he has a foible for the human touch ("the deep human glow") of a
book, and he may also care for social messages more than Nabokov did. Still
he profoundly appreciates "Conclusive Evidence" and has many intimately
perceptive things to say about it, things we all are bound to quote when
speaking about it, and he also appreciates "Amen Corner" written by a
hybrid of T. S. Eliot and T. Mann (who, whatever one may think of him as a
writer, certainly was no Nazi as Nabokov of course knew) and that biography
"When Lilacs Last," written by "Barbara Braun." She, while probably of
German extraction, comes from a thoroughly naturalized American family: her
grandfather (late nineteenth century) was "a great American
educationalist." (If they did not americanize their name during World War I
as so many Americans of German extraction did, it might have been precisely
because they did not want to forsake a well-reputed name.) The title of her
biography she takes from Whitman's elegy for Abraham Lincoln, not exactly
an Unamerican or undemocratic oeuvre. So from what we know about the
preferences of the fictitious reviewer, from what he tells us about
granddad Braun's biography and from its title we are led to imagine what
that biography might be like; I bet it is going to be very mild and mellow
and perhaps all too wholesome stuff. What point would there be in implying
that its author was a political moron and a social brute? If he was, it
would compromise everything the reviewer has to say about "Conclusive
Evidence." That is, Nabokov's ploy would not have worked. (One can never be
certain, but I would guess that he would have chosen some other name if he
had foreseen that anybody would read a Nazi into Ms. Braun. It is a kind of
Nazi "Sippenhaft" to see a barbarian in every Barbara of the world and a
Nazi in every Braun, and I don't want to know what our life would be like
if we predicated it on such a principle.)
We have a problem here. To my humble understanding, literary criticism
should not be an exercise in free association. "What comes to your mind
when you read the word lilacs' or the name Braun'?" "Germany. Werner von
Braun. Eva Braun. Brown as the color of Nazism. Chocolate. Shit." Looking
for hidden meanings is one thing and as such perfectly legitimate. However,
unlike the researcher in science, the literary critic often has no way of
establishing that the meanings he uncovers are the true or at least the
intended ones. For all we know, "Barbara Braun" may just be the first name
Nabokov happened to come across in a telephone directory when he was
writing the piece (there are two Barbara Brauns in the LoC catalog, one an
American art critic, the other a lawyer for the disabled in the Dakotas).
What could the uncoverer of meanings use as a check to his imagination? I
propose that one test be how much sense the uncovered meaning makes in the
context of the work in question.
I would not become so upset about this if it were the first and only
instance of free association in Nabokov scholarship.
Dieter E. Zimmer, Hamburg, Germany
From: "Dieter E. Zimmer" <DEZimmer@compuserve.com>
*********************************
Dear Nabokovians of NABOKV-L:
I beg you! Surely looking for meaning in the names Nabokov chose for his
characters is fun. But the thing can be overdone. To me it is utter
nonsense to read a Nazi barbarian into "Barbara Braun".
What are the tangible facts?
Nabokov invented a reviewer for his "Conclusive Evidence" who somewhat
resembles John Ray: Unlike Nabokov, at least Nabokov on the rhetorical
level, he has a foible for the human touch ("the deep human glow") of a
book, and he may also care for social messages more than Nabokov did. Still
he profoundly appreciates "Conclusive Evidence" and has many intimately
perceptive things to say about it, things we all are bound to quote when
speaking about it, and he also appreciates "Amen Corner" written by a
hybrid of T. S. Eliot and T. Mann (who, whatever one may think of him as a
writer, certainly was no Nazi as Nabokov of course knew) and that biography
"When Lilacs Last," written by "Barbara Braun." She, while probably of
German extraction, comes from a thoroughly naturalized American family: her
grandfather (late nineteenth century) was "a great American
educationalist." (If they did not americanize their name during World War I
as so many Americans of German extraction did, it might have been precisely
because they did not want to forsake a well-reputed name.) The title of her
biography she takes from Whitman's elegy for Abraham Lincoln, not exactly
an Unamerican or undemocratic oeuvre. So from what we know about the
preferences of the fictitious reviewer, from what he tells us about
granddad Braun's biography and from its title we are led to imagine what
that biography might be like; I bet it is going to be very mild and mellow
and perhaps all too wholesome stuff. What point would there be in implying
that its author was a political moron and a social brute? If he was, it
would compromise everything the reviewer has to say about "Conclusive
Evidence." That is, Nabokov's ploy would not have worked. (One can never be
certain, but I would guess that he would have chosen some other name if he
had foreseen that anybody would read a Nazi into Ms. Braun. It is a kind of
Nazi "Sippenhaft" to see a barbarian in every Barbara of the world and a
Nazi in every Braun, and I don't want to know what our life would be like
if we predicated it on such a principle.)
We have a problem here. To my humble understanding, literary criticism
should not be an exercise in free association. "What comes to your mind
when you read the word lilacs' or the name Braun'?" "Germany. Werner von
Braun. Eva Braun. Brown as the color of Nazism. Chocolate. Shit." Looking
for hidden meanings is one thing and as such perfectly legitimate. However,
unlike the researcher in science, the literary critic often has no way of
establishing that the meanings he uncovers are the true or at least the
intended ones. For all we know, "Barbara Braun" may just be the first name
Nabokov happened to come across in a telephone directory when he was
writing the piece (there are two Barbara Brauns in the LoC catalog, one an
American art critic, the other a lawyer for the disabled in the Dakotas).
What could the uncoverer of meanings use as a check to his imagination? I
propose that one test be how much sense the uncovered meaning makes in the
context of the work in question.
I would not become so upset about this if it were the first and only
instance of free association in Nabokov scholarship.
Dieter E. Zimmer, Hamburg, Germany