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Re: Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
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Matt Roth [ In response to the Jim Twiggs’ query about VN’s thoughts on criminals]: I’m not sure I understand VN’s final point here. Shouldn’t a less successful crime reveal a greater idiocy? Is the less successful criminal closer to the artist?..."
JM: Thanks to the internet I can now quote the lines I could only remember in part. They were inserted in a paragraph by Paul Duncan Morris which I thought deserves to be copied in full since he expresses thoughts which I was unable to articulate with equal clarity, concerning the "poet-reader relationship":
"... hence, the source of his claim in Strong Opinions: "A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me' (SO 33). This individual contact between poet and reader does not preclude either the author's artistic formulation or the reader's identification of a 'message,' ethical, political, or otherwise; it does, however, preclude the mass proselytizing of a message, as the fixing of such a message would impinge upon the freedom crucial to the poet-reader relationship. The potential ethical or moral value of fiction is realizable alonge in individual contexts. The ethical value of literature cannot be ideological in the usual sense, as this assumes a group base and the intention of mass propagation, a descent from the open potential of the individual imagination to the enforced strictures of a mass-understanding of common sense.[...] It is along this continuum, from appreciation and poetic recreation of the trifle and detail of the world to acknowlegdement and verification of its essential goodness, that Nabokov saw his own transformation from 'frivolous firebird' to 'rigid moralist'; '... I believe that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that, far from having been a frivolous firebird, I was a rigid moralist kicking sin, cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel - and assigning sovereign power to tenderness, talent, and pride" (SO 193).
Vladimir Nabokov: Poetry and the Lyric Voice by Paul Duncan Morris http://books.google.com.br/books?id=sVpkLlvNXuEC&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=vladimir+nabokov+moralist+sin&source=bl&ots=8LI_Iv_5nP&sig=2WGAvveqRL4eVLt_IlllvImCOtc&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ei=nchET_SfF_O00AG7neGXBA&sqi=2&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA
p.174
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JM: Thanks to the internet I can now quote the lines I could only remember in part. They were inserted in a paragraph by Paul Duncan Morris which I thought deserves to be copied in full since he expresses thoughts which I was unable to articulate with equal clarity, concerning the "poet-reader relationship":
"... hence, the source of his claim in Strong Opinions: "A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to me' (SO 33). This individual contact between poet and reader does not preclude either the author's artistic formulation or the reader's identification of a 'message,' ethical, political, or otherwise; it does, however, preclude the mass proselytizing of a message, as the fixing of such a message would impinge upon the freedom crucial to the poet-reader relationship. The potential ethical or moral value of fiction is realizable alonge in individual contexts. The ethical value of literature cannot be ideological in the usual sense, as this assumes a group base and the intention of mass propagation, a descent from the open potential of the individual imagination to the enforced strictures of a mass-understanding of common sense.[...] It is along this continuum, from appreciation and poetic recreation of the trifle and detail of the world to acknowlegdement and verification of its essential goodness, that Nabokov saw his own transformation from 'frivolous firebird' to 'rigid moralist'; '... I believe that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that, far from having been a frivolous firebird, I was a rigid moralist kicking sin, cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel - and assigning sovereign power to tenderness, talent, and pride" (SO 193).
Vladimir Nabokov: Poetry and the Lyric Voice by Paul Duncan Morris http://books.google.com.br/books?id=sVpkLlvNXuEC&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174&dq=vladimir+nabokov+moralist+sin&source=bl&ots=8LI_Iv_5nP&sig=2WGAvveqRL4eVLt_IlllvImCOtc&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ei=nchET_SfF_O00AG7neGXBA&sqi=2&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA
p.174
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/