It seems to me that "cruelty" in writing can mean two things: Writing that is designed to hurt real people, and writing that appeals to the same feelings as cruelty does. For the first, Nabokov did plenty of it, but as far as I know his victims (to the extent they were hurt) were people who he felt deserved it, perpetrators of howlers or baseless psychological theories or dictatorships. One could say a good deal more about whether they did deserve it and whether it's a good idea even then.
For the second, of course no one is hurt when a fictional boy is turned over to fictional psychopaths, or when the government that does so is mocked because they blundered in choosing that particular boy, but I take people who call this "cruel" to be saying that it appeals that side of (many of) us that likes to watch real or televised fights, or real comedians get pies in the face, or likes to read compendia of famous insults. (I know some by heart--"You will turn it over again in what you are pleased to call your mind.")
A few notes on details in recent posts:
Eric Hyman wrote:
*”Jacobethan”: a term coined by the linguist David Crystal (at least that is where I first encountered it) to cover the reigns of both Elizabeth I and James I, the period of Shakespeare’s productivity.
The earliest hits on "Jacobethan" I can find at Google Books are from 1931 and refer to architecture. <http://books.google.com/books?ei=ZPvDS73WG4GizQTN7-moAg&cd=4&q=Jacobethan+date%3A1921-1931&btnG=Search+Books>
Jansy Mello wrote:
Why would women in Genesis have to
look
beautiful? (feminists should complain about that to H.Bloom!) I always
thought people in Genesis would appear like any other native,
although healthily vegetarian
of course.
Eve (like Adam) is traditionally seen as physically perfect, a challenge some artists have enjoyed meeting. Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel are explicitly described as beautiful. Shechem saw some quality in Dinah that led him to fall in love with her (in some sense of "love" that's compatible with rape, and thus almost on topic here). After a quick glance, I don't see any judgements of other women's looks in Genesis, except that Leah had "weak eyes".
By the way, in "Pale Fire" there are
references
to peacock-herls (alders)
I think the overt meaning of "herl" in PF is "a barb or fibre of a feather" (NSOED s.v. "harl"). Here's a picture of [a] peacock herl for fishing: <http://www.tackle-craft.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=538>. Yes, I should have mentioned this before. I won't dispute that there could be a secondary reference to "Erlkönig".
Jerry Friedman
All private editorial communications, without
exception, are
read by both co-editors.