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Re: THOUGHTS: artists don't have to be consistent...or do
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Laurence Hochard [on Jansy: "Novelists don't need to be consistent" and JA: "I agree artists don't have to be consistent."]
I don't agree!Great artists are great precisely because they are able to build fictionnaly, aesthetically, philosophically... coherent and consistent worlds.
JM: I agree with your disagreement, but only in part.What I meant was that "novelists" don't have to be consistent in their novels. They may voice their own conflicts or contradictions through their characters, or cultivate an equivocal mood. Speaking through Van ( Ada, or Ardor) or Fyodor (Father's Butterflies) for example, VN expressed with great "detachment" various philosophical ideas on spacetime, Einstein, Darwin, and he was pedagogical while criticizing pedagogical-minded authors.
As you pointed out quite well, the artist's (the essayist, the novel writer...) consistency lies deeper: You wrote: "What makes an artist like VN seem inconsistent is that the coherence of his work lies deeper than the ordinary coherence of ordinary thought: this is what makes it so intriguing and fascinating[...]I think it might be more interesting to consider it in the light of Nietzsche's criticism of utilitarianism.Another example is VN's lifelong denounciation of Freud's psychoanalysis[...] Of course, a critic or a reader, even one who loves VN's fiction, is entirely free to disagree with VN's view of psychoanalysis or any other subject provided he fights it with arguments instead of being content with dismissing it as "inconsistent".
BTW: VN's explicit opinions about psychoanalysis were apparently informed only by his contact with Freud's very early writings and, probably, by the "utilitarian Freudians". Therefore, as I see it, he actually was a true Freudian inspite of himself.
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I don't agree!Great artists are great precisely because they are able to build fictionnaly, aesthetically, philosophically... coherent and consistent worlds.
JM: I agree with your disagreement, but only in part.What I meant was that "novelists" don't have to be consistent in their novels. They may voice their own conflicts or contradictions through their characters, or cultivate an equivocal mood. Speaking through Van ( Ada, or Ardor) or Fyodor (Father's Butterflies) for example, VN expressed with great "detachment" various philosophical ideas on spacetime, Einstein, Darwin, and he was pedagogical while criticizing pedagogical-minded authors.
As you pointed out quite well, the artist's (the essayist, the novel writer...) consistency lies deeper: You wrote: "What makes an artist like VN seem inconsistent is that the coherence of his work lies deeper than the ordinary coherence of ordinary thought: this is what makes it so intriguing and fascinating[...]I think it might be more interesting to consider it in the light of Nietzsche's criticism of utilitarianism.Another example is VN's lifelong denounciation of Freud's psychoanalysis[...] Of course, a critic or a reader, even one who loves VN's fiction, is entirely free to disagree with VN's view of psychoanalysis or any other subject provided he fights it with arguments instead of being content with dismissing it as "inconsistent".
BTW: VN's explicit opinions about psychoanalysis were apparently informed only by his contact with Freud's very early writings and, probably, by the "utilitarian Freudians". Therefore, as I see it, he actually was a true Freudian inspite of himself.
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/