Subject
Re: surrender and exile...
From
Date
Body
Don Stanley [to JM's VN gives us to understand that he cannot become an exile since he carries the artist's passport and that his native country is a state of mind. In this context, what does it mean "I'll not surrender"?] He means he will never surrender his memories. They are all safe in his head, where Stalin and the rest of the superhuman crew can’t get at them. There is a letter somewhere about how he wished he had immortalized every blade of Vyra grass. He said he had the happiest childhood imaginable. We all live via memory, but Nabokov especially.
Alexey Sklyarenko [corrects JM] :... Ganin is the main character in Mary. The hero in Glory is Martyn Edelweiss.
JM: Thank you for your replies, AS's apt correction and DS's interesting interpretation.
Memories are dependent on how they are registered as images, sensations, emotions, gestures, language. Perhaps we could add to Don Stanley's views about VN's refusal to "surrender his memories," Nabokov's independence from a Soviet-determined use of the Russian language in art. In this respect certain paragraphs of "The Luzhin Defense," (among others ) came immediately to my mind. In these, unlike his more objective answers to his English interviewers, he expands on his recollections, angers and his thoughts about ideological pressures, using his native language and inscribing it as a constitutive part of his novel's body and soul.
I'm still unsure about what else, besides memories (and his Russian?) could he have meant by "I'll not surrender."
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/
Alexey Sklyarenko [corrects JM] :... Ganin is the main character in Mary. The hero in Glory is Martyn Edelweiss.
JM: Thank you for your replies, AS's apt correction and DS's interesting interpretation.
Memories are dependent on how they are registered as images, sensations, emotions, gestures, language. Perhaps we could add to Don Stanley's views about VN's refusal to "surrender his memories," Nabokov's independence from a Soviet-determined use of the Russian language in art. In this respect certain paragraphs of "The Luzhin Defense," (among others ) came immediately to my mind. In these, unlike his more objective answers to his English interviewers, he expands on his recollections, angers and his thoughts about ideological pressures, using his native language and inscribing it as a constitutive part of his novel's body and soul.
I'm still unsure about what else, besides memories (and his Russian?) could he have meant by "I'll not surrender."
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/