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Re: [NABOKOV-L] Old news,
branching off from Steinberg and Cartoons into Laughter in the
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branching off from Steinberg and Cartoons into Laughter in the
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David Brodie's A Beautiful Idea: Nabokov's Animating Painting and its Retributions: "Something nagged at me...a revival of the age-old tableau vivant, in which actors come to assume the poses of a famous work of art, reminded me that I'd dropped a thread some years before when reading Vladimir Nabokov's novel Laughter in the Dark. There, a character daydreams about animating an old master painting, "movement and gesture graphically developed in complete harmony with their static state in the picture." The imagined film would bring to life...the final interpolation ...culminating in the original painting itself (or rather, in a photographic image of it). We can say, then, that Laughter postulates a limit-case tableau vivant...Laughter doesn't simply refer to paintings and films, it transmutes their formal properties into text...In Nabokov's other novels frequent references to painting and film function as metaphysical invocation; Laughter in the Dark's proposal to turn an old master painting into a cinematic entertainment, a cartoon, threatens to drag high art into low places, and this seems to call forth, even more, a sort of ontological retribution.... the book ends with the pathetic tableau in question, the precisely arranged death scene which struck me as being compelled by the idea of an animated painting introduced at the book's very beginning.[...]
JM: Some time ago I watched Seurat's "tableau vivant" in Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George" and was not particularly impressed *, but David Brodie managed to reawaken my interest in the theme. However, here we have, at least, a linguistic problem to solve. It belongs to the category of formulation that finds its analogy in what the French name "nature morte" and the English "still life." For there's no adequate translation of "tableau vivant" into English. Literally, it means a "living picture" and Brodie's arguments that "the book ends with the pathetic tableau [vivant!] in question, the precisely arranged death scene..." struck me, at first, as being relatively contradictory in connection to the achieved verbal painting that finally became a "still life/dead nature," or a "tableau vivant."
If the amusing idea of a "living death-scene" is what Brodie indicated as "a sort of ontological retribution," he was perhaps almost too discreet. It took me several hours before I finally reached my overdue "Laughter in the Dark" and I only began to worry about its irony much later (I still don't think that "dying is fun", though).
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* - I prefer the idea that's been put forward in "Mrs Henderson Presents," a 2005 British comedy film, directed by Stephen Frears. It stars Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins...(wiki:The film is based on the true story of the Windmill Theatre in London... Eccentric 70-year-old widow Mrs Laura Henderson purchases it as a post-widowhood hobby...In 1937 they start a continuous variety review called 'Revudeville', but after other theatres in London copy this innovation, they begin to lose money. Mrs Henderson suggests they add female nudity similar to the Moulin Rouge in Paris. This is unprecedented in the United Kingdom. The Lord Chamberlain reluctantly allows this under the condition that the nude performers do not move so it can be considered art.)
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JM: Some time ago I watched Seurat's "tableau vivant" in Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George" and was not particularly impressed *, but David Brodie managed to reawaken my interest in the theme. However, here we have, at least, a linguistic problem to solve. It belongs to the category of formulation that finds its analogy in what the French name "nature morte" and the English "still life." For there's no adequate translation of "tableau vivant" into English. Literally, it means a "living picture" and Brodie's arguments that "the book ends with the pathetic tableau [vivant!] in question, the precisely arranged death scene..." struck me, at first, as being relatively contradictory in connection to the achieved verbal painting that finally became a "still life/dead nature," or a "tableau vivant."
If the amusing idea of a "living death-scene" is what Brodie indicated as "a sort of ontological retribution," he was perhaps almost too discreet. It took me several hours before I finally reached my overdue "Laughter in the Dark" and I only began to worry about its irony much later (I still don't think that "dying is fun", though).
..................................................................................................................................................................................
* - I prefer the idea that's been put forward in "Mrs Henderson Presents," a 2005 British comedy film, directed by Stephen Frears. It stars Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins...(wiki:The film is based on the true story of the Windmill Theatre in London... Eccentric 70-year-old widow Mrs Laura Henderson purchases it as a post-widowhood hobby...In 1937 they start a continuous variety review called 'Revudeville', but after other theatres in London copy this innovation, they begin to lose money. Mrs Henderson suggests they add female nudity similar to the Moulin Rouge in Paris. This is unprecedented in the United Kingdom. The Lord Chamberlain reluctantly allows this under the condition that the nude performers do not move so it can be considered art.)
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/