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Re: Fw: [NABOKV-L] [Fwd: Re: Brian Boyd's "American Scholar"
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Hafid Bouazza [to JM: ...and what we may find in his more intimate conversation with wife and family...] This remark baffles me... How about the letters to his wife and family in Selected Letters 1940-1977 (ed. Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli, 1989)? Published, as you will notice, posthumously, too...
[to JM: ...shall be preferably directed to Nabokov scholars, art historians and such, instead of opened to the public in general.]God help the lot of us...I am not a scholar, nor an art historian as many, I dare guess (I know, I should guess less and shave more), of the people on this forum, but why should we be left in the cold?Who is to decide? Well, Dmitri Nabokov, in the first place. Your maternalistic position in this, seems very odd, to say the least"
JM: I reacted, from what you described as my "maternalistic position," to B.Boyd's words in the review (I quote excerpts: In June 1979 I stopped in Montreux for four days, quizzing Véra, long past her usual bedtime, about the composition and publication of her husband’s works... I also persuaded her to allow me to see the papers Nabokov had given to the Library of Congress between 1959 and 1963, an archive he had stipulated should remain closed for 50 years...Although I had free access to the Montreux archives and controlled access to the Library of Congress Nabokoviana, I could not see the materials that Véra guarded in her bedroom: Nabokov’s letters to his parents and to her, his diaries, and The Original of Laura. I kept pressing her for access, especially to the letters to his parents. To my repeated requests she eventually replied, “Why do you need to see the letters if you are doing only a bibliography? If you were writing a biography, of course I would show you everything.”...I knew at first hand of Véra’s intense privacy....She agreed to condone my working on a biography...Véra had already let me see Nabokov’s diaries and his letters to his parents....after she ...realized she would not regret trusting me, that she allowed me oblique access to Nabokov’s letters to her. She would not let me read or hold them, but sat at the small round dining table in her sitting room while I sat opposite. In her 80s, still coughing and husky from a recent cold, she read aloud from the letters into my tape recorder, session after session, skipping endearments and anything else she thought too personal, announcing “propusk” (“omission”) at each cut.Late in 1984 Véra had told me she would “of course” eventually let me see The Original of Laura, but she made such promises mainly to silence my persistence. In February 1987 she at last agreed to my entreaties). My whimsical response to B.Boyd's charming powers of persuasion was not the decisive factor. As I said, VN's absence from the editorial scene, and the extent to what I felt has been a "helpless" exposure to the media, after the widely publicized edition of "TOoL," started to cause me discomfort in a way I had not felt before.
I only expressed my "hopes" against the event of a repetition to what, in my eyes, has been a most unfortunate circumstance related to TOoL.
By " directed to Nabokov scholars..and such," ( I included myself in "and such") I meant publication in the existing Nabokovian magazines ( Nabokov Studies, The Nabokovian, NOJ, Zembla...) which would grant total access to anyone lovingly interested in Nabokov's work and the light his personal life might shed on it.
You realize, of course, that I'm expressing my point of view in a forum, a place for the exchange of ideas, revision of opinions, redirection of mistakes, enlargement of information - among other equally important items. No need to invoke God, I'm quite harmless outside of the ideas and conjectures I try to formulate with total frankness.
Changing the subject. In Bend Sinister (ch3) we find "... The unfinished translation of his favourite lines in Shakespeare's greatest play —
follow the perttaunt jauncing 'neath the rack
with her pale skeins-mate.
crept up tentatively but it would not scan because in his native tongue 'rack' was anapaestic. Like pulling a grand piano through a door. Take it to pieces. Or turn the corner into the next line. But the berth there was taken, the table was reserved, the line was engaged."
The anapaestic 'rack" (in his native tongue) was impossible to scan because it felt like pulling a grand piano through the door, made me think of "Ada" and her piano teacher, Philip Rack., an insignificant young musician who, according to informer Blanche, was squiring Ada "through the tall grass, a flute in his hand. Who he? What flute? Mais le musicien allemand, Monsieur Rack.... How anybody could do it with l’immonde Monsieur Rack, who once forgot his waistcoat in a haystack, was beyond the informer’s comprehension," with failing health and gums, whose wife gave premature birth to "driblets" and who lay dying by poisoning in a hospital ward.
To check if there is any connection beside the fortuitous proximity bt. "rack", musician and piano (the flute he held is, of course, a typical Nabokovian joke) I would need to return to BS, to Ada, to Shakespeare, to translation, to prosody. Perhaps others, more versed than I am in these matters, will care to take notice of this slight link and, perhaps, bring forth more information.
2010/3/14 Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
Maurice Couturier: "In his "American Scholar" article about The Original of Laura Brian covers a lot of interesting ground about his own involvement with Nabokov as a scholar and a friend of Vera; he also offers inspiring critical comments about the novel itself, and announces the publication of new Nabokov material we all look forward to. There are still a few questions concerning TOOL which I would like to address. Despite his extended comment about the opening, I still think there is nothing really new here. Someone mentioned the opening of To the Lighthouse; I think the opening of My Dalloway makes even more sense... Nabokov never outdid Virginia Woolf in this kind of discursive game (see the samples of it I analyzed in "La Figure de l’auteur"). Brian’s explanations concerning the fact that no one spotted Nabokov in the quiz are interesting but not sufficient in my opinion. I have been a translator of Nabokov for over thirty years now and I never had to deal with a text of his so underdetermined poetically, though there are a few good passages of course. Had he had time to finish the novel, there is no doubt that he would have rewritten even the almost finished first chapter. In most of his other novels, Nabokov is indeed the perfect dictator, making sure that the reader won’t misuse his words and run away with his text. William Gass: “when readers read as if the words on the page were only fleeting visual events, and not signs to be sung inside themselves – so that the author’s voice is stilled – the author’s hand must reach out into the space of the page and put a print upon it that will be unmistakable, uneradicable. With lipstick, perhaps.” (Representation and Performance in Postmodern Literature, ed. by M. Couturier, Delta, 1983, p. 41). Nabokov didn’t have the time and the energy to achieve that in this case.I wish, also, Brian had addressed the question of who invents whom. Who is Eric, who is Ivan Vaughan? Is “Aurora” another text, another book?..."
JM: In relation to the innovation found in TOoL's opening lines, when it is compared with a train of other VN openings, as they've been by "The New Yorker" critic, Anthony Lane (quoted by Fulmerford), we may note qua first sentences: "their lack of preamble or introduction. The reader is almost always set down at some mid point of the narrative.'... 'Again and again, with polite indifference, the stories drop us in media res, and leave us to work out what on earth the res might be'." - Cf. VN's The Circle: "In the second place, because he was possessed by a sudden mad hankering after Russia". Couturier's discussion about Mrs. Dalloway is ellucidating in more levels than this one , and his added quotation from W.Gass, too - plus the enticing bibliography he added.
I was very thrilled when I read about Brian Boyd's future projects concerning Nabokov's still unpublished letters, poems and writings, but I checked myself. There's a difference in following Nabokov/Wilson's exchanges, or his open letters to his publishers, and his deliberately-voiced strong opinions, and what we may find in his more intimate conversation with wife and family, and in his unrevised poems.
I feel that TOoL caused a lot of exposure to him, for it was aimed at the readers in general, and subjected to a volley of important, often cruel, critical reviews which considered the "novel" for what it's worth and, coherently, forgot all about the ailing author, totally at their mercy, deprived of repartees and his effective authorial "dictator's voice." I keep hoping that the edition of Nabokov's archival treasures shall be preferably directed to Nabokov scholars, art historians and such, instead of opened to the public in general.
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
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/
[to JM: ...shall be preferably directed to Nabokov scholars, art historians and such, instead of opened to the public in general.]God help the lot of us...I am not a scholar, nor an art historian as many, I dare guess (I know, I should guess less and shave more), of the people on this forum, but why should we be left in the cold?Who is to decide? Well, Dmitri Nabokov, in the first place. Your maternalistic position in this, seems very odd, to say the least"
JM: I reacted, from what you described as my "maternalistic position," to B.Boyd's words in the review (I quote excerpts: In June 1979 I stopped in Montreux for four days, quizzing Véra, long past her usual bedtime, about the composition and publication of her husband’s works... I also persuaded her to allow me to see the papers Nabokov had given to the Library of Congress between 1959 and 1963, an archive he had stipulated should remain closed for 50 years...Although I had free access to the Montreux archives and controlled access to the Library of Congress Nabokoviana, I could not see the materials that Véra guarded in her bedroom: Nabokov’s letters to his parents and to her, his diaries, and The Original of Laura. I kept pressing her for access, especially to the letters to his parents. To my repeated requests she eventually replied, “Why do you need to see the letters if you are doing only a bibliography? If you were writing a biography, of course I would show you everything.”...I knew at first hand of Véra’s intense privacy....She agreed to condone my working on a biography...Véra had already let me see Nabokov’s diaries and his letters to his parents....after she ...realized she would not regret trusting me, that she allowed me oblique access to Nabokov’s letters to her. She would not let me read or hold them, but sat at the small round dining table in her sitting room while I sat opposite. In her 80s, still coughing and husky from a recent cold, she read aloud from the letters into my tape recorder, session after session, skipping endearments and anything else she thought too personal, announcing “propusk” (“omission”) at each cut.Late in 1984 Véra had told me she would “of course” eventually let me see The Original of Laura, but she made such promises mainly to silence my persistence. In February 1987 she at last agreed to my entreaties). My whimsical response to B.Boyd's charming powers of persuasion was not the decisive factor. As I said, VN's absence from the editorial scene, and the extent to what I felt has been a "helpless" exposure to the media, after the widely publicized edition of "TOoL," started to cause me discomfort in a way I had not felt before.
I only expressed my "hopes" against the event of a repetition to what, in my eyes, has been a most unfortunate circumstance related to TOoL.
By " directed to Nabokov scholars..and such," ( I included myself in "and such") I meant publication in the existing Nabokovian magazines ( Nabokov Studies, The Nabokovian, NOJ, Zembla...) which would grant total access to anyone lovingly interested in Nabokov's work and the light his personal life might shed on it.
You realize, of course, that I'm expressing my point of view in a forum, a place for the exchange of ideas, revision of opinions, redirection of mistakes, enlargement of information - among other equally important items. No need to invoke God, I'm quite harmless outside of the ideas and conjectures I try to formulate with total frankness.
Changing the subject. In Bend Sinister (ch3) we find "... The unfinished translation of his favourite lines in Shakespeare's greatest play —
follow the perttaunt jauncing 'neath the rack
with her pale skeins-mate.
crept up tentatively but it would not scan because in his native tongue 'rack' was anapaestic. Like pulling a grand piano through a door. Take it to pieces. Or turn the corner into the next line. But the berth there was taken, the table was reserved, the line was engaged."
The anapaestic 'rack" (in his native tongue) was impossible to scan because it felt like pulling a grand piano through the door, made me think of "Ada" and her piano teacher, Philip Rack., an insignificant young musician who, according to informer Blanche, was squiring Ada "through the tall grass, a flute in his hand. Who he? What flute? Mais le musicien allemand, Monsieur Rack.... How anybody could do it with l’immonde Monsieur Rack, who once forgot his waistcoat in a haystack, was beyond the informer’s comprehension," with failing health and gums, whose wife gave premature birth to "driblets" and who lay dying by poisoning in a hospital ward.
To check if there is any connection beside the fortuitous proximity bt. "rack", musician and piano (the flute he held is, of course, a typical Nabokovian joke) I would need to return to BS, to Ada, to Shakespeare, to translation, to prosody. Perhaps others, more versed than I am in these matters, will care to take notice of this slight link and, perhaps, bring forth more information.
2010/3/14 Jansy <jansy@aetern.us>
Maurice Couturier: "In his "American Scholar" article about The Original of Laura Brian covers a lot of interesting ground about his own involvement with Nabokov as a scholar and a friend of Vera; he also offers inspiring critical comments about the novel itself, and announces the publication of new Nabokov material we all look forward to. There are still a few questions concerning TOOL which I would like to address. Despite his extended comment about the opening, I still think there is nothing really new here. Someone mentioned the opening of To the Lighthouse; I think the opening of My Dalloway makes even more sense... Nabokov never outdid Virginia Woolf in this kind of discursive game (see the samples of it I analyzed in "La Figure de l’auteur"). Brian’s explanations concerning the fact that no one spotted Nabokov in the quiz are interesting but not sufficient in my opinion. I have been a translator of Nabokov for over thirty years now and I never had to deal with a text of his so underdetermined poetically, though there are a few good passages of course. Had he had time to finish the novel, there is no doubt that he would have rewritten even the almost finished first chapter. In most of his other novels, Nabokov is indeed the perfect dictator, making sure that the reader won’t misuse his words and run away with his text. William Gass: “when readers read as if the words on the page were only fleeting visual events, and not signs to be sung inside themselves – so that the author’s voice is stilled – the author’s hand must reach out into the space of the page and put a print upon it that will be unmistakable, uneradicable. With lipstick, perhaps.” (Representation and Performance in Postmodern Literature, ed. by M. Couturier, Delta, 1983, p. 41). Nabokov didn’t have the time and the energy to achieve that in this case.I wish, also, Brian had addressed the question of who invents whom. Who is Eric, who is Ivan Vaughan? Is “Aurora” another text, another book?..."
JM: In relation to the innovation found in TOoL's opening lines, when it is compared with a train of other VN openings, as they've been by "The New Yorker" critic, Anthony Lane (quoted by Fulmerford), we may note qua first sentences: "their lack of preamble or introduction. The reader is almost always set down at some mid point of the narrative.'... 'Again and again, with polite indifference, the stories drop us in media res, and leave us to work out what on earth the res might be'." - Cf. VN's The Circle: "In the second place, because he was possessed by a sudden mad hankering after Russia". Couturier's discussion about Mrs. Dalloway is ellucidating in more levels than this one , and his added quotation from W.Gass, too - plus the enticing bibliography he added.
I was very thrilled when I read about Brian Boyd's future projects concerning Nabokov's still unpublished letters, poems and writings, but I checked myself. There's a difference in following Nabokov/Wilson's exchanges, or his open letters to his publishers, and his deliberately-voiced strong opinions, and what we may find in his more intimate conversation with wife and family, and in his unrevised poems.
I feel that TOoL caused a lot of exposure to him, for it was aimed at the readers in general, and subjected to a volley of important, often cruel, critical reviews which considered the "novel" for what it's worth and, coherently, forgot all about the ailing author, totally at their mercy, deprived of repartees and his effective authorial "dictator's voice." I keep hoping that the edition of Nabokov's archival treasures shall be preferably directed to Nabokov scholars, art historians and such, instead of opened to the public in general.
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
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/