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Fw: [NABOKV-L] LINKS: Two Early PF Newspaper Items
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Matthew Roth:I recently came across two articles in the Google News archive... The first is a review of Pale Fire by Michael Diebold (May 31, 1962)...The second article sheds light on a couple of minor controversies.. In June 24, 1962, the author quotes VN as follows:"The structure of the book was something new. First, I had to create a New England poet who was a follower of Robert Frost. Then I had to evolve some kind of inspiration to produce a good poem, and I hope I did."
JM: A follower of Robert Frost? So that's what "an oozy footstep behind Frost" means? One must find the context for this quote to get the feel of Nabokov's tease.
In Strong Opinions we only read two interviews dated 1962. I remember VN once wrote to EW about how novel the structure of PF was.
Where else could the author have found it?
Sandy Klein sends http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1966/nov/03/nabokovs-way/?pagination=false (November 3, 1966, by D.J. Enright) a critical review of Escape Into Aesthetics: The Art of Vladimir Nabokov by Page Stegner, with the title "Nabokov's way."
excerpts: "in a slightly uneasy way Mr. Stegner offers to justify Nabokov, to show that he possesses not only a brilliant style but also a deeply compassionate nature... Nabokov loves memories, chiefly memories of his family, feels a large and fairly comprehensive distaste for the real...with the practically illimitable scope he offers for pattern-tracing, the pursuit of maybe allusions and might-be correspondences, which in the work of Nabokov amounts to a rich and welcome substitute for the old bone of symbolology that time and scholarly dentures have worn away..."
JM: As the editor of "The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse 1945-1980 ( Oxford University Press, 1980), we find that D.J.Enright did not include either Nabokov or Shade in his anthology (but his particular selection of poets and poems remains a fine one, and a pleasure to read). Judging from what I could read in his article, it would seem that Page Stegner ranks among those that feel the urge to "justify Nabokov" and extoll his "deeply compassionate nature." And yet, Enright's comments must have over-emphasized P.S's moralistic or sentimental quandaries. I must have mislaid my copy of "Escape into Aesthetics" but Page Stegner's, later, "The Portable Nabokov"(1968) carries no whiff of what D.J. Enright criticized in his attitute towards Nabokov. On the contrary, his "critical Introduction" strikes me, for all its brevity, as a very encompassing view of Nabokov's aims and achievements.
Stegner writes, qua "Lolita":"To recognize that Humbert is hopelessly yearning for an intangible element in the private universe of children, an ideal state beyond space and time, is not to excuse his destruction of a young girl or the murder of his "double," Quilty. ..If he is a monster (and he would be the last to deny it), he is a very lonely and rootless monster... a man who stands outside life without hope of re-entry... His only redemption...is through art, and quite consciously in the telling of his tale,in the choice of his language and the selection of his metaphors, he perverts the sordid reality of his relationship with Lolita (just as in an opposite way he once perverted the real creature) and transforms her life and his into art.[...] "
Although his actual phrasing, as presented here, is rather curious (if we must conclude from it that, for Stegner, the transformation of HH's and Lolita's life into art is achieved by the narrator's "perverting" the sordid reality of their relationship), later on, though, he will praise Pnin's awareness of the "disparity between art and life."
What I do appreciate in Stegner is his emphasis on Nabokov's (through Pnin's) total absence of self-pity:"His response (Pnin's) is not a self-destructive howl at past horrors, but a legitimate and admirable refure in the antithesis of nightmare...the aesthetics of art." ... "For Nabokov the escape from the impossible suffering and vulgarity that prevail in this world is through art, through irony, parody, and the intrincacies of composition... he transcends his finite existence through art".
This observation, by Stegner, concerning Nabokov's lack of self-pity illumines the spirit of Speak, Memory and of every piece of Nabokovian writing (with the exception of TOoL), his humor, parodies, poetry, science, art. In it I encounter Nabokov (the human being) and the artist co-existing in perfect harmony.
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JM: A follower of Robert Frost? So that's what "an oozy footstep behind Frost" means? One must find the context for this quote to get the feel of Nabokov's tease.
In Strong Opinions we only read two interviews dated 1962. I remember VN once wrote to EW about how novel the structure of PF was.
Where else could the author have found it?
Sandy Klein sends http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1966/nov/03/nabokovs-way/?pagination=false (November 3, 1966, by D.J. Enright) a critical review of Escape Into Aesthetics: The Art of Vladimir Nabokov by Page Stegner, with the title "Nabokov's way."
excerpts: "in a slightly uneasy way Mr. Stegner offers to justify Nabokov, to show that he possesses not only a brilliant style but also a deeply compassionate nature... Nabokov loves memories, chiefly memories of his family, feels a large and fairly comprehensive distaste for the real...with the practically illimitable scope he offers for pattern-tracing, the pursuit of maybe allusions and might-be correspondences, which in the work of Nabokov amounts to a rich and welcome substitute for the old bone of symbolology that time and scholarly dentures have worn away..."
JM: As the editor of "The Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse 1945-1980 ( Oxford University Press, 1980), we find that D.J.Enright did not include either Nabokov or Shade in his anthology (but his particular selection of poets and poems remains a fine one, and a pleasure to read). Judging from what I could read in his article, it would seem that Page Stegner ranks among those that feel the urge to "justify Nabokov" and extoll his "deeply compassionate nature." And yet, Enright's comments must have over-emphasized P.S's moralistic or sentimental quandaries. I must have mislaid my copy of "Escape into Aesthetics" but Page Stegner's, later, "The Portable Nabokov"(1968) carries no whiff of what D.J. Enright criticized in his attitute towards Nabokov. On the contrary, his "critical Introduction" strikes me, for all its brevity, as a very encompassing view of Nabokov's aims and achievements.
Stegner writes, qua "Lolita":"To recognize that Humbert is hopelessly yearning for an intangible element in the private universe of children, an ideal state beyond space and time, is not to excuse his destruction of a young girl or the murder of his "double," Quilty. ..If he is a monster (and he would be the last to deny it), he is a very lonely and rootless monster... a man who stands outside life without hope of re-entry... His only redemption...is through art, and quite consciously in the telling of his tale,in the choice of his language and the selection of his metaphors, he perverts the sordid reality of his relationship with Lolita (just as in an opposite way he once perverted the real creature) and transforms her life and his into art.[...] "
Although his actual phrasing, as presented here, is rather curious (if we must conclude from it that, for Stegner, the transformation of HH's and Lolita's life into art is achieved by the narrator's "perverting" the sordid reality of their relationship), later on, though, he will praise Pnin's awareness of the "disparity between art and life."
What I do appreciate in Stegner is his emphasis on Nabokov's (through Pnin's) total absence of self-pity:"His response (Pnin's) is not a self-destructive howl at past horrors, but a legitimate and admirable refure in the antithesis of nightmare...the aesthetics of art." ... "For Nabokov the escape from the impossible suffering and vulgarity that prevail in this world is through art, through irony, parody, and the intrincacies of composition... he transcends his finite existence through art".
This observation, by Stegner, concerning Nabokov's lack of self-pity illumines the spirit of Speak, Memory and of every piece of Nabokovian writing (with the exception of TOoL), his humor, parodies, poetry, science, art. In it I encounter Nabokov (the human being) and the artist co-existing in perfect harmony.
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/