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Re: Nabokov's famous formulation about literature ...
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Re: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov's famous formulation about literature ...Victor Fet: I agree with Stan that such folkloric references hardly needs a footnote, they are part and parcel of our culture. However, Wikipedia says that “The Boy Who Cried Wolf, also known as The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, is a fable attributed to Aesop but in fact written in 1673 ...
JM: We are invited to imagine how tv-deprived peoples needed at least two consecutive lies to believe in what they were told...Perhaps that's why children always ask to hear the same story over and over again and complain if they find any alteration in the telling.
Btw, there's a nuance in VN's use of this fable that develops still further the image about art as "shimmering go-between"* and way beyond the fabled wolf. In his lectures at Cornell, VN refers not only to the “tall story” about a boy crying wolf ( as in GRGW) but he also mentions: “the magic of art is manifested in the dream about the wolf, in the shadow of the invented wolf" (1955, 347).
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* “between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature."
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JM: We are invited to imagine how tv-deprived peoples needed at least two consecutive lies to believe in what they were told...Perhaps that's why children always ask to hear the same story over and over again and complain if they find any alteration in the telling.
Btw, there's a nuance in VN's use of this fable that develops still further the image about art as "shimmering go-between"* and way beyond the fabled wolf. In his lectures at Cornell, VN refers not only to the “tall story” about a boy crying wolf ( as in GRGW) but he also mentions: “the magic of art is manifested in the dream about the wolf, in the shadow of the invented wolf" (1955, 347).
.........................................................................................................................................................
* “between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature."
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/