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RES: [NABOKV-L] Dom Quixote: a world of cruelty and the author's
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Jansy Mello: Ive always been surprised at the famous bouts of criticism
V.Nabokov directed against Dom Quixote, because his Lecture on Quixote
was lovingly researched and presented [ ]A few months ago I found a
statement relating VNs criticism about this cruel and crude book to the
way in which Cervantes treated his character and not to any other kind of
cruelty pertaining to its action nor in relation to the readers. [ ]Is VN
demonstrating, through his rejection of Cervantess writing that, in any
novel, lifes destructiveness and evil are to be portrayed only as aspects
of the real cruelty of the external world and its inhabitants? That an
author should never be an accomplice of the worlds evil to remain, at most,
an impartial observer? [ ]quote: we do not laugh at [Don Quixote] any
longer. His blazon is pity, his banner is beauty. He stands for everything
that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish and gallant.
Present posting: My initial query related to VNs indignation at the ways in
which Cervantes tortured his unhappy knight has been amply explored by
scholars, * although my sweeping supposition about how VN seemed to
recommend that authors avoid becoming accomplices of the evil & cruelty
presented in a novel hasnt been considered under the same light. Before
examining more deeply the articles available to me, or returning to VNs
original lecture, I allowed myself to imagine that an artists pursuit of
beauty and pity must belong to a different dimension as that of an artworks
materiality (should VN have extended the same discipline of attention to
detail and neutrality of science to the art of creating a work of fiction
that his words about science and art attest). V.Nabokovs words on Dom
Quixote: His blazon is pity, his banner is beauty are the same ones that
he chose for his definition of Art: Beauty plus pity-that is the closest
we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for
the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies
with the matter, the world dies with the individual. (Lecture on
Kafka,LL,251). I wonder whats the fictional status of Dom Quixote after
being alienated from his creators work, or granted immortality.
The need to reexamine VNs various choices for first-person narrators,
confessions and diaries in relation to his keeping an authorial distance
from the narrated events was clear to me, as well as the importance of
distinguishing them from his interventions and from his play with
extradiegetic levels. Nevertheless, I fear Ill have to abandon my projects
because Vladimir Nabokov, with typical fastidiousness, squabbled that
seldom has an author been as cruel to his character, although he also
recommended that we do our best to avoid the fatal error of looking for
so-called real life in novels. Nabokov added: Let us not try and
reconcile the fiction of facts with the facts of fiction. Don Quixote is a
fairy tale, so is Bleak House, so is Dead Souls. Madame Bovary and Anna
Karenin are supreme fairy tales. But without these fairy tales the world
would not be real. (Ilan Stavans
<http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/septemberoctober/feature/one-master-many
-cervantes>
http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/septemberoctober/feature/one-master-many-
cervantes ). Even after we leave out whats habitually described as the
facts of the world from fiction and fairy tale, the world of fantasy still
retains important links with the human mind. And did VN equally isolate
pity from compassion? Its so very confusing.
..
*-quoting and indicating a few texts:
Don Quixote Restored by Guy Davenport (1983)
<http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/13/books/don-quixote-restored.html>
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/13/books/don-quixote-restored.html
''I REMEMBER with delight,'' Vladimir Nabokov said in 1966 to Herbert Gold,
who had traveled to Montreux to interview him, ''tearing apart 'Don
Quixote,' a cruel and crude old book, before 600 students in Memorial Hall,
much to the horror and embarrassment of some of my more conservative
colleagues.'' [ ] What Nabokov's eyes kept seeing as he prepared his
lectures was the accurately perceived fact that the book elicits cruel
laughter. Cervantes' old man who had read himself into insanity and his
smelly squire were created to be the butt of mockery.
Cruel and Crude: Nabokov Reading Cervantes by Catherine Kunce
Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
<http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/cervante/csa/bcsaf93.htm> 13.2 (1993): 93-104.
The late Stephen Gilman, however, caustically protests that Nabokov, the
author of that most painfully méchant of novels, Bend Sinister, . . .
professed to be shocked both by the cruelty of Cervantes' treatment of his
hero and by the gales of laughter that that cruelty supposedly provoked
But Gilman reminds us that Cervantes' two supremely naive protagonists are
used in order to illuminate ironically a society, swollen with
self-importance, that refused to make a place for him despite his past
heroism(44). Gilman places Cervantes in the larger tradition of the novel,
concluding that it was Fielding's conscious adaptation of Cervantine irony
that opened the way to the future of the novel... To the degree, then, that
Nabokov refuses Cervantes his irony, he impugns the tenor of his own
novels.[ ] There is a further irony to consider, this time, in Nabokov's
disdain for the violence in Don Quixote. The word requires some scrutiny.
Nabokov's complaints of the innumerable beatings and the duchess and duke's
playful inhumanity towards Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are well taken,
but this violence is not for the mindless amusement of cloddish readers,
as Nabokov suggests: rather, it carries a psychological message. ( Cruel
and Crude: Nabokov Reading Cervantes by Catherine Kunce)
The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote, by Simon Leys(1998) .
<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1998/jun/11/the-imitation-of-our-l
ord-don-quixote/>
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1998/jun/11/the-imitation-of-our-lo
rd-don-quixote/ The New York Review of Books
he was appalled by the crudeness and the savagery of Cervantes narrative.
In the words of Brian Boyd, his biographer, He detested the belly-laughs
Cervantes wanted his readers to derive from his heros discomfiture, and he
repeatedly compared the vicious fun of the book with Christs humiliation
and crucifixion, with the Spanish Inquisition, with modern bullfighting. [
] His distaste for Cervantes sadistic treatment of Don Quixote reached such
a point that he eventually excluded the book from his regular lectures on
foreign literature at Cornell: he could not bear to dwell on the subject any
further. But the corollary of his virulent hostility toward the writer was a
loving admiration for his creature Simon Leys
One Master Many Cervantes Don Quixote in Translation By
<http://www.neh.gov/humanities/author/ilan-stavans> Ilan Stavans |
HUMANITIES, September/October 2008 | Volume 29, Number 5
<http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/septemberoctober/feature/one-master-many
-cervantes>
http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/septemberoctober/feature/one-master-many-
cervantes
The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov: edited by Julian W. Connolly
Nabokovs Worldview, by Leona Toker.
Style Is Matter - The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov
Leland de la Durantaye Cornell University Press,2007
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L
V.Nabokov directed against Dom Quixote, because his Lecture on Quixote
was lovingly researched and presented [ ]A few months ago I found a
statement relating VNs criticism about this cruel and crude book to the
way in which Cervantes treated his character and not to any other kind of
cruelty pertaining to its action nor in relation to the readers. [ ]Is VN
demonstrating, through his rejection of Cervantess writing that, in any
novel, lifes destructiveness and evil are to be portrayed only as aspects
of the real cruelty of the external world and its inhabitants? That an
author should never be an accomplice of the worlds evil to remain, at most,
an impartial observer? [ ]quote: we do not laugh at [Don Quixote] any
longer. His blazon is pity, his banner is beauty. He stands for everything
that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish and gallant.
Present posting: My initial query related to VNs indignation at the ways in
which Cervantes tortured his unhappy knight has been amply explored by
scholars, * although my sweeping supposition about how VN seemed to
recommend that authors avoid becoming accomplices of the evil & cruelty
presented in a novel hasnt been considered under the same light. Before
examining more deeply the articles available to me, or returning to VNs
original lecture, I allowed myself to imagine that an artists pursuit of
beauty and pity must belong to a different dimension as that of an artworks
materiality (should VN have extended the same discipline of attention to
detail and neutrality of science to the art of creating a work of fiction
that his words about science and art attest). V.Nabokovs words on Dom
Quixote: His blazon is pity, his banner is beauty are the same ones that
he chose for his definition of Art: Beauty plus pity-that is the closest
we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for
the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies
with the matter, the world dies with the individual. (Lecture on
Kafka,LL,251). I wonder whats the fictional status of Dom Quixote after
being alienated from his creators work, or granted immortality.
The need to reexamine VNs various choices for first-person narrators,
confessions and diaries in relation to his keeping an authorial distance
from the narrated events was clear to me, as well as the importance of
distinguishing them from his interventions and from his play with
extradiegetic levels. Nevertheless, I fear Ill have to abandon my projects
because Vladimir Nabokov, with typical fastidiousness, squabbled that
seldom has an author been as cruel to his character, although he also
recommended that we do our best to avoid the fatal error of looking for
so-called real life in novels. Nabokov added: Let us not try and
reconcile the fiction of facts with the facts of fiction. Don Quixote is a
fairy tale, so is Bleak House, so is Dead Souls. Madame Bovary and Anna
Karenin are supreme fairy tales. But without these fairy tales the world
would not be real. (Ilan Stavans
<http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/septemberoctober/feature/one-master-many
-cervantes>
http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/septemberoctober/feature/one-master-many-
cervantes ). Even after we leave out whats habitually described as the
facts of the world from fiction and fairy tale, the world of fantasy still
retains important links with the human mind. And did VN equally isolate
pity from compassion? Its so very confusing.
..
*-quoting and indicating a few texts:
Don Quixote Restored by Guy Davenport (1983)
<http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/13/books/don-quixote-restored.html>
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/13/books/don-quixote-restored.html
''I REMEMBER with delight,'' Vladimir Nabokov said in 1966 to Herbert Gold,
who had traveled to Montreux to interview him, ''tearing apart 'Don
Quixote,' a cruel and crude old book, before 600 students in Memorial Hall,
much to the horror and embarrassment of some of my more conservative
colleagues.'' [ ] What Nabokov's eyes kept seeing as he prepared his
lectures was the accurately perceived fact that the book elicits cruel
laughter. Cervantes' old man who had read himself into insanity and his
smelly squire were created to be the butt of mockery.
Cruel and Crude: Nabokov Reading Cervantes by Catherine Kunce
Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America
<http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/cervante/csa/bcsaf93.htm> 13.2 (1993): 93-104.
The late Stephen Gilman, however, caustically protests that Nabokov, the
author of that most painfully méchant of novels, Bend Sinister, . . .
professed to be shocked both by the cruelty of Cervantes' treatment of his
hero and by the gales of laughter that that cruelty supposedly provoked
But Gilman reminds us that Cervantes' two supremely naive protagonists are
used in order to illuminate ironically a society, swollen with
self-importance, that refused to make a place for him despite his past
heroism(44). Gilman places Cervantes in the larger tradition of the novel,
concluding that it was Fielding's conscious adaptation of Cervantine irony
that opened the way to the future of the novel... To the degree, then, that
Nabokov refuses Cervantes his irony, he impugns the tenor of his own
novels.[ ] There is a further irony to consider, this time, in Nabokov's
disdain for the violence in Don Quixote. The word requires some scrutiny.
Nabokov's complaints of the innumerable beatings and the duchess and duke's
playful inhumanity towards Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are well taken,
but this violence is not for the mindless amusement of cloddish readers,
as Nabokov suggests: rather, it carries a psychological message. ( Cruel
and Crude: Nabokov Reading Cervantes by Catherine Kunce)
The Imitation of Our Lord Don Quixote, by Simon Leys(1998) .
<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1998/jun/11/the-imitation-of-our-l
ord-don-quixote/>
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1998/jun/11/the-imitation-of-our-lo
rd-don-quixote/ The New York Review of Books
he was appalled by the crudeness and the savagery of Cervantes narrative.
In the words of Brian Boyd, his biographer, He detested the belly-laughs
Cervantes wanted his readers to derive from his heros discomfiture, and he
repeatedly compared the vicious fun of the book with Christs humiliation
and crucifixion, with the Spanish Inquisition, with modern bullfighting. [
] His distaste for Cervantes sadistic treatment of Don Quixote reached such
a point that he eventually excluded the book from his regular lectures on
foreign literature at Cornell: he could not bear to dwell on the subject any
further. But the corollary of his virulent hostility toward the writer was a
loving admiration for his creature Simon Leys
One Master Many Cervantes Don Quixote in Translation By
<http://www.neh.gov/humanities/author/ilan-stavans> Ilan Stavans |
HUMANITIES, September/October 2008 | Volume 29, Number 5
<http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/septemberoctober/feature/one-master-many
-cervantes>
http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2008/septemberoctober/feature/one-master-many-
cervantes
The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov: edited by Julian W. Connolly
Nabokovs Worldview, by Leona Toker.
Style Is Matter - The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov
Leland de la Durantaye Cornell University Press,2007
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L