Subject
Nabokov: INQUIRY : H.H.'s "Maternity" and "Pauline anide"
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1. (Andrey) collected progressive philistine art ...His bride found the ranch yard adorned with a sculpture, if that's the right word, by old Heinrich himself and his four hefty assistants, a huge hideous lump of bourgeois mahogany, ten feet high, entitled 'Maternity,' the mother (in reverse) of all the plaster gnomes and pig-iron toadstools planted by former Vinelanders in front of their dachas in Lyaska.
(ADA)
2 ..As had happened on previous occasions, around ten o'clock a most jarring succession of bumps and scrapes suddenly came from above: it was the cretin upstairs dragging a heavy piece of inscrutable sculpture (catalogued as "Pauline anide") from the center of his studio to the corner it occupied at night. ( Transparent Things)
Dear List,
I wonder if VN's harsh words against HM's scultpures, classed amid "philistine art" in general ( Ada), added to his angry dismissal of "the cretin upstairs" equally "maternal " sculpture (Transparent Things), reappear in his other novels in a more explicit and particularized way. I'm also curious about this connection bt. trashy art and proliferating maternal decorative Kitsch. Many VN characters are sterile ( Van, for example, quite explicitly so): is this somehow connected to VN's assessment of Modern Art and, say, Duchamp's "ready mades" and a trend towards popularization of art ?
Thank you,
Jansy
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(ADA)
2 ..As had happened on previous occasions, around ten o'clock a most jarring succession of bumps and scrapes suddenly came from above: it was the cretin upstairs dragging a heavy piece of inscrutable sculpture (catalogued as "Pauline anide") from the center of his studio to the corner it occupied at night. ( Transparent Things)
Dear List,
I wonder if VN's harsh words against HM's scultpures, classed amid "philistine art" in general ( Ada), added to his angry dismissal of "the cretin upstairs" equally "maternal " sculpture (Transparent Things), reappear in his other novels in a more explicit and particularized way. I'm also curious about this connection bt. trashy art and proliferating maternal decorative Kitsch. Many VN characters are sterile ( Van, for example, quite explicitly so): is this somehow connected to VN's assessment of Modern Art and, say, Duchamp's "ready mades" and a trend towards popularization of art ?
Thank you,
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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