Subject
Fw: Query: "German source" in SPEAK, MEMORY
From
Date
Body
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From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 12:25:43 -0300
Dear List,
Unfortunately I could not find the name of who found the suggestive sentence
from Lolita 1,4: "touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory" that
conjures the one I´m trying to place rendered as: "brilliant childhood
impressions whose paint stains for ever the fingertips of memory".
Thank you! It is always a pleasure to be reminded of VN´s magic imagery.
Various former postings have created a clash between two extreme
positionings ( as if there was no truth in fiction or else, too much of the
personal kind) and it was comforting to return to a less literal, more
literary sphere.
Anthony Stadlen mentioned Coleridge when he here announced his Sunday
Seminars.
While perusing the student-notes taken at Jorge Luis Borges´ "English Lit.
Course" in Buenos Aires, I discovered in them something that might be of
interest to other List participants. I´ll translate it:
"We have now reached Coleridge´s ideas about Shakespeare. Coleridge had
studied Spinoza. You will remember that his philosophy is pantheistic, it
holds that there is only one real Being in the universe, and that this Being
is God. We all are God´s attributes, His adjectives, moments, but we don´t
actually exist (..) In Spinoza and in Scotus Erigena there is "natura
naturans" and "natura naturata" (a creating nature and a created nature).
Spinoza considers God as synonimous to Nature: "Deus sive natura", as if God
and Nature were the same, but God as "natura naturans" or "the life force"
as Bernard Shaw would say. And this is what Coleridge applied to
Shakespeare. He says that Shakespeare is like Spinoza´s God, an infinite
substance capable of assuming all multiple forms.
According to Coleridge, Shakespeare based his entire creation on himself
from where he extracted all things (...)
Coleridge believed that Shakespeare had not actually observed people, that
he had never condescended to spy or to do journalistic investigative work.
So, Shakespeare only thought about how a man became a murderer and then he
imagined a Macbeth. In the same way, he also imagined lady Macbeth, Duncan,
the three witches ... Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, King Lear...
This means that Shakespeare had been every and each of his characters, even
to the most transient ones. He was also actor, impresario...
When Frank Harris completed his biography of Bernard Shaw he wrote and asked
Shaw for details about his private life. Shaw answered back that he had no
private life because he, like Shakespeare, was all things and every man.
He added in the same breath: " I have been all things and all men, and at
the same time I´m nobody. I´m nothing."
And yet, although Coleridge had compared Shakespeare and God, he confessed
that there were scenes in Shakespeare that were not justifiable, when in
King Lear´s play, for example, the eyes of a character were torn away on
stage. But then he amended: " I´ve sometimes wished I could find mistakes in
Shakespeare, later I discovered that in Shakespeare there are no erros, he
was always right".
Coleridge was a Shakespeare theologian (...). Along the same lines Victor
Hugo wrote: "Shakespeare may be subject of absences in infinity".
We have among us Nabokov theologians and iconoclasts. But this only happens
because instead of literature we unconciously submitted to a form of
religion that deny nature, art, authors and creator.
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:34 AM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Query: "German source" in SPEAK, MEMORY
Could the phrase Jansy is thinking of possibly be found in the sentence from
Lolita I,4 (p. 14 of Annotated): "Through the darkness and the tender trees
we
could see the arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored
inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards -- presumably
because a bridge game was keeping the enemy busy."?
> ----------
> From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> Reply-To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 20:34:31 -0700
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Fwd: Re: Query: "German source" in SPEAK, MEMORY
>
> Could the phrase Jansy is thinking of possibly be found in the sentence
> from
> Lolita I,4 (p. 14 of Annotated): "Through the darkness and the tender
> trees
> we
> could see the arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the
> colored
> inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards --
> presumably
> because a bridge game was keeping the enemy busy."?
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
> Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.1/104 - Release Date: 16/9/2005
>
>
----------
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 12:25:43 -0300
Dear List,
Unfortunately I could not find the name of who found the suggestive sentence
from Lolita 1,4: "touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory" that
conjures the one I´m trying to place rendered as: "brilliant childhood
impressions whose paint stains for ever the fingertips of memory".
Thank you! It is always a pleasure to be reminded of VN´s magic imagery.
Various former postings have created a clash between two extreme
positionings ( as if there was no truth in fiction or else, too much of the
personal kind) and it was comforting to return to a less literal, more
literary sphere.
Anthony Stadlen mentioned Coleridge when he here announced his Sunday
Seminars.
While perusing the student-notes taken at Jorge Luis Borges´ "English Lit.
Course" in Buenos Aires, I discovered in them something that might be of
interest to other List participants. I´ll translate it:
"We have now reached Coleridge´s ideas about Shakespeare. Coleridge had
studied Spinoza. You will remember that his philosophy is pantheistic, it
holds that there is only one real Being in the universe, and that this Being
is God. We all are God´s attributes, His adjectives, moments, but we don´t
actually exist (..) In Spinoza and in Scotus Erigena there is "natura
naturans" and "natura naturata" (a creating nature and a created nature).
Spinoza considers God as synonimous to Nature: "Deus sive natura", as if God
and Nature were the same, but God as "natura naturans" or "the life force"
as Bernard Shaw would say. And this is what Coleridge applied to
Shakespeare. He says that Shakespeare is like Spinoza´s God, an infinite
substance capable of assuming all multiple forms.
According to Coleridge, Shakespeare based his entire creation on himself
from where he extracted all things (...)
Coleridge believed that Shakespeare had not actually observed people, that
he had never condescended to spy or to do journalistic investigative work.
So, Shakespeare only thought about how a man became a murderer and then he
imagined a Macbeth. In the same way, he also imagined lady Macbeth, Duncan,
the three witches ... Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, King Lear...
This means that Shakespeare had been every and each of his characters, even
to the most transient ones. He was also actor, impresario...
When Frank Harris completed his biography of Bernard Shaw he wrote and asked
Shaw for details about his private life. Shaw answered back that he had no
private life because he, like Shakespeare, was all things and every man.
He added in the same breath: " I have been all things and all men, and at
the same time I´m nobody. I´m nothing."
And yet, although Coleridge had compared Shakespeare and God, he confessed
that there were scenes in Shakespeare that were not justifiable, when in
King Lear´s play, for example, the eyes of a character were torn away on
stage. But then he amended: " I´ve sometimes wished I could find mistakes in
Shakespeare, later I discovered that in Shakespeare there are no erros, he
was always right".
Coleridge was a Shakespeare theologian (...). Along the same lines Victor
Hugo wrote: "Shakespeare may be subject of absences in infinity".
We have among us Nabokov theologians and iconoclasts. But this only happens
because instead of literature we unconciously submitted to a form of
religion that deny nature, art, authors and creator.
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:34 AM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Query: "German source" in SPEAK, MEMORY
Could the phrase Jansy is thinking of possibly be found in the sentence from
Lolita I,4 (p. 14 of Annotated): "Through the darkness and the tender trees
we
could see the arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored
inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards -- presumably
because a bridge game was keeping the enemy busy."?
> ----------
> From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
> Reply-To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 20:34:31 -0700
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Fwd: Re: Query: "German source" in SPEAK, MEMORY
>
> Could the phrase Jansy is thinking of possibly be found in the sentence
> from
> Lolita I,4 (p. 14 of Annotated): "Through the darkness and the tender
> trees
> we
> could see the arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the
> colored
> inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards --
> presumably
> because a bridge game was keeping the enemy busy."?
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
> Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.1/104 - Release Date: 16/9/2005
>
>