Subject
Gessen's "Reading Vladimir Nabokov"
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Date
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Just to get this over with, I found the following sentence
extremely annoying:
> he was the Whites' Great Hope
I wish people wouldn't miss, like Eliot with his complaints about
the inconsistencies in Paradise Lost, the obvious.
To move on, interesting if wrong-headed. He makes the conclusion that
"Emotion was not enough; detail was not enough." from the musing that:
> She had spent all her life feeling miserable; this misery was her
native element; its fluctuations, its varying depths, alone
gave her the impression of moving and living. What bothers me is that
a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a
permanent soul.
I don't think that is a reflection on emotion so much as on the
inadequacy
of negative definition, which is an idea at least as old as Milton's
Satan. Moreover, the English Nabokov was older than the Russian one for
the most part. And Speak, Memory is a rather interesting choice to prove
that Nabokov needed English to express himself well since the Russian
version of it was an important stage in its literary evolution, as is
obvious from comparing the original and the final versions of the
memoir.
> They are the ones behind the books about Nabokov's butterflies.
If he doesn't like the books or is not interested in the subject, he
might atleast be good enough not to bother himself about them. This
probably emanates from a sensibility that cannot see anything valuable
outside social commentary. That might represent a valid viewpoint, but I
don't see why they should force themselves on the rest of the world. I
enjoyed Nabokov's Butterflies (I haven't yet gotten round to reading
Nabokov's Blues) and I appreciate the effort that went into it. If he
cannot sympathise with it, he might atleast shut up.
> the turtlenecked acolytes of reading-as-wanking
Reading-as-wanking (There is writing-as-wanking too, I am tempted to
point out) to the extent that I can understand the term would involve a
"sentimentalist" (used in the Nabokovian as opposed to the Leavisite
sense) identification with the characters in the novel, or even the
artist-figure, neither of which, as far as I know, is a suitable
approach
to VN. Besides, there is no reason why seeing the novel as a game is
harmful to seeing the humane side. Rather typically, this article
belittles the critical achievements of people like Ellen Pifer and Leona
Toker.
> It lacked the land and the army and the political reality to nurture the
causal relationship between word and deed.
This supposes as necessary for the translation of his words into
deeds,
a nation waiting on the whims of a poet, which I shall be bold enough
to describe as stupid.
> His Russian prose, too, though full of ironic tricks and intricate
detail, tilted toward the sentimental.
I can never understand what most people mean by the word sentimental
(or for that matter - with Empson - "reactionary"), but VN's best
Russian
prose (atleast in translation) - The Gift, Invitation to a Beheading,
The
Defense, Mary - doesn't contain anything I could describe as superficial
emotion.
On the whole, I think Gessen is battling against his own inventions:
The
pure aesthetes that he talks about never existed, nor did the repressive
Nabokov estate, nor the Nabokov crying out to be saved from the
post-structuralists.
On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, D. Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Reading Vladimir Nabokov
> Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 18:54:23 -0500
> From: "Martin Striz" <martinstriz@hotmail.com>
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>
>
>
> "Reading Vladimir Nabokov" by Keith Gessen.
> http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no6/gessen.html
>
> I don't know if anyone mentioned this article and I just overlooked it,
> but have a look. The critic has a few words to say about us, "the
> aesthetes, the punsters, the turtlenecked acolytes of reading-as-wanking
> and
> literature as play." What do you think of HIS reading of Nabokov?
>
> Best,
> Martin Striz
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
Cheers!
yours
Kiran
"the impossible [will take] a little longer...."
-Vicki Moore
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~kiran
Just to get this over with, I found the following sentence
extremely annoying:
> he was the Whites' Great Hope
I wish people wouldn't miss, like Eliot with his complaints about
the inconsistencies in Paradise Lost, the obvious.
To move on, interesting if wrong-headed. He makes the conclusion that
"Emotion was not enough; detail was not enough." from the musing that:
> She had spent all her life feeling miserable; this misery was her
native element; its fluctuations, its varying depths, alone
gave her the impression of moving and living. What bothers me is that
a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a
permanent soul.
I don't think that is a reflection on emotion so much as on the
inadequacy
of negative definition, which is an idea at least as old as Milton's
Satan. Moreover, the English Nabokov was older than the Russian one for
the most part. And Speak, Memory is a rather interesting choice to prove
that Nabokov needed English to express himself well since the Russian
version of it was an important stage in its literary evolution, as is
obvious from comparing the original and the final versions of the
memoir.
> They are the ones behind the books about Nabokov's butterflies.
If he doesn't like the books or is not interested in the subject, he
might atleast be good enough not to bother himself about them. This
probably emanates from a sensibility that cannot see anything valuable
outside social commentary. That might represent a valid viewpoint, but I
don't see why they should force themselves on the rest of the world. I
enjoyed Nabokov's Butterflies (I haven't yet gotten round to reading
Nabokov's Blues) and I appreciate the effort that went into it. If he
cannot sympathise with it, he might atleast shut up.
> the turtlenecked acolytes of reading-as-wanking
Reading-as-wanking (There is writing-as-wanking too, I am tempted to
point out) to the extent that I can understand the term would involve a
"sentimentalist" (used in the Nabokovian as opposed to the Leavisite
sense) identification with the characters in the novel, or even the
artist-figure, neither of which, as far as I know, is a suitable
approach
to VN. Besides, there is no reason why seeing the novel as a game is
harmful to seeing the humane side. Rather typically, this article
belittles the critical achievements of people like Ellen Pifer and Leona
Toker.
> It lacked the land and the army and the political reality to nurture the
causal relationship between word and deed.
This supposes as necessary for the translation of his words into
deeds,
a nation waiting on the whims of a poet, which I shall be bold enough
to describe as stupid.
> His Russian prose, too, though full of ironic tricks and intricate
detail, tilted toward the sentimental.
I can never understand what most people mean by the word sentimental
(or for that matter - with Empson - "reactionary"), but VN's best
Russian
prose (atleast in translation) - The Gift, Invitation to a Beheading,
The
Defense, Mary - doesn't contain anything I could describe as superficial
emotion.
On the whole, I think Gessen is battling against his own inventions:
The
pure aesthetes that he talks about never existed, nor did the repressive
Nabokov estate, nor the Nabokov crying out to be saved from the
post-structuralists.
On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, D. Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Reading Vladimir Nabokov
> Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 18:54:23 -0500
> From: "Martin Striz" <martinstriz@hotmail.com>
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>
>
>
> "Reading Vladimir Nabokov" by Keith Gessen.
> http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no6/gessen.html
>
> I don't know if anyone mentioned this article and I just overlooked it,
> but have a look. The critic has a few words to say about us, "the
> aesthetes, the punsters, the turtlenecked acolytes of reading-as-wanking
> and
> literature as play." What do you think of HIS reading of Nabokov?
>
> Best,
> Martin Striz
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
Cheers!
yours
Kiran
"the impossible [will take] a little longer...."
-Vicki Moore
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~kiran