Subject
Strengths of ADA, weaknesses of LO... (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Matt Morris <mmorris@netunlimited.net>
An occasional reader of NABOKV-L and astute fellow Nabokovian made the
following observations on ADA, LO, Proust and Freud that I think are worth
considering:
It is interesting that the fact that Proust is made
the enemy to be revised and to a degree reviled in the first chapter of
Ada, rather than Freud as in the Ray preface to Lolita is what may have
allowed Nabokov to make the later novel so much richer than the earlier
one. HERE, the villain-narrator can simultaneously be a brute, a
psychiatrist interested in what madman, neurotics, and dreams can tell
one (what Humbert definitely could not be, thus limiting the scope of
Nabokovian interests that can be brought to play), and a real artist and
lover a la Proust, instead of the lover and artist manque Humbert of
"Lolita," who must parody the "artist as neurotic" equation Freud makes in
several of his essays on art. Proust is much richer than Freud, of course,
and so "Ada" can be much richer than "Lolita." The poke at Tolstoy in the
first chapter is a bait, for Tolstoy is used as Joyce is against Proust
and Freud.
An occasional reader of NABOKV-L and astute fellow Nabokovian made the
following observations on ADA, LO, Proust and Freud that I think are worth
considering:
It is interesting that the fact that Proust is made
the enemy to be revised and to a degree reviled in the first chapter of
Ada, rather than Freud as in the Ray preface to Lolita is what may have
allowed Nabokov to make the later novel so much richer than the earlier
one. HERE, the villain-narrator can simultaneously be a brute, a
psychiatrist interested in what madman, neurotics, and dreams can tell
one (what Humbert definitely could not be, thus limiting the scope of
Nabokovian interests that can be brought to play), and a real artist and
lover a la Proust, instead of the lover and artist manque Humbert of
"Lolita," who must parody the "artist as neurotic" equation Freud makes in
several of his essays on art. Proust is much richer than Freud, of course,
and so "Ada" can be much richer than "Lolita." The poke at Tolstoy in the
first chapter is a bait, for Tolstoy is used as Joyce is against Proust
and Freud.