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Re: Nabokov on Truth (pravda and istina) - art's higher level?
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Two or three typos marred my copy from VN's Russian lectures and I wouldn't have needed to copy them down, had I first checked them with what is offered online. [ concerning the message "A few postings ago there was an exchange between Frances Assa and me in connection to "Nabokov's truth"] Nablers will find a more reliable quote and illuminating comments here:
''http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/25/books/nabokov-s-russians.html
excerpts from NABOKOV'S RUSSIANS, by Leonard Michaels -.Published: October 25, 1981 .
"AFTER years of lecturing in universities, one of my colleagues was discovered bent over a Xerox machine making copies of his head. I once began a lecture and talked for several minutes before noticing that I was in the wrong room. [ ]. One still hears remarks like ''I sat at the feet of Heidegger.'' Such abject adoration is a mysterious thing, a sort of religious phenomenon. Father Ong, the great literary scholar, has written an essay called ''Voice As a Summons for Belief.'' Something like this can be heard in the published lectures of Vladimir Nabokov. His voice summons us to a belief in high art [ ]... Nabokov definitely believes in the dialectical relation of reality and illusion. Discussing Tolstoy, he says: ''Some of you may still wonder why I and Tolstoy mention such trifles (historical data contemporary with the time in novels). To make his magic, fiction, look real the artist sometimes places it, as Tolstoy does, within a definite, specific historical frame, citing facts that can be checked in a library - that citadel of illusion.'' Given this notion of a library, a novelist might as well invent everything. More relevant is that Nabokov presents Tolstoy - a ''moralist'' who invented enormously yet resisted inventing - as someone who shares Nabokov's ontological vision, and, like him, captures the unreal in the very fabric of the real. But while Nabokov's word for fiction is ''magic,'' he tells us that, for Tolstoy, the word is ''Truth.''
''What obsessed Tolstoy, what obscured his genius, what now distresses the good reader, was that, somehow, the process of seeking the Truth seemed more important to him than the easy, vivid, brilliant discovery of the illusion of truth through the medium of his artistic genius. Old Russian Truth was never a comfortable companion; it had a violent temper and a heavy tread. It was not simply truth, not merely everyday pravda but immortal istina - not truth but the inner light of truth. When Tolstoy did happen to find it in himself, in the splendor of his creative imagination, then, almost unconsciously, he was on the right path. What does his tussle with the ruling Greek-Catholic Church matter, what importance do his ethical opinions have, in the light of this or that imaginative passage in any of his novels?''
If Tolstoy leans too far one way, maybe Nabokov leans too far the other way, but the difference between them doesn't prevent Nabokov from making Tolstoy similar to himself without, thereby, betraying Tolstoy. For example, on ideas in literature generally and in Tolstoy particularly, he says:''... we should always bear in mind that literature is not a pattern of ideas but a pattern of images. Ideas do not matter much in comparison to a book's imagery and magic. What interests us here is not what Lyovin thought (as he watched a bug creep up a blade of grass) ... but that little bug that expresses so neatly the turn, the switch, the gesture of thought.''
If Tolstoy leans too far one way, maybe Nabokov leans too far the other way, but the difference between them doesn't prevent Nabokov from making Tolstoy similar to himself without, thereby, betraying Tolstoy. For example, on ideas in literature generally and in Tolstoy particularly, he says:
''... we should always bear in mind that literature is not a pattern of ideas but a pattern of images. Ideas do not matter much in comparison to a book's imagery and magic. What interests us here is not what Lyovin thought (as he watched a bug creep up a blade of grass) ... but that little bug that expresses so neatly the turn, the switch, the gesture of thought.''This is a lovely perception, and, whether or not moral Tolstoy would agree, it feels true. In Nabokov's Gogol essay, excerpted from his book on Gogol and reprinted in the ''Lectures,'' he observes something similar to the above:
''The faceless saloon-walker ... is again seen a minute later coming down from Chichikov's room and spelling out the name on a slip of paper as he walks down the steps. 'Pa-vel I-va-no-vich Chi-chikov'; and these syllables have a taxonomic value for the identification of that particular staircase.''
Thus a physical action paralleling a mental action renders it kinesthetically. Nabokov's concentration on the poetics of superlative prose recalls his own prose. He does such Gogolian things himself.[ ]
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''http://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/25/books/nabokov-s-russians.html
excerpts from NABOKOV'S RUSSIANS, by Leonard Michaels -.Published: October 25, 1981 .
"AFTER years of lecturing in universities, one of my colleagues was discovered bent over a Xerox machine making copies of his head. I once began a lecture and talked for several minutes before noticing that I was in the wrong room. [ ]. One still hears remarks like ''I sat at the feet of Heidegger.'' Such abject adoration is a mysterious thing, a sort of religious phenomenon. Father Ong, the great literary scholar, has written an essay called ''Voice As a Summons for Belief.'' Something like this can be heard in the published lectures of Vladimir Nabokov. His voice summons us to a belief in high art [ ]... Nabokov definitely believes in the dialectical relation of reality and illusion. Discussing Tolstoy, he says: ''Some of you may still wonder why I and Tolstoy mention such trifles (historical data contemporary with the time in novels). To make his magic, fiction, look real the artist sometimes places it, as Tolstoy does, within a definite, specific historical frame, citing facts that can be checked in a library - that citadel of illusion.'' Given this notion of a library, a novelist might as well invent everything. More relevant is that Nabokov presents Tolstoy - a ''moralist'' who invented enormously yet resisted inventing - as someone who shares Nabokov's ontological vision, and, like him, captures the unreal in the very fabric of the real. But while Nabokov's word for fiction is ''magic,'' he tells us that, for Tolstoy, the word is ''Truth.''
''What obsessed Tolstoy, what obscured his genius, what now distresses the good reader, was that, somehow, the process of seeking the Truth seemed more important to him than the easy, vivid, brilliant discovery of the illusion of truth through the medium of his artistic genius. Old Russian Truth was never a comfortable companion; it had a violent temper and a heavy tread. It was not simply truth, not merely everyday pravda but immortal istina - not truth but the inner light of truth. When Tolstoy did happen to find it in himself, in the splendor of his creative imagination, then, almost unconsciously, he was on the right path. What does his tussle with the ruling Greek-Catholic Church matter, what importance do his ethical opinions have, in the light of this or that imaginative passage in any of his novels?''
If Tolstoy leans too far one way, maybe Nabokov leans too far the other way, but the difference between them doesn't prevent Nabokov from making Tolstoy similar to himself without, thereby, betraying Tolstoy. For example, on ideas in literature generally and in Tolstoy particularly, he says:''... we should always bear in mind that literature is not a pattern of ideas but a pattern of images. Ideas do not matter much in comparison to a book's imagery and magic. What interests us here is not what Lyovin thought (as he watched a bug creep up a blade of grass) ... but that little bug that expresses so neatly the turn, the switch, the gesture of thought.''
If Tolstoy leans too far one way, maybe Nabokov leans too far the other way, but the difference between them doesn't prevent Nabokov from making Tolstoy similar to himself without, thereby, betraying Tolstoy. For example, on ideas in literature generally and in Tolstoy particularly, he says:
''... we should always bear in mind that literature is not a pattern of ideas but a pattern of images. Ideas do not matter much in comparison to a book's imagery and magic. What interests us here is not what Lyovin thought (as he watched a bug creep up a blade of grass) ... but that little bug that expresses so neatly the turn, the switch, the gesture of thought.''This is a lovely perception, and, whether or not moral Tolstoy would agree, it feels true. In Nabokov's Gogol essay, excerpted from his book on Gogol and reprinted in the ''Lectures,'' he observes something similar to the above:
''The faceless saloon-walker ... is again seen a minute later coming down from Chichikov's room and spelling out the name on a slip of paper as he walks down the steps. 'Pa-vel I-va-no-vich Chi-chikov'; and these syllables have a taxonomic value for the identification of that particular staircase.''
Thus a physical action paralleling a mental action renders it kinesthetically. Nabokov's concentration on the poetics of superlative prose recalls his own prose. He does such Gogolian things himself.[ ]
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
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/