Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022957, Fri, 15 Jun 2012 20:05:38 -0300

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Correction to former posting on Proust in PF and Lolita
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Dear List,
I forgot to add the French quote corresponding to the scene where Marcel feels sorry that he let go some of his Aunt LĂ©onie's furniture, and then, to complicate matters even more, I confused it with another quote, from "Albertine disparue.". I added the missing quote from Proust and established the parallel mood that, for me, links his paragraph, about the submission of intelligence to higher and unknown powers, to John Shade's lines about plexed artistry. The other connections to "Lolita" and "Pale Fire" need not to be repeated here.
My best excuses to everyone...!
Jansy Mello



In Proust's Recherche, after the narrator donated several pieces of the furniture, he inherited from his aunt LĂ©onie, to the owner of a brothel, he begins to feel that he's violated the vertues that surrounded his aunt's room in Combray. Her furniture seemed, then, to live on, like the apparently inanimate objects of a Persian story, begging for their liberation. When he first mentioned the re-encarnation of the soul , the idea of "being imprisoned in objects" was already entertained, but the illusion of a rebirth was kept. In contrast, later, as pointed out by Mariolina Bongiovanni Bertini (quoted by L. Foschini) "the same belief will arise with an inverted signal, subdued by the context that eliminates any hope in a ressurrection, bringing out the terror and the anxiety that is associated to a definite shape of survival that will be excluded from redemption."

So, as Marcel describes in the Recherche : "Je cessai du reste d'aller dans cette maison parce que désireux de témoigner mes bons sentiments à la femme qui la tenait et avait besoin de meubles, je lui en donnai quelques-uns, notamment un grand canapé - que j'avais hérités de ma tante Léonie. Je ne les voyais jamais car le manque de place avait empêché mes parents de les laisser entrer chez nous et ils étaient entassés dans un hangar. Mais dès que je les retrouvai dans la maison où ces femmes se servaient d'eux, toutes les vertus qu'on respirait dans la chambre de ma tante à Combray, m'apparurent, suppliciées par le contact cruel auquel je les avais livrés sans défense! J'aurais fait violer une morte que je n'aurais pas souffert davantage. Je ne retournai plus chez l'entremetteuse, car ils me semblaient vivre et me supplier, comme ces objets en apparence inanimés d'un conte persan, dans lesquels sont enfermées des âmes qui subissent un martyre et implorent leur délivrance."

In Albertine disparue the narrator develops the idea that it is Life, the experience of living, that which teaches us about the superiority of "other powers," when intelligence can accept her role as a servant or helper. We now read about how reasoning and intelligence, in the end, bow to the unknown powers that spur humans towards mysterious objectives. He belies that the motives for their passionate pursuit should not be searched among unconscious intuitions or superstitious forebodings: "Mais - et la suite le montrera davantage, comme bien des épisodes ont pu déjà l'indiquer - de ce que l'intelligence n'est pas l'instrument le plus subtil, le plus puissant, le plus approprié pour saisir le vrai, ce n'est qu'une raison de plus pour commencer par l'intelligence et non par un intuitivisme de l'inconscient, par une foi aux pressentiments toute faite. C'est la vie qui peu à peu, cas par cas, nous permet de remarquer que ce qui est le plus important pour notre cour, ou pour notre esprit, ne nous est pas appris par le raisonnement mais par des puissances autres. Et alors, c'est l'intelligence elle-même qui, se rendant compte de leur supériorité, abdique par raisonnement devant elles et accepte de devenir leur collaboratrice et leur servante."

In these lines I see the same kind of wisdom visited on John Shade, after his misadventures related to the "mountain/fountain" episode, when he not only bows to the scheming gods that play chess with humanity, but goes one step further, by attempting to emulate them and thereby share in their joys.
Cf lines 810-820 "...some kind/Of correlated pattern in the game,/ Plexed artistry, and something of the same/Pleasure in it as they who played it found.// It did not matter who they were.../.../they were, aloof and mute,/ Playing a game of worlds."

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