Subject
Re: Sighting-- Nabokov Vindicated article in Spanish from Roger
Vila's institution
Vila's institution
From
Date
Body
Kurt Johnson: offers "...a link to an article in Spanish from Roger Vila's institution http://www.ibe.upf-csic.es/ibe/_pdf/Nabokov.pdf ...Roger Vila appears on this video interview: http://www.youtube.com/user/rtvcardedeu#p/u/13/Y0EbdsrozV0; The Vila, Pierce et. al paper is in the headlines/features at the gene sequencing scientific website in what they call The Daily Scan http://www.genomeweb.com/newsletter/daily-scan." Johnson also adds "an interesting and insightful article from Bioephemera posted today by another molecular biologist discussing whether S. J. Gould's published assessment of Nabokov would have been changed by these developments" found at http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/2011/01/nabokov_was_right_-_so_was_gou.php "
JM: Nabokov once described reality as "a very subjective affair. I can only define it as a kind of gradual accumulation of information; and as specialization. If we take a lily, for instance, or any other kind of natural object, a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist... You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable....So that we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects-- that machine, there, for instance. It's a complete ghost to me-- 1 don't understand a thing about it and, well, it's a mystery to me..." (1962, Peter Duval-Smith and Christopher Burstall BBC television interview). He doesn't mention butterflies here, but a lily, as it's perceived, in successive levels of specialization, by an ordinary person, a naturalist, a botanist, moving towards the "reality" of an object. Nabokov concludes that "we live surrounded by...ghostly objects." However, for him, butterflies are the truest representatives of a progressive investigation into "unquenchable reality," therefore, the must be the less ghostly among animated beings and things. Inspite of this, in his novels, butterflies often appear as ghostly entities, instruments of enchantment or emblematic of a spiritual quest.Perhaps, to the trained eyes of a lepidopterologist. his novels may also reveal other layers and levels of "butterfly reality," or recurrent "false-bottoms" (as in "Ada," when a depiction of a specimen in a triptych painted by J. Bosch is criticized for its inverted artificiality).
In the article just posted to the Nab-L, Veríssimo muses about how "artistically caged" we live, for we are dependent of words and prision-bound by their invisible bars. He quotes King Salomon directly (not the lilies of the fields *): "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter." (Proverbs 25:2) to conclude that God's true glory can only be discerned after language reaches its limits and all words fail - as it's bound to happen to every writer, even those of Clarice Lispector's and Vladimir Nabokov's stature and talents.
Nabokov, at his most playful, often presented himself as "God" creating a fictional world, a mir-age (or as a rival, who could teach him a thing or two, even about butterflies). From all the reports about his recent "vindication" I suppose one could safely crown him King, were it not for the fact that the achievements in science always rely on an efficient team-work. "Monarchs" are milkweed butterflies...
...........................
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." (Matt. 6:28-29). Luiz Fernando's father, Erico Veríssimo, wrote "Olhai os Lírios do Campo (Consider the Lilies of the Field, Macmillan, 1948). "Erico Verissimo was presented for the first time in the English language in 1943, when his second novel was translated by L.C. Kaplan and published by Macmillan in New York. Crossroads is often taken to represent the author's condemnation of the hypocrisy of the little bourgeois." His "technique of fragmentation points to the general question of influence on Verissimo's fiction, and beyond that to the wider issue of its place in the development of Brazilian modernism. The debt to Aldous Huxley and John Dos Passos was fully evident and in his memories Verissimo admitted the influence of Huxley's counterpoint technique...Verissimo was fluent in French" and perhaps, "because he disliked the experiments with language of the modern French novel, his attention was caught by the structural innovations of the English novelists." (http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marco_Bomfoco ). Luiz Fernando is a cartoonist, a journalist and a writer who often quotes and mentions Nabokov in his writing.
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JM: Nabokov once described reality as "a very subjective affair. I can only define it as a kind of gradual accumulation of information; and as specialization. If we take a lily, for instance, or any other kind of natural object, a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist... You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable....So that we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects-- that machine, there, for instance. It's a complete ghost to me-- 1 don't understand a thing about it and, well, it's a mystery to me..." (1962, Peter Duval-Smith and Christopher Burstall BBC television interview). He doesn't mention butterflies here, but a lily, as it's perceived, in successive levels of specialization, by an ordinary person, a naturalist, a botanist, moving towards the "reality" of an object. Nabokov concludes that "we live surrounded by...ghostly objects." However, for him, butterflies are the truest representatives of a progressive investigation into "unquenchable reality," therefore, the must be the less ghostly among animated beings and things. Inspite of this, in his novels, butterflies often appear as ghostly entities, instruments of enchantment or emblematic of a spiritual quest.Perhaps, to the trained eyes of a lepidopterologist. his novels may also reveal other layers and levels of "butterfly reality," or recurrent "false-bottoms" (as in "Ada," when a depiction of a specimen in a triptych painted by J. Bosch is criticized for its inverted artificiality).
In the article just posted to the Nab-L, Veríssimo muses about how "artistically caged" we live, for we are dependent of words and prision-bound by their invisible bars. He quotes King Salomon directly (not the lilies of the fields *): "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter." (Proverbs 25:2) to conclude that God's true glory can only be discerned after language reaches its limits and all words fail - as it's bound to happen to every writer, even those of Clarice Lispector's and Vladimir Nabokov's stature and talents.
Nabokov, at his most playful, often presented himself as "God" creating a fictional world, a mir-age (or as a rival, who could teach him a thing or two, even about butterflies). From all the reports about his recent "vindication" I suppose one could safely crown him King, were it not for the fact that the achievements in science always rely on an efficient team-work. "Monarchs" are milkweed butterflies...
...........................
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." (Matt. 6:28-29). Luiz Fernando's father, Erico Veríssimo, wrote "Olhai os Lírios do Campo (Consider the Lilies of the Field, Macmillan, 1948). "Erico Verissimo was presented for the first time in the English language in 1943, when his second novel was translated by L.C. Kaplan and published by Macmillan in New York. Crossroads is often taken to represent the author's condemnation of the hypocrisy of the little bourgeois." His "technique of fragmentation points to the general question of influence on Verissimo's fiction, and beyond that to the wider issue of its place in the development of Brazilian modernism. The debt to Aldous Huxley and John Dos Passos was fully evident and in his memories Verissimo admitted the influence of Huxley's counterpoint technique...Verissimo was fluent in French" and perhaps, "because he disliked the experiments with language of the modern French novel, his attention was caught by the structural innovations of the English novelists." (http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marco_Bomfoco ). Luiz Fernando is a cartoonist, a journalist and a writer who often quotes and mentions Nabokov in his writing.
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/