Matthew Roth wrote: "...thanks and admiration to Jerry for his thoughts on teaching PF.
I'm guessing he could stand in for me in my lit courses a lot more capably than
I could stand in for him in physics."
Although I also have a long experience as
a teacher, I must acknowledge my total incapacity to teach either
English Lit. or Physics, even in Kindergarten. And yet, I have one
suggestion to offer to Matthew Roth.
I'll use an example: Yesterday I wrote about VN's poem ( the one
about "ex Ponto") that I considered a fragment from a
long song of exile. Independently, Giulia playfully brought up a
line from Goethe connected to another nostalgic song ( "Nur wer die
Sehnsucht kennt")*.
This small
"coincidence" illustrates a backbone of nostalgia and loss, in
Nabokov, that may at times be felt whatever American novel of his we
pick up to read.
Nabokov complained about Joyce's excess of "verbal
thought" and indicated a dimension of "thinking with images, not
words"... Nabokov students, imho, should learn the Keatsian advice of
" heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter" to practice, with
Nabokov, at hearing both...
There are several hidden themes which shine
through in irregular places and that depend on the reader's momentary mood (
these effects create a "poltergeist" effect).
I think this is one of the
multiple experiences with feelings Nabokov students must learn to
let rise in them: the various and sonorous "Leitmotif" (
Leitmotiven?) that weave through his novels.
Someone in the know might express something like:
One must read Nabokov both sincronically and diacronically, like a person
listening to myths recited by Homeric followers. And more...read him as poet
and scientist, geographer and historian, like someone
ennamoured with Vermeer and Picasso. Like a teacher in
Physics....
Jansy
*It is soooo amazing, there is no precise word
in English for "Sehnsucht" or "Saudades" . Later I'll find a comment on the
latter by Nabokov, while lecturing on Cervantes.