Dear List,
I suggested that, in La Veneziana we might
consider McGore as the narrator ( who else could see the tennis racket as having
been twisted "in the shape of an eight", forming the symbol of the
infinite, if not he who was observing someone else holding this
spoilt instrument in his hands?).Now, should we entertain this hypothesis, can
we ask: does McGore's opinion reflect or contrast with Nabokov's?
McGore: "regarded the world
as a rather poor study daubed with unstable paints on a flimsy canvas"
(p.91). For him "as we have already remarked, Mr.McGore
considered life's Creator only a second-rate imitator of the
masters...",p.92)
VN valued the artist's ability to be as deceitful as
nature and, at the same time, his power to create new worlds. Would he be
opposed to Charles Darwin's accessment that "Natural Selection,
as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and
is as immeasurably superior to man’s feeble efforts, as the works of
Nature are to those of Art."?
Would he believe, like Kant, that beauty is present in
nature and mere human beings are unable to emmulate it?
Would he favor Hegel’s position, according to whom "art is
the product of the mind, and this expression of beauty surpasses the beauty
coming from nature."? For Hegel, and McGore, what the
human spirit engenders is more valuable than any natural production because
the artist's creation is a reflection of an ideal concept.
Stephen Blackwell might ellucidate us over this point for I heard he's been
ellaborating VN's concepts about the relation bt. nature and art. I wonder if he
'd agree that Nabokov didn't oppose either Darwin's view nor Hegel's, because
his focus lay on how both nature and art worked together ( the eye
that perceives, the mind that registers).