Dear Carolyn,
It sounds as if Beethoven wasn't dead in his grave after all, merely Haydn.
I can't speak for Nabokov's views (the ones you find distasteful), but I can
sympathize with them. However, I can also sympathize with Mozart's, if death
means not simply bodily dissolution but spiritual liberation from punishing
puns.
The puns Beethoven himself littered his letters with aren't the most inventive, no matter how one editor spins it (unless he's just picked out the lamest examples):
"Of puns, and various plays upon words there is abundance, one might say superabundance.... To take a simple example, Beethoven speaks of a person named Traeg as traeg, i.e., slow. The mere fact of having to explain such mild specimens of humour is, of course, fatal, yet as this punning propensity runs through the whole of the letters, some attempt had to be made to show it in translation. Of Beethoven's puns, as one can well imagine, some were very good, others very bad. He never missed an opportunity with names of composers. We need not call attention to familiar jokes, but would note two in connection with Bach. The composer hears that Anna Regina Bach, the last surviving child of the great composer, is in distress, and in writing to Hofmeister expresses the hope that something may be done for this bach ("brook") before it dries up....The other is a play upon the basso ostinato of the Crucifixus in Bach's B minor Mass. Beethoven tells his publisher Steiner, that this basso resembles him, i.e., in his obstinacy with regard to terms. He writes to Ries that he hears J. B. Cramer does not approve of his (Beethoven's) music, and so calls him a Counter-subject, the Society of Musical Friends (Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde) is a Society of Fiends, and so on. --A.C. Kalischer, The Complete Letters of Beethoven
Brian Tomba
On Jul 12, 2012, at 2:27 PM, Brian wrote: The tantalizing lacuna: "...That human life is but a first installment of the serial soul and that one’s individual secret is not lost in the process of earthly dissolution ..."Dear Mr Tomba,
Odd that you should send this in just at this time, as I have recently been wondering if VN's antagonism to Freud hasn't been mis-interpreted. In other words I wonder if it isn't Freud's belief in what he called Todestrieb, that is the death drive, that VN actually objected to. Jansy kindly published two essays on music that I had written back in the '90s on her web site aetern.us. One of them is entitled "Purcell - death and the music." In this essay I quote my great mentor Vladimir Markov's belief that at the heart of Mozart's music lay death, and also Mozart's own words, "Death is the true goal of our existence, and mankind’s best friend. The thought of it does not frighten me, but comforts me and brings me peace."Personally I find this a very sane and healthy attitude, and if I may be allowed my own prejudices, I find it rather 'Jewish,' although we too have our seekers after immortality. This inability to allow nature to take her age-old course I find very distasteful in VN. It is in an odd way a life defeating attitude. Our works should live on after us, not our selves.In this case, I think Freud got it right.
Carolyn Kunin
p.s. But all seriousness aside, did you hear that when Beethoven's grave was dug up, they found the great composer going through scores of his music erasing, erasing, erasing. When asked what he thought he was doing, with a straight face the old man explained that he was de-composing.All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.