Barrie Akin: "Sublime to the
Ridiculous" Fascinating that the idea apparently comes originally from Paine -
who was living in France when he wrote "The Age of Reason" and was certainly a
public figure there./ Presumably Napoleon read the book!
A.Sklyarenko:Re Napoleon: see my post "Sosed in Pale Fire"
in which Napoleon's words are quoted by the short man who opposed
Mayakovski: Я должен напомнить товарищу Маяковскому, -
горячится коротышка, - старую истину, которая была ещё известна
Наполеону: от великого до смешного - один
шаг...
Sandy Klein sends
( http://rbth.ru/arts/2013/01/19/nabokovs_poetry_ridiculous_or_sublime_21957.html
), bearing the title:Nabokov’s poetry: ridiculous or sublime? Vladimir
Nabokov, Collected poems, Penguin Classics, 2012.
JM: A striking coincidence in
relation to recent postings on the same theme
.........................................................................................
PS [to:...It's
always worth considering how Nabokov dealt with speech and the unconscious. He
might have tried to control the subconscious/unconscious discourse by his
reference to an "underside of the weave," but that's exactly what I haven't yet
managed to figure out. Kinbote's tapestry (or whatever)
represents a closed system (dominated by his narcisistic,
individualistic prison), unlike the Freudian unconscious. I may have
been kept confused by Nabokov's use of "weaving" only in a
metaphorical sense (was it?), unlike Freud's image in "The Interpretation
of Dreams," extracted from a poem by JWGoethe, that relates to the textile
process, the fixed warp and the moving weft (will try to locate it later
on)].
"Freud does not always merely draw on the aesthetic resources of others, he
also uses literary allusions to increase the impact of his own stylistic
techniques. In The Interpretation of Dreams he uses the following
quotation from Faust to illustrate overdetermination:
Ein Tritt tausend Fäden regt,/Die Schifflein herüber, hinüber
schiessen,/ Die Fäden ungesehen fliessen,/Ein Schlag tausend Verbindungen
schlät" (IV,26). The translation holds that 'a thousand threads one
treadle throws/ Where fly the shuttles hither and thither,/Unseen the threads
are knit together/ And an infinite combination grows' (infinite
(English),'Tausend' (German)." Cf
FREUD'S LITERARY CULTURE - Library of
Congress catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/.../99038041.pdf -