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Re: THOUGHTS re: M.Maar's "Speak, Nabokov"
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Jim Twiggs:Banville's proposed translation (in footnote 3 of his essay) of the German subtitle is The Lovely Wicked World of Vladimir Nabokov. Google translates the phrase in question as "the beautiful evil world," but I prefer Banville's version.
JM:The word wicked, as I see it, has lost its original "evil" meaning by having acquired a kind of "mischievous" tonality...
Banville wrote that "the central thesis of Speak, Nabokov is that the philosophical basis of Nabokov's work is Gnosticism, arrived at via a sympathetic reading of Schopenhauer: The classic defining feature of [the] Gnostic view is the answer to the question of evil in Creation. How can there be such monstrousness in the world if a good God created it? The Gnostic answer is that there is not one Creator, but two.. The true God is concealed in his realm of light. The affairs of the material world are handled by the secondary Creator God, the Demiurge.. The Demiurge is powerful and bars humanity's way to its true purpose.. In Gnostic imagery he is the jailer who holds us captive in the prison of matter.. Only the escape from the prison of the body leads the soul into the otherworldly realm of light. At most, sparks of this light are scattered in the material world,"thereby demanding a more effective word in lieu of "wicked."
Actually, this is the first time I find a link bt. Nabokov, Schopenhauer and the Gnostics. The way the argument is presented brings to one's mind, immediately, Pnin's words, which Maar quotes already in his preface: "no conscience, and hence no consciousness, could be expected to subsist in a world where such things as Mira's death were possible." Hoiwever, here I find the same mystery as the one in the phrasing of Maar's title. After all, we expect Pnin's conscience and consciousness to have subsisted, as much as we feel we continue to hold on to our own, although the world outside can be evil, indeed.
PS: I'd like to apologize to Philip Klop because, when I read it again, I saw that my commentary seemed to jump over his helpful information about the origin of the expression in German.("Die Schöne Böse Welt refers to the German expression Die große böse Welt which means something akin to "The big and dangerous world" or "The big and evil world". The expression stems from children's literature and is used when a small child is exposed to the overwhelmingly big outside world; thus stressing some sort of clash between the small, good child in his safe home and the big, evil and dangerous world awaiting him outside. )
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JM:The word wicked, as I see it, has lost its original "evil" meaning by having acquired a kind of "mischievous" tonality...
Banville wrote that "the central thesis of Speak, Nabokov is that the philosophical basis of Nabokov's work is Gnosticism, arrived at via a sympathetic reading of Schopenhauer: The classic defining feature of [the] Gnostic view is the answer to the question of evil in Creation. How can there be such monstrousness in the world if a good God created it? The Gnostic answer is that there is not one Creator, but two.. The true God is concealed in his realm of light. The affairs of the material world are handled by the secondary Creator God, the Demiurge.. The Demiurge is powerful and bars humanity's way to its true purpose.. In Gnostic imagery he is the jailer who holds us captive in the prison of matter.. Only the escape from the prison of the body leads the soul into the otherworldly realm of light. At most, sparks of this light are scattered in the material world,"thereby demanding a more effective word in lieu of "wicked."
Actually, this is the first time I find a link bt. Nabokov, Schopenhauer and the Gnostics. The way the argument is presented brings to one's mind, immediately, Pnin's words, which Maar quotes already in his preface: "no conscience, and hence no consciousness, could be expected to subsist in a world where such things as Mira's death were possible." Hoiwever, here I find the same mystery as the one in the phrasing of Maar's title. After all, we expect Pnin's conscience and consciousness to have subsisted, as much as we feel we continue to hold on to our own, although the world outside can be evil, indeed.
PS: I'd like to apologize to Philip Klop because, when I read it again, I saw that my commentary seemed to jump over his helpful information about the origin of the expression in German.("Die Schöne Böse Welt refers to the German expression Die große böse Welt which means something akin to "The big and dangerous world" or "The big and evil world". The expression stems from children's literature and is used when a small child is exposed to the overwhelmingly big outside world; thus stressing some sort of clash between the small, good child in his safe home and the big, evil and dangerous world awaiting him outside. )
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/