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Fwd: Aug. 18 - Balzac, Loos, Nabokov, Montaigne & de la Boetie
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From: Today in Literature <list@todayinliterature.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 3:36 AM
Subject: Aug. 18 - Balzac, Loos, Nabokov, Montaigne & de la Boetie
To: stevenorquist@gmail.com
To comment or report problems, contact Steve
King<sking@todayinliterature.com> [image:
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[image: Today in Literature - Great Books, Good Stories, Every
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Balzac — Life as Fiction
*August 18, 2010* On this day in 1850 Honore de
Balzac<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr99bd1ZAOH9xoKyuQpNq8kTvlHFG07aCzfRlyp2EW5aIDgayQxFMsLCQQZpEufEWTwjeHtYPG9H_5jubJaBL8Bn_P_HmVNVzw-FKhEHzKbwI-e01fwLfrD95vVEt7WKCHMPEgZ5W1aLfGp7G8y1sMekdWLM14zgBzc=>died
at the age of fifty-one. Balzac's last months were as tumultuous as
all
the others, and as brimming with life as anything in his
seventeen-volume *Human
Comedy*. Balzac believed that such adventures and appetites finally killed
him, his finite store of vital fluid having been used up. [full
story<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr_jxjXYeaO73p2tXTXI5H4swNx1pDZyNONPqdA8yghD9K1FtYCJ4jiM19V79y5Uv3J8Fn6zRG1duaEbxuseab99CU29F_tiaSZr6TbsKelZcszCmpVYKSWB2YDCEckH47wUU0asyhw9yFS8m4vZNy8eonoN4M94O83X6I39adIArA==>
] [image: spacer]
Anita Loos<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr9XT1NstXQPAErwB_-Fbnzrty63ao4G8y8SfqlxnSKKVJqfMO8qHpOBUl7M94nIq2ypFVeGz49Dm9INfat_LDC0qAntZDiLTE-uQBAruw68x6f_lrIanu45Fn_W4Ae5k7-R_lVWBjg4mgoB4xDWtToO>died
on this day in 1981. In
*A Girl Like I*, her 1966 autobiography, Loos tells us that the 1,200 copies
in the first edition of *Gentlemen Prefer Blondes *(1926) was sold out by
noon, that the second edition numbered 65,000 copies, that there were
forty-five more editions by 1966, and that the whole world was reading the
novel in translation, though some had to rationalize the fun:
When the book reached Russia, I was told by our then Ambassador, William
Bullitt, that the Soviet authorities embraced it as evidence of the
exploitation of helpless female blondes by predatory magnates of the
capitalistic system. As such, the book had a wide sale, but Russia never
sent me any royalties, which seems rather like the exploitation of a
helpless brunette author by a predatory Soviet regime.
[image: spacer]
Vladimir Nabokov’s<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr_HZVL2ysRfO20AMWLULftF6oSJT-Tkpo3f98H0bs1vl-crIsRLX-lqyLDBeLYSFU2C5orV3txpQDcOfK91bLlgdo9PVy1WU8uvKunK39RuAfcTTS09mKYekmF8CxtePl09S5AeEtReq4El_WJDVXJIt-nxrkrxkQ0=>
*Lolita* was published in the U.S. on this day in 1958, (three years after
the first, French edition), and it too was an instant hit, selling 100,000
copies in three weeks. But the debate over whether the book was satire or
pornography or poignant tragedy persisted, as Nabokov’s winking “Foreword”
had suggested it would. The Foreword purports to be by “John Ray Jr., Ph.
D.,” a specialist in perversions, a recent recipient of the Poling Prize
(for “Do the Senses make Sense?”), and a cousin of the lawyer entrusted with
Humbert Humbert’s written confession of his nymphet-crimes. Dr. Ray warns us
that Humbert is a man of “diabolical cunning,” one whose “singing violin can
conjure up a tendresse” with the best psychopaths. Most importantly, Dr. Ray
cautions, we are to read ethically, alert to our responsibility:
…for in this poignant personal study there lurks a general lesson; the
wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac—these are not only
vivid characters in a unique story: they warn us of dangerous trends; they
point out potent evils. *Lolita* should make all of us—parents, social
workers, educators—apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision
to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world. [image:
spacer]
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it
could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he,
because it was I.
—Montaigne, in “On Friendship”
The friend who inspired Montaigne’s essay was *Etienne de la Boetie*, who
died on this day in 1563, aged thirty-two. Apart from his connection to
Montaigne, de la Boetie is most famous for his “Discourse on Voluntary
Servitude,” a paper written while still a teenager, and so explosive that it
was circulated covertly. As Machiavelli, thirty years earlier, had addressed
the Renaissance princes who ruled Europe, so de la Boetie addressed those
ruled, asking them to explain something he couldn’t:
I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so
many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a
single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is
able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to
bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred
to put up with him rather than contradict him.
Finding no good explanation, de la Boetie urges the citizenry to simply
shake off their slavery:
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you
place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support
him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose
pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
Such passages were quoted enthusiastically in the 18th century, on both
sides of the Atlantic.
[image: spacer] [image: spacer] [image: spacer] TELL A
FRIEND<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr_Ob9OCEvHskMDrdAgOiDKofrO69VCGiV3__yvpsQzkRHNSfAtxd_vl3rzGhx3KfQ7OZ-JK_nDhCJ3IO2CCIGfgbYygxnMOQGDzj9M77-S8GbCnAqUjyZnguzXBLX8sX1A=>
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Today in Literature <list@todayinliterature.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 3:36 AM
Subject: Aug. 18 - Balzac, Loos, Nabokov, Montaigne & de la Boetie
To: stevenorquist@gmail.com
To comment or report problems, contact Steve
King<sking@todayinliterature.com> [image:
spacer]
[image: Today in Literature - Great Books, Good Stories, Every
Day.]<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr8njowCb44E85WX1IEk8veN899gDG8b18Gl7NFAUvwRA62fR-6SL75XYi3dMti8uCaBOOk319bCU1KiUHbNEV9CFiGiLkkH-EEvEVd14_sbhoQmgroEX7h2>
Balzac — Life as Fiction
*August 18, 2010* On this day in 1850 Honore de
Balzac<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr99bd1ZAOH9xoKyuQpNq8kTvlHFG07aCzfRlyp2EW5aIDgayQxFMsLCQQZpEufEWTwjeHtYPG9H_5jubJaBL8Bn_P_HmVNVzw-FKhEHzKbwI-e01fwLfrD95vVEt7WKCHMPEgZ5W1aLfGp7G8y1sMekdWLM14zgBzc=>died
at the age of fifty-one. Balzac's last months were as tumultuous as
all
the others, and as brimming with life as anything in his
seventeen-volume *Human
Comedy*. Balzac believed that such adventures and appetites finally killed
him, his finite store of vital fluid having been used up. [full
story<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr_jxjXYeaO73p2tXTXI5H4swNx1pDZyNONPqdA8yghD9K1FtYCJ4jiM19V79y5Uv3J8Fn6zRG1duaEbxuseab99CU29F_tiaSZr6TbsKelZcszCmpVYKSWB2YDCEckH47wUU0asyhw9yFS8m4vZNy8eonoN4M94O83X6I39adIArA==>
] [image: spacer]
Anita Loos<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr9XT1NstXQPAErwB_-Fbnzrty63ao4G8y8SfqlxnSKKVJqfMO8qHpOBUl7M94nIq2ypFVeGz49Dm9INfat_LDC0qAntZDiLTE-uQBAruw68x6f_lrIanu45Fn_W4Ae5k7-R_lVWBjg4mgoB4xDWtToO>died
on this day in 1981. In
*A Girl Like I*, her 1966 autobiography, Loos tells us that the 1,200 copies
in the first edition of *Gentlemen Prefer Blondes *(1926) was sold out by
noon, that the second edition numbered 65,000 copies, that there were
forty-five more editions by 1966, and that the whole world was reading the
novel in translation, though some had to rationalize the fun:
When the book reached Russia, I was told by our then Ambassador, William
Bullitt, that the Soviet authorities embraced it as evidence of the
exploitation of helpless female blondes by predatory magnates of the
capitalistic system. As such, the book had a wide sale, but Russia never
sent me any royalties, which seems rather like the exploitation of a
helpless brunette author by a predatory Soviet regime.
[image: spacer]
Vladimir Nabokov’s<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr_HZVL2ysRfO20AMWLULftF6oSJT-Tkpo3f98H0bs1vl-crIsRLX-lqyLDBeLYSFU2C5orV3txpQDcOfK91bLlgdo9PVy1WU8uvKunK39RuAfcTTS09mKYekmF8CxtePl09S5AeEtReq4El_WJDVXJIt-nxrkrxkQ0=>
*Lolita* was published in the U.S. on this day in 1958, (three years after
the first, French edition), and it too was an instant hit, selling 100,000
copies in three weeks. But the debate over whether the book was satire or
pornography or poignant tragedy persisted, as Nabokov’s winking “Foreword”
had suggested it would. The Foreword purports to be by “John Ray Jr., Ph.
D.,” a specialist in perversions, a recent recipient of the Poling Prize
(for “Do the Senses make Sense?”), and a cousin of the lawyer entrusted with
Humbert Humbert’s written confession of his nymphet-crimes. Dr. Ray warns us
that Humbert is a man of “diabolical cunning,” one whose “singing violin can
conjure up a tendresse” with the best psychopaths. Most importantly, Dr. Ray
cautions, we are to read ethically, alert to our responsibility:
…for in this poignant personal study there lurks a general lesson; the
wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac—these are not only
vivid characters in a unique story: they warn us of dangerous trends; they
point out potent evils. *Lolita* should make all of us—parents, social
workers, educators—apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision
to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world. [image:
spacer]
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it
could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he,
because it was I.
—Montaigne, in “On Friendship”
The friend who inspired Montaigne’s essay was *Etienne de la Boetie*, who
died on this day in 1563, aged thirty-two. Apart from his connection to
Montaigne, de la Boetie is most famous for his “Discourse on Voluntary
Servitude,” a paper written while still a teenager, and so explosive that it
was circulated covertly. As Machiavelli, thirty years earlier, had addressed
the Renaissance princes who ruled Europe, so de la Boetie addressed those
ruled, asking them to explain something he couldn’t:
I should like merely to understand how it happens that so many men, so
many villages, so many cities, so many nations, sometimes suffer under a
single tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him; who is
able to harm them only to the extent to which they have the willingness to
bear with him; who could do them absolutely no injury unless they preferred
to put up with him rather than contradict him.
Finding no good explanation, de la Boetie urges the citizenry to simply
shake off their slavery:
Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you
place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support
him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose
pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
Such passages were quoted enthusiastically in the 18th century, on both
sides of the Atlantic.
[image: spacer] [image: spacer] [image: spacer] TELL A
FRIEND<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr_Ob9OCEvHskMDrdAgOiDKofrO69VCGiV3__yvpsQzkRHNSfAtxd_vl3rzGhx3KfQ7OZ-JK_nDhCJ3IO2CCIGfgbYygxnMOQGDzj9M77-S8GbCnAqUjyZnguzXBLX8sX1A=>
SUBSCRIBE<http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1103619359547&s=28407&e=0017vYA-LHIkr8Zmd5Fjo28qNZahH1E088Tpj0QcSQZxBjulWth1RpaK9sl4YiQtHDfLF5NCiPEVMIZouq9VQKPq2Ng9zl-Xz00p7UQLa8aKduqFJNQzGcxcDeEzyhrgeqgmKZM9v5jijqndF1W5eYC3A==>
Copyright
2000-2010. Today in Literature. All rights reserved. THIS E-MAIL IS FOR
PERSONAL,
NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY
[image: Safe Unsubscribe]<http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?p=un&v=001y30BAB0MJNOGljHWQQW8agv0MSztBlruccKyJlSnwFHKxtKNj8TJwEopvZT2Gkxz2YF51n-pW2eFUrAqu236zg%3D%3D>
This email was sent to stevenorquist@gmail.com by list@todayinliterature.com
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Instant removal with
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| Privacy Policy <http://ui.constantcontact.com/roving/CCPrivacyPolicy.jsp>.
Today In Literature | 24 Empire Ave | St. John's | Newfoundland | A1C 3E6 |
Canada
--
Norky
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/