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Re: THOUGHTS on the Pale Fire poem--response to Friedman
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Dear Jim,
Thanks for your kind reply. Indeed your case doesn't depend on the value of
Monroe's criticism (about which more could be said). And I doubt my
knowledge is superior--it's more my appetite for bad logic and false
"facts", which might resemble the way you can enjoy bad poetry.
I see I'll have to read /Nabokov's World/. What I'm interested in finding
is a specific interpretation of /Pale Fire/: that a lot in the book points
us to the author's higher world, and thus by implication to a world above
the author. I have the comfort of having come up with it independently of
others, but that's the belief of every fish in the school.
In yet another difference from you, I like the fact that /Pale Fire/ is
overtly about "the beyond". Otherwise I wouldn't have seen (or thought I
saw) the covert connections.
In the Nabokov parodies I recognize (such as Boswell and Johnson, and
Ruritanian romance, in /Pale Fire/, Annabel Leigh as a parody of Freudianism
and Poe in /Lolita/), either there's no change of style, or the change
doesn't last long. Appel says Nabokov is "a master parodist of literary
styles" as well as parodying works in ways that don't require him to imitate
his subject's style. What I'm wondering is whether his parodies ever
involved intentional bad writing at the length of "Pale Fire" the poem.
Yeats's "flight into the irrational" doesn't diminish his poetry for me in
the least, to the extent that I can even imagine his poetry without it. And
whether ideas are shopworn doesn't affect my enjoyment of fiction based on
them. The major religions have been around for a long time, but they're
still inspiring great art (and bad art). As for Nabokov's worlds within
worlds and his coincidences, I don't know much about the origins you cite,
but I know some writers who expressed similar ideas around Nabokov's time,
such as Jung, Tolkien (another inventor of poets), and Borges (who even used
the comparison to chess in a sonnet I finally got around to reading). Your
comments are more reasons that I don't see Shade's view--which I ascribe to
Nabokov, and maybe I'll find that Johnson and Boyd prove it--as very
original.
On another point: thanks to Dmitri Nabokov for shedding light on a "Beaver"
game in Faulkner's story "Turnabout". That's not a recommendation--I just
happen to know the story.
Jerry Friedman
On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 2:44 PM, James Twiggs <jtwigzz@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Jerry,
>
>
> I put myself on a limb, obviously, by praising Monroe’s essay so highly--a
> limb that, as far as I can tell, Sam Gwynn has successfully sawed off. I’m
> grateful to Sam for taking the time to respond so fully to the technical
> aspects of Monroe’s paper, and I bow to his (and, apparently, your own)
> superior knowledge. There was a time when I could have explored these
> questions further by consulting with two of my good friends and former
> teachers at the University of Arkansas--Sam will know their names--but alas,
> these men are no longer available for guidance, and I'm too old to immerse
> myself once again, on my own, after all these years, into the tricky waters
> of Form and Theory. (I tell you what, folks, we’re getting feeble and dead
> in a hurry down here in Fudville.) Luckily for me, nothing much turns on
> whether Monroe’s technical discussion is defensible or not. As you suggest,
> it was always going to come down to a matter of taste anyway--taste,
> judgment, and our (apparently very different) senses of how the poem and the
> character of Shade fit into the novel as a whole. Considered in this way,
> the passages I quoted from Monroe still hold firm for the larger view I was
> trying to develop.
>
>
> As for your question about a school of “otherworlders,” I refer you to Don
> Johnson’s and Brian Boyd’s “Prologue: The Otherworld,” in *Nabokov’s
> World, Vol. 1: The Shape of Nabokov’s World* (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002),
> in which Johnson provides an overview of the history of Nabokov criticism.
> What I meant by “otherworlders” is summed up by Johnson as follows:
>
>
>
> Much of Nabokov’s work is best understood in terms of the possible survival
> of the individual consciousness (personality and memory) after death. Death
> is, speculatively, merely the dividing line between levels of consciousness.
> These levels (or worlds), one exercising a degree of influence over the
> events in the other, form the basic conceptual categories underlying most,
> if not all of Nabokov’s work. Much of the technical virtuosity in Nabokov’s
> work is in aid of hinting at this relationship between dimensions. This
> approach, sometimes known as the ‘metaphysical’ (as opposed to the earlier
> ‘metaliterary’) . . . dominated the 1990s. It is the matrix for most current
> criticism and is, in my view, basically sound, a productive paradigm for
> continued research. (p. 20)
>
>
>
> Although I have high regard for the work of both Johnson and Boyd, and have
> learned much from both of them, I’m not drawn to this approach to my
> favorite Nabokov books, and I'm especially suspicious of its application to
> *Pale Fire--*in part because the novel is so overtly *about* these very
> matters. I was therefore gratified when Johnson goes on to say that
>
>
>
> My present discomfort stems from the thought that this dominant critical
> paradigm discourages critics and readers from attending to the very concrete
> details that constitute the basis of Nabokov’s stature as an artist. They
> also tend to ignore the wit and humour that are so central to his work. For
> the sake of argument, let us suppose that Nabokov is in fact a ‘dirty’
> writer who sometimes appeals to the reader’s prurience; let us assume that
> his values are sometimes less than humanistic, and that his other worlds
> philosophy is, in itself, badly shopworn. Would acknowledging such
> assumptions significantly diminish our delight? Would Nabokov be less the
> consummate artist? Apart from whatever heuristic value they may have, our
> reigning paradigms should be regarded with scepticism, lest they deflect
> attention from the area of Nabokov’s greatest originality--the brilliance of
> his style and wit. (p. 21)
>
>
>
> If the otherworld model is the dominant paradigm, then it follows that
> you're not the only member of what clearly seems to be a "school."
>
>
> Your question about why an author would deliberately write bad poetry (or
> prose) is one that you ought to take up with Nabokov himself. The early,
> "metaliterary" school of VN criticism, mentioned by Johnson, was led by
> Alfred Appel, Jr., who in 1967 published a famous paper titled "*Lolita*:
> The Springboard of Parody," which was later incorporated into the
> Introduction of *The Annotated Lolita*. The subtitle of the paper is taken
> from *The Real Life of Sebastian Knight*: "As was often the case with
> Sebastian Knight, he used parody as a kind of springboard for leaping into
> the highest region of serious emotion . . ." The rest of this passage,
> quoted on page li of Appel's Introduction, along with Appel's elaboration of
> VN's use of parody and comedy, is one of the inspirations for my own reading
> of *Pale Fire*.
>
>
> In his response to Johnson, Boyd says:
>
>
>
> [H]e asks if it would make any difference whether Nabokov’s otherworldly
> philosophy were shopworn. To me it certainly would. Eliot’s craving for the
> authority of tradition, Yeats’s refuge in the irrational, to me seriously
> diminish their art. Nabokov is of such interest partly because he is such a
> clear and independent thinker, and his style is the way it is because he has
> such clarity and independence of thought. (p. 23)
>
>
>
> I disagree strongly with Boyd's second sentence. I think most of what he
> has presented as Nabokov's "deep" side is indeed shopworn, and was shopworn
> long before Nabokov came on the scene. As Boyd has described it in the pages
> I've read by him, the "philosophy" is a hodgepodge of familiar ideas--a bit
> of Ancient Wisdom here (Gnosticism, neo-Platonism, etc.), a spot of
> pseudo-science there (Blavatsky, Steiner, Dunne, Ouspensky, et al.), pretty
> standard intimations of immortality and nature mysticism, and some ideas
> about design that have been around for a very long while.
>
> This isn't to say that I don't think there's depth in Nabokov. *Pale Fire
> * is a deep novel indeed, a novel that I greatly admire, but I don't think
> Boyd has the handle on what the depth consists of. But that's a matter for
> another time. For now, Jerry, I appreciate your interest in my postings, and
> I hope I've answered your questions. There's one thing we definitely agree
> on--namely, that Hazel's suicide is suitably motivated. In my estimation,
> this is set up wonderfully and believably well.
>
> Jim Twiggs
>
> P.S. You're right, you don't have to remind me that the difference between
> "comic" and "cosmic" is a single letter. It's a question of which word is to
> be master, and which way the influence runs.
>
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Thanks for your kind reply. Indeed your case doesn't depend on the value of
Monroe's criticism (about which more could be said). And I doubt my
knowledge is superior--it's more my appetite for bad logic and false
"facts", which might resemble the way you can enjoy bad poetry.
I see I'll have to read /Nabokov's World/. What I'm interested in finding
is a specific interpretation of /Pale Fire/: that a lot in the book points
us to the author's higher world, and thus by implication to a world above
the author. I have the comfort of having come up with it independently of
others, but that's the belief of every fish in the school.
In yet another difference from you, I like the fact that /Pale Fire/ is
overtly about "the beyond". Otherwise I wouldn't have seen (or thought I
saw) the covert connections.
In the Nabokov parodies I recognize (such as Boswell and Johnson, and
Ruritanian romance, in /Pale Fire/, Annabel Leigh as a parody of Freudianism
and Poe in /Lolita/), either there's no change of style, or the change
doesn't last long. Appel says Nabokov is "a master parodist of literary
styles" as well as parodying works in ways that don't require him to imitate
his subject's style. What I'm wondering is whether his parodies ever
involved intentional bad writing at the length of "Pale Fire" the poem.
Yeats's "flight into the irrational" doesn't diminish his poetry for me in
the least, to the extent that I can even imagine his poetry without it. And
whether ideas are shopworn doesn't affect my enjoyment of fiction based on
them. The major religions have been around for a long time, but they're
still inspiring great art (and bad art). As for Nabokov's worlds within
worlds and his coincidences, I don't know much about the origins you cite,
but I know some writers who expressed similar ideas around Nabokov's time,
such as Jung, Tolkien (another inventor of poets), and Borges (who even used
the comparison to chess in a sonnet I finally got around to reading). Your
comments are more reasons that I don't see Shade's view--which I ascribe to
Nabokov, and maybe I'll find that Johnson and Boyd prove it--as very
original.
On another point: thanks to Dmitri Nabokov for shedding light on a "Beaver"
game in Faulkner's story "Turnabout". That's not a recommendation--I just
happen to know the story.
Jerry Friedman
On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 2:44 PM, James Twiggs <jtwigzz@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Jerry,
>
>
> I put myself on a limb, obviously, by praising Monroe’s essay so highly--a
> limb that, as far as I can tell, Sam Gwynn has successfully sawed off. I’m
> grateful to Sam for taking the time to respond so fully to the technical
> aspects of Monroe’s paper, and I bow to his (and, apparently, your own)
> superior knowledge. There was a time when I could have explored these
> questions further by consulting with two of my good friends and former
> teachers at the University of Arkansas--Sam will know their names--but alas,
> these men are no longer available for guidance, and I'm too old to immerse
> myself once again, on my own, after all these years, into the tricky waters
> of Form and Theory. (I tell you what, folks, we’re getting feeble and dead
> in a hurry down here in Fudville.) Luckily for me, nothing much turns on
> whether Monroe’s technical discussion is defensible or not. As you suggest,
> it was always going to come down to a matter of taste anyway--taste,
> judgment, and our (apparently very different) senses of how the poem and the
> character of Shade fit into the novel as a whole. Considered in this way,
> the passages I quoted from Monroe still hold firm for the larger view I was
> trying to develop.
>
>
> As for your question about a school of “otherworlders,” I refer you to Don
> Johnson’s and Brian Boyd’s “Prologue: The Otherworld,” in *Nabokov’s
> World, Vol. 1: The Shape of Nabokov’s World* (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002),
> in which Johnson provides an overview of the history of Nabokov criticism.
> What I meant by “otherworlders” is summed up by Johnson as follows:
>
>
>
> Much of Nabokov’s work is best understood in terms of the possible survival
> of the individual consciousness (personality and memory) after death. Death
> is, speculatively, merely the dividing line between levels of consciousness.
> These levels (or worlds), one exercising a degree of influence over the
> events in the other, form the basic conceptual categories underlying most,
> if not all of Nabokov’s work. Much of the technical virtuosity in Nabokov’s
> work is in aid of hinting at this relationship between dimensions. This
> approach, sometimes known as the ‘metaphysical’ (as opposed to the earlier
> ‘metaliterary’) . . . dominated the 1990s. It is the matrix for most current
> criticism and is, in my view, basically sound, a productive paradigm for
> continued research. (p. 20)
>
>
>
> Although I have high regard for the work of both Johnson and Boyd, and have
> learned much from both of them, I’m not drawn to this approach to my
> favorite Nabokov books, and I'm especially suspicious of its application to
> *Pale Fire--*in part because the novel is so overtly *about* these very
> matters. I was therefore gratified when Johnson goes on to say that
>
>
>
> My present discomfort stems from the thought that this dominant critical
> paradigm discourages critics and readers from attending to the very concrete
> details that constitute the basis of Nabokov’s stature as an artist. They
> also tend to ignore the wit and humour that are so central to his work. For
> the sake of argument, let us suppose that Nabokov is in fact a ‘dirty’
> writer who sometimes appeals to the reader’s prurience; let us assume that
> his values are sometimes less than humanistic, and that his other worlds
> philosophy is, in itself, badly shopworn. Would acknowledging such
> assumptions significantly diminish our delight? Would Nabokov be less the
> consummate artist? Apart from whatever heuristic value they may have, our
> reigning paradigms should be regarded with scepticism, lest they deflect
> attention from the area of Nabokov’s greatest originality--the brilliance of
> his style and wit. (p. 21)
>
>
>
> If the otherworld model is the dominant paradigm, then it follows that
> you're not the only member of what clearly seems to be a "school."
>
>
> Your question about why an author would deliberately write bad poetry (or
> prose) is one that you ought to take up with Nabokov himself. The early,
> "metaliterary" school of VN criticism, mentioned by Johnson, was led by
> Alfred Appel, Jr., who in 1967 published a famous paper titled "*Lolita*:
> The Springboard of Parody," which was later incorporated into the
> Introduction of *The Annotated Lolita*. The subtitle of the paper is taken
> from *The Real Life of Sebastian Knight*: "As was often the case with
> Sebastian Knight, he used parody as a kind of springboard for leaping into
> the highest region of serious emotion . . ." The rest of this passage,
> quoted on page li of Appel's Introduction, along with Appel's elaboration of
> VN's use of parody and comedy, is one of the inspirations for my own reading
> of *Pale Fire*.
>
>
> In his response to Johnson, Boyd says:
>
>
>
> [H]e asks if it would make any difference whether Nabokov’s otherworldly
> philosophy were shopworn. To me it certainly would. Eliot’s craving for the
> authority of tradition, Yeats’s refuge in the irrational, to me seriously
> diminish their art. Nabokov is of such interest partly because he is such a
> clear and independent thinker, and his style is the way it is because he has
> such clarity and independence of thought. (p. 23)
>
>
>
> I disagree strongly with Boyd's second sentence. I think most of what he
> has presented as Nabokov's "deep" side is indeed shopworn, and was shopworn
> long before Nabokov came on the scene. As Boyd has described it in the pages
> I've read by him, the "philosophy" is a hodgepodge of familiar ideas--a bit
> of Ancient Wisdom here (Gnosticism, neo-Platonism, etc.), a spot of
> pseudo-science there (Blavatsky, Steiner, Dunne, Ouspensky, et al.), pretty
> standard intimations of immortality and nature mysticism, and some ideas
> about design that have been around for a very long while.
>
> This isn't to say that I don't think there's depth in Nabokov. *Pale Fire
> * is a deep novel indeed, a novel that I greatly admire, but I don't think
> Boyd has the handle on what the depth consists of. But that's a matter for
> another time. For now, Jerry, I appreciate your interest in my postings, and
> I hope I've answered your questions. There's one thing we definitely agree
> on--namely, that Hazel's suicide is suitably motivated. In my estimation,
> this is set up wonderfully and believably well.
>
> Jim Twiggs
>
> P.S. You're right, you don't have to remind me that the difference between
> "comic" and "cosmic" is a single letter. It's a question of which word is to
> be master, and which way the influence runs.
>
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/