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Re: Dostoevski and psychoanalysis
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Alexey Sklyarenko [to JMhe is mentioned as "Charles" Chateaubriand - and I wonder why ] points out that as"Darkbloom comments on it in his "Notes": "she [Ada who liked crossing orchids] crosses here two French authors, Baudelaire and Chateaubriand".
JM: Thank you for the clarification about the crossing of Baudelaire and Chateaubriand.
In the internet I found an article on Baudelaire et la tradition de l'allégorie (Patrick Labarthe, 1999) and, through it, the mixture in "Charles Chateaubriand" can be better understood when we follow its description aboaut Baudelaire's profound admiration of Chateaubriand's "great school of melancholy" and "love of death". One sentence (from the internet extract) caught my attention: Baudelaire had to fight "against a Chateaubriand he carried in his heart," in much the same vein in which I often find Nabokov fighting, in his heart, against great romantics, revolutionaries and religious authors.
Chateaubriand's works "Les Aventures du dernier Abencerage" and "Atala" are distortedly mentioned, by name, in "Ada."
In "RLSK" we find V.'s insistent reference to Sebastian Knight's "dandyism" (similar to Chateaubriand's); in "Pale Fire," Hazel's notes about the wandering light may not only indicate the "Atalanta" butterfly (and myth), but also Chateaubriand's "Atala." (Nabokov set Hazel's words differently in French, didn't he? )
There is a treasure of discoveries for those who are familiar with French literature. And yet, I doubt it that Nabokov would have excluded important clues from his readers in English by offering them exclusively to those familiar with French culture. Their "overlapping," though, may still hold some thrilling surprises (if they've not already been explored by the French Nabokovians...)
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JM: Thank you for the clarification about the crossing of Baudelaire and Chateaubriand.
In the internet I found an article on Baudelaire et la tradition de l'allégorie (Patrick Labarthe, 1999) and, through it, the mixture in "Charles Chateaubriand" can be better understood when we follow its description aboaut Baudelaire's profound admiration of Chateaubriand's "great school of melancholy" and "love of death". One sentence (from the internet extract) caught my attention: Baudelaire had to fight "against a Chateaubriand he carried in his heart," in much the same vein in which I often find Nabokov fighting, in his heart, against great romantics, revolutionaries and religious authors.
Chateaubriand's works "Les Aventures du dernier Abencerage" and "Atala" are distortedly mentioned, by name, in "Ada."
In "RLSK" we find V.'s insistent reference to Sebastian Knight's "dandyism" (similar to Chateaubriand's); in "Pale Fire," Hazel's notes about the wandering light may not only indicate the "Atalanta" butterfly (and myth), but also Chateaubriand's "Atala." (Nabokov set Hazel's words differently in French, didn't he? )
There is a treasure of discoveries for those who are familiar with French literature. And yet, I doubt it that Nabokov would have excluded important clues from his readers in English by offering them exclusively to those familiar with French culture. Their "overlapping," though, may still hold some thrilling surprises (if they've not already been explored by the French Nabokovians...)
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/