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Re: Cruelty
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Jim Twiggs: Like Matt, I too was puzzled by parts of the exchange on cruelty between Jansy Mello and Gavriel Shapiro [...] Thanks to Jansy and Gavriel for bringing up such an interesting topic.
JM: Dear Jim, I'm afraid I led you (as it's happened with Matt) into the mistaken assumption that I was arguing "art and cruelty" with Shapiro. I must first read his articles in full.
Jim Twiggs: Consider this passage from Clarence Brown’s essay “Krazy, Ignatz, and Vladimir: Nabokov and the Comic Strip,” which appears in the volume Nabokov at Cornell (2003), edited by Shapiro himself: Asked by an interviewer to characterize his memory, Nabokov replied: I am an ardent memoirist with a rotten memory; a drozy king’s absentminded remembrancer. With absolute lucidity I recall landscapes, gestures, intonations, a million sensuous details, but names and numbers topple into oblivion with absurd abandon like little blind men in file from a pier...Pause for a moment to consider this figure. It has the streak of cruelty that is inherent in all caricature (and, to the exasperation of many critics, in Nabokov’s imagination): “Absurd abandon” seems a heartless characterization of the stumbling of the blind. But this sequential bit of slapstick must be understood as the benign violence of the early comic strip, hopelessly incorrect politically, in which “visual impairment” meant getting poked in the eye with an umbrella. (Brown, pp. 260, 262).[...] Nor is “benign” quite the right word for the collateral damage done along the way, in the history of such comedy, not only to the sensibilities but to the physical well-being of minorities, women, gays, and, as in the example from VN, the genuinely impaired. Worst of all, perhaps, the simple thoughtlessness behind so much of the action and so many of the portrayals can spread among us like an epidemic...
JM: José Saramago's book "Ensaio sobre a Cegueira" (1995), dealing with a similar epidemic, was made into a movie,"Blindness", directed by Fernando Meirelles, with Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo in the leading roles. I haven't felt motivated enough to read Saramago's book, nor did I see the film.They seem to belong to the same category of social criticism as found in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." I've seen captions of Meirelles filming, where a reference is made to Pieter Brueghel's painting of the "Parable of the Blind Men," most probably a gratuitous allusion - but never "comic".
Brueghel's work is extremelly compassionate and tragic. There is no hint of anything funny in the wave of apprehension that we find expressed in the faces of the blindmen when each of them beging to sense that a disaster has befallen their blind leader. Nor do I find in Nabokov's analogy anything even closely resembling a cruel caricature ( in my opinion in this case the most we can see is Nabokov's good-natured self-mockery).
J.Twiggs: Second, and more to the point, is the question, addressed only parenthetically by Brown, of the possible cruelty in VN’s imagination. Although I have little if any quarrel with what Gavriel says about Pnin, I have strong doubts concerning his general premise about art and cruelty...
JM: I agree with your argumentation and your additional remarks concerning the question Brown has parenthetically raised[You wrote:We know that VN himself often put cruelty on his list of greatest sins. Is Brown wrong, then, in speaking of the streak of cruelty in VN’s imagination].
If Charlotte Haze is considered to be a representative of "philistinism," her pathetic surrender to perverse Humbert Humbert's haughty and despicable treatment of her, may extract a similarly haughty triumphant reaction from the reader, instead of a revulsion, against HH's malevolence.
Shelley Winters, in Kubick's "Lolita," more than Melanie Griffith in Adrian Lyne's movie, is a touching image of a (certainly vulgar and silly) deceived woman. And yet, this depiction is more a product of the movie-directors's abilities, than something that one can easily recover from Nabokov's original writing (but the seeds are there). However, what are we to make of Margot's, and her lover's, mockery of blinded Albinus, in "Camera Oscura" ("Laughter in the Dark")?
J.Twiggs: I would like to think this discussion might continue, so I’ll stop for now--though not without referring you to the three discussions of VN and cruelty that I’m familiar with. They are all defenses of VN, and two are by Richard Rorty: (1) The Introduction to the Modern Library edition of Pale Fire.; (2) “The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov on Cruelty,” in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989). The third is by Mary Gaitskill and is available online (3) “My Inspiration: Vladimir Nabokov”: http://www.salon.com/12nov1995/feature/nabokov.html.
JM: I'll be happy to participate in this discussion, should more participants adhere to your suggestion, in my case only after I read Gaitskill's article.I often find myself disagreeing with Rorty's ethical relativity, including some of his ideas expressed in both (1) and (2), but I must re-read them to exclude him from a group (Peter Quennel's preface to "Lolita" came to my mind) of critics who try to exculpate (therefore they must have blamed him in the first place) Nabokov's writings, as if they had to assert Nabokov's basic "humanism" to be able to enjoy reading and writing about him.
Jim Twiggs
From: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Fri, April 9, 2010 8:31:33 AM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Cruelty
Jansy,
You said, affirming Gavriel Shapiro's point, that genuine art doesn't resort to cruelty. I have to admit that I'm not sure what this means in practical terms. Your statement seems to imply that genuine art could resort to cruelty, but doesn't. But what is cruelty in art? Cruelty at what level? Certainly all satire has an element of cruelty in it, insomuch as corrective laughter, even when well-placed, corrects by shaming and/or embarrassing the butt of the joke. So the point may be both true and cruel. If, on the other hand, we're talking about an author's relationship to his characters, I don't see how an author can be either cruel or kind. Was it cruel to give Humbert Humbert that nasty habit? Was it kind of VN to show us Pnin's tender side? Perhaps I'm missing something. Can you give an example of another author you would consider cruel?
Thanks,
Matt
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