Subject
[NABOKOV-L] Methods of Composing:Baudelaire, Wilson,
Flaubert...Nabokov
Flaubert...Nabokov
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Charles Baudelaire's posthumously published note-cards under the title "Mon Coeur Mis à Nu" were translated to Portuguese in 2009 by Tomaz Tadeu as "Meu Coração Desnudado." In the note [21] headed by "Deliver oneself to Satan: what does this mean?" we read:
"To begin a novel, start with a theme, at any point and, to wish to finish it over, begin using very beautiful sentences." (sorry for my faulty re-translation into English)*
In his letter 209 ( May 9, 1950) Edmund Wilson wrote to Volodya: "I've just been examining the early text of Madame Bovary that was published last year. It is impressive and to me a little surprising to see how Flaubert worked. The most marvellous passages in the finished version are often quite flat in this one, and even rather inept... It is as if he first assembled his data and then at a given point turned on the music and magic. I am especially interested in this because it is more or less my own method. You, I imagine, are more likely to start with the words themselves." (DB-DV,University of California Press, p.270)
Nabokov answered (May, 15, 1950) in his letter, n.210: "My method of composing is quite different from Flaubert's. I shall explain it to you at lenght some day. Now I must go to room 178 to analyse ("The Lady with the Dog", Chekov)..."
JM: What a pity that the letter to EW, the one in which Nabokov would fulfill his promise about his method of composing has, apparently, not been written.
We may suppose that certain qualms, as they've been expressed by Sebastian Knight (according to V.) represent, in part, VN's difficulties to tame divergent lines of associations. There are more explicit clues in "Strong Opinions," but these point in a different direction.
Wilson thought VN was likely to start with the words, whereas Nabokov (in SO) always insisted that he would first get the entire novel ready in his mind, before he started to set it down on paper in "a tumble of words." When Nabokov referred to TOoL he used the same model that starts with the abstract project that is waiting to gain verbal shape but, from the recently published cards, it is difficult to get the complete image which VN suggests he already kept (nor the finished novel he recited for a select-audience of pines, avians, one doctor and several nurse-attendants).
Words are doubtlessly important to him ( cf. notes from OED,Webster's, a list of synonims, schematic word plays, rewritten sentences), as much as verbalized recollections and thoughts. However I disagree (in part) from Wilson's hypothesis. I wonder at which "given point' Nabokov would "turn on the music and magic." Wouldn't he have started exactly by "turning them on" in the first place? It would correspond to what EW described as being Flaubert's second creative move : first Nabokov intuited the music and magic, then he intuited how they'd been set into an overall pattern, then the novel was formed like a chess-game or following the idea of a plot. Finally enter the words ( Leonardo da Vinci's painting procedure by "via de ponere"). Nevertheless Nabokov's power over words is so astounding that, most probably, my artificial amateurish schema is all wrong: he could have intuited the music and magic from a set of words, everything coming to him at once, to be worked off, like in da Vinci's "via de levare" method, as in sculpture.
Perhaps only those who are writers by profession can join together Nabokov's different descriptions about plot, game, image and beautiful/ecstatic sentences and proffer a reasoned hypothesis. My rough attemps are intended as a stimulus for those who are better equipped to answer, or who can indicate a bibliography related to "methods of composing in Nabokov," as I'm certain there are.
.......................................................................................................................................................................
* The edition and numbering of the translation is different from the French edition I found in [PDF] MON COUR MIS À NU - ... elg0001.free.fr/pub/pdf/baudelaire_mon_coeur_mis_a_nu.pdf
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"To begin a novel, start with a theme, at any point and, to wish to finish it over, begin using very beautiful sentences." (sorry for my faulty re-translation into English)*
In his letter 209 ( May 9, 1950) Edmund Wilson wrote to Volodya: "I've just been examining the early text of Madame Bovary that was published last year. It is impressive and to me a little surprising to see how Flaubert worked. The most marvellous passages in the finished version are often quite flat in this one, and even rather inept... It is as if he first assembled his data and then at a given point turned on the music and magic. I am especially interested in this because it is more or less my own method. You, I imagine, are more likely to start with the words themselves." (DB-DV,University of California Press, p.270)
Nabokov answered (May, 15, 1950) in his letter, n.210: "My method of composing is quite different from Flaubert's. I shall explain it to you at lenght some day. Now I must go to room 178 to analyse ("The Lady with the Dog", Chekov)..."
JM: What a pity that the letter to EW, the one in which Nabokov would fulfill his promise about his method of composing has, apparently, not been written.
We may suppose that certain qualms, as they've been expressed by Sebastian Knight (according to V.) represent, in part, VN's difficulties to tame divergent lines of associations. There are more explicit clues in "Strong Opinions," but these point in a different direction.
Wilson thought VN was likely to start with the words, whereas Nabokov (in SO) always insisted that he would first get the entire novel ready in his mind, before he started to set it down on paper in "a tumble of words." When Nabokov referred to TOoL he used the same model that starts with the abstract project that is waiting to gain verbal shape but, from the recently published cards, it is difficult to get the complete image which VN suggests he already kept (nor the finished novel he recited for a select-audience of pines, avians, one doctor and several nurse-attendants).
Words are doubtlessly important to him ( cf. notes from OED,Webster's, a list of synonims, schematic word plays, rewritten sentences), as much as verbalized recollections and thoughts. However I disagree (in part) from Wilson's hypothesis. I wonder at which "given point' Nabokov would "turn on the music and magic." Wouldn't he have started exactly by "turning them on" in the first place? It would correspond to what EW described as being Flaubert's second creative move : first Nabokov intuited the music and magic, then he intuited how they'd been set into an overall pattern, then the novel was formed like a chess-game or following the idea of a plot. Finally enter the words ( Leonardo da Vinci's painting procedure by "via de ponere"). Nevertheless Nabokov's power over words is so astounding that, most probably, my artificial amateurish schema is all wrong: he could have intuited the music and magic from a set of words, everything coming to him at once, to be worked off, like in da Vinci's "via de levare" method, as in sculpture.
Perhaps only those who are writers by profession can join together Nabokov's different descriptions about plot, game, image and beautiful/ecstatic sentences and proffer a reasoned hypothesis. My rough attemps are intended as a stimulus for those who are better equipped to answer, or who can indicate a bibliography related to "methods of composing in Nabokov," as I'm certain there are.
.......................................................................................................................................................................
* The edition and numbering of the translation is different from the French edition I found in [PDF] MON COUR MIS À NU - ... elg0001.free.fr/pub/pdf/baudelaire_mon_coeur_mis_a_nu.pdf
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/