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Re: Semblable: neighbour, fellow, but not double
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Anthony Stadlen: "I do not agree at all that "brothers" and "kinsmen" are being contrasted, in Leviticus, with "fellows" and "neghbours". This is not sentimental rosy-glow love, it is honest love-as-action. As Auden said: "You shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart." hope this will be regarded as sufficiently relevant to discussion of VN, as this is as it were the primal literature of our civilisation that underlies all discussions of Baudelaire, Shakespeare, Nabokov and others."
Anthony Stadlen: I am somehow convinced of VN's basic true kindness, as opposed to the sentimental "kindness" of the commandant. I was dismayed that I could think of no better evidence than these two feeble examples. Perhaps I am too easily swayed by VN's explicitly stated love of kindness and dislike of cruelty, but they always struck me as genuine.What I find most questionable, or at least puzzling, is his insistence that "Lolita" is "pure" and "abstract", so utterly removed from his own concerns, whereas his most casual references in interviews, and other parts of his oeuvre, so frequently return quite (to me) unexpectedly and arbitrarily to the paedophilic theme.I am surprised that there appears to have been no discussion of this. What do others think?
JM: Freud's famous clinical observation ("neurotics are perverts in their dreams"), must have been aided by his readings of Plato. Freud makes two explicit references to the Greek philosopher's Book IX - The Republic, in his "The Interpretation of Dreams." In chapter: "Moral Sense in Dreams" he writes: "Plato...thought that the best men are those who only dream what others do in their waking life". In the closing lines of his book he writes: "The virtuous man is content to dream what a wicked man really does."
We cannot be certain, even, that Humbert actually did" what he confessed in writing, while confined in an asylum.But we can be certain that Nabokov's dreams and nightmares were seldom gentle and kind (he suffered from chronic insomnia). Through his writing he exorcized and expelled his monsters, placed like the gargoyles in the façade of cathedrals. If Nabokov's "inside" was not a cathedral, we know that his art strained to reach an invisible dimension where kindness is the rule.
Personally, I don't worry about Nabokov's well-being in any protean hereafter, nor do I find it important to ascertain that he was kind or generous in his cotidian life. His writing could operate an alchemy and his readers get a whiff of this invisible realm. This is what matters to me.
(btw: Stan! Was there a person from Porlock who kept you from seeing the hidden haiku in TOoL? If "style is matter", what's to be discerned in anyone's immaterial after-life?
You wrote: "I will dust the old Ouija board and try again tomorrow. Dying to meet you! So many questions!" - but I hope to meet you in June, despite televised World-Cup Championship games. We even could try consulting the Ouija board together, in great style, with Carolyn's helping hand! )
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Anthony Stadlen: I am somehow convinced of VN's basic true kindness, as opposed to the sentimental "kindness" of the commandant. I was dismayed that I could think of no better evidence than these two feeble examples. Perhaps I am too easily swayed by VN's explicitly stated love of kindness and dislike of cruelty, but they always struck me as genuine.What I find most questionable, or at least puzzling, is his insistence that "Lolita" is "pure" and "abstract", so utterly removed from his own concerns, whereas his most casual references in interviews, and other parts of his oeuvre, so frequently return quite (to me) unexpectedly and arbitrarily to the paedophilic theme.I am surprised that there appears to have been no discussion of this. What do others think?
JM: Freud's famous clinical observation ("neurotics are perverts in their dreams"), must have been aided by his readings of Plato. Freud makes two explicit references to the Greek philosopher's Book IX - The Republic, in his "The Interpretation of Dreams." In chapter: "Moral Sense in Dreams" he writes: "Plato...thought that the best men are those who only dream what others do in their waking life". In the closing lines of his book he writes: "The virtuous man is content to dream what a wicked man really does."
We cannot be certain, even, that Humbert actually did" what he confessed in writing, while confined in an asylum.But we can be certain that Nabokov's dreams and nightmares were seldom gentle and kind (he suffered from chronic insomnia). Through his writing he exorcized and expelled his monsters, placed like the gargoyles in the façade of cathedrals. If Nabokov's "inside" was not a cathedral, we know that his art strained to reach an invisible dimension where kindness is the rule.
Personally, I don't worry about Nabokov's well-being in any protean hereafter, nor do I find it important to ascertain that he was kind or generous in his cotidian life. His writing could operate an alchemy and his readers get a whiff of this invisible realm. This is what matters to me.
(btw: Stan! Was there a person from Porlock who kept you from seeing the hidden haiku in TOoL? If "style is matter", what's to be discerned in anyone's immaterial after-life?
You wrote: "I will dust the old Ouija board and try again tomorrow. Dying to meet you! So many questions!" - but I hope to meet you in June, despite televised World-Cup Championship games. We even could try consulting the Ouija board together, in great style, with Carolyn's helping hand! )
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/