NABOKV-L post 0016514, Sun, 15 Jun 2008 21:51:51 -0700

Hochard: Forces? It seems to me that Natasha is easily convinced she can leave her father to the landlady's care.
This is precisely my point. Why is she so easily convinced? He's a little better after a rough night, but as concerned as I thought she was, this sudden leaving  was most unconvincing. And are teasing me when you say that descriptions of her eyelids amount to more characterization than her eroticism and visions? Cause that's what I thought I was referring to?
Hochard: By the way, can you tell me more about that word (formication): is it unusual in english? 
  
Yes, it's quite an unusual word to toss into a short story (but then Nabokov is the total dictionary-freak writer), so odd that I kept my eyes out for ants after looking it up.




________________________________
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:30:59 -0700
From: vanveen13@SBCGLOBAL.NET
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] CORRECTION: Hochard on "Natasha"
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU


Learning from Hochard that Nabokov was a subtle artist was, of course, nothing short of a revelation; being told I am a
hasty reader, humbling. So I re-read Natasha and am convinced more than ever this is a very minor Nabokov story. On the previous subjects: Wolfe's lies. I am in agreement with Hochard, as I always was, that N. was not being ironic in the suggestion that there is something charming in the character living so fully in his imagination. My problem was with the validity of the idea as dramatized in the story. What makes the character more like Smurov than Sebastian Knight is that Wolfe lies to Natasha up until the trip to the country, clearly using his fibs to impress her and others to make himself seem more interesting, whereas Knight was a writer whose profession is making up stories and being up front about it. On the subject of whether the character's imagination is cliched, I stand by initial opinion, the monkey vertebra, the fat bellied kinglet, the exotic trees with the oranges, seem like something off Skull Island from the old King Kong movie
(please don't inform me that that film came out in 1933 and so could not possibly have influenced N.'s story in 1924), or covers of National Geographics without limit. And about the childishness of Natasha. I should revise my statement a little. She's mushy and formless, characterized only by her visions (which she does and doesn't have) and by her eroticism, especially heightened in the couch scene the night before she and Wolfe go on their trip to the country where lethargy keeps her from brushing away the "formication" on her legs that makes her press them together (this is prophetic as well, by the way, since in the country she and Wolfe have to jump up from the ground where they sat on an anthill); she's also described by her childish hairdo twice (I would like to suggest as well that N.'s idea that we should look at the world with childlike wonder is also cliche. Why is a child's wonder any more valuable than an adult's? My interest in the
world--of nature and the comings and goings of civilization--are far deeper and more varied as an adult than any superstious lazy ideas I had about virtually everything as a kid.) But these things are of course subjective appraisals about which we'll never agree. I instead turn my criticism to structural problems with the story. I had found on my first reading a certain clumsiness in the tale's development, despite the loveliness of the bluey description. It comes in that trip to the country Nabokov forces Natasha to take with Wolfe. They don't just go on a date to a nearby restaurant because N. needs them to be so far away they can't be fetched when Natasha's father kicks the bucket, so that he can make sure she has her vision of him healthily going out to buy the paper before she discovers in fact he has died--though Natasha probably would not have chanced that trip. The part where Wolfe tells her he loves her then dashes into a tobacco
shop right near the end seems awkward as well. Clearly N. hoped this reticence would have a certain psychological legitimacy, when really you can see it's been staged this way just so Natasha will be by herself when she runs into her father outside the apartment building, because N. needs this vision to remain ambiguous. In fact the whole problem with the story's metaphysical elements is that they've been worked out with an eye to tricking the reader. First Natasha says she's had a vision of the virgin Mary and telikenetically made a bell ring, then says she was lying about the whole thing. Then at the end she has a genuine vision? You can too easily see the author is playing the reader rather than revealing his characters, which can be amusing, but flattens out any expression of genuiness there might be in the idea of extrasensory perception, which, since it doesn't exist, needs all the compelling depth Nabokov can invest it with. 


----- Original Message ----
From: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 12:08:51 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] CORRECTION: Hochard on "Natasha"


My message has been a bit mangled; it should read:
"...so self-centered, in other words,that he can't but be blind to the real
(=poetic) Bombay.
This "reversal of values" is what VN never ceased to illustrate, to
incarnate...."
 
Laurence Hochard
 
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