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Re: QUERY: B Boyd on Nabokov and Darwin]
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J.A to JM.: [What strikes me in this debate is the fact that Man was not considered a predator! A dangerous one, under all accounts, whose powers of appreciation are equal to his powers of deception...] That is a very excellent, A+++++ point ;
JA to BB: That he did not like the usual idea of God, I understood[...]what he saw through mist was something I took to be some sort of vaguely Easterny Universal spirit [...] only detected by certain signs in nature [...] But N. seems to keep his exact views so separated and unarticulated that I've never been wholy sure what he did believe. I'm honestly surprised to find out he accepted Darwin as a scientist of genius. Is there any of the published work in English where he talks about him in this light?
BB to JA: See, for instance, Nabokov's Butterflies, p. 566, interview by Jacob Bronowski, 1963: Bronowski: Do you think scientists are as deeply and personally involved in their work as the novelist is? Nabokov: I think it all depends on what scientists or novelists you have in view. Darwin or Gauss were as deeply and rapturously involved in their work as Browning or Joyce. On the other hand, we have in both camps those crowds of imitators, those technicians and administrators and career boys who cannot really be called scientists and artists.
JM: As BB reminds us by quoting Nabokov, both real scientists and real novelists are equally "rapturously involved in their work" and yet, this might be as far as their offspring can be compared. Scientific reports obey standards that are obviously disregarded in fictional writings.For a pragmatist, probably VN's scientific texts shall correctly inform aboyt his exact views about nature as it is viewd by an "observer" (sometimes a human, sometimes an extraneous godly eye). For those more mystically inclined, VN's novels may provide enough inexact hints, mainly because his views are, indeed, "separated and unarticulated." qua logical or common-sense vocabulary. In between we find VN's direct answers to his interviwers, such as those presented in S.O. - these statements are hard to place.
Should we imagine a scientist, that is also a novelist, under the guise of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde could we understand one without the other, inspite of their split? Take something else, "Pale Fire" for eg. (ponder the egg).
Can we understand Shade's poem without Kinbote's delirious commentary, foreword and the index if we want to read the novel as a whole?
If we agree that this is impossible to achieve without grave distortions or further splits, then we must discover what tools we must use. They cannot be either a scientist's nor a novelist's: perhaps they are waiting to be invented.
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JA to BB: That he did not like the usual idea of God, I understood[...]what he saw through mist was something I took to be some sort of vaguely Easterny Universal spirit [...] only detected by certain signs in nature [...] But N. seems to keep his exact views so separated and unarticulated that I've never been wholy sure what he did believe. I'm honestly surprised to find out he accepted Darwin as a scientist of genius. Is there any of the published work in English where he talks about him in this light?
BB to JA: See, for instance, Nabokov's Butterflies, p. 566, interview by Jacob Bronowski, 1963: Bronowski: Do you think scientists are as deeply and personally involved in their work as the novelist is? Nabokov: I think it all depends on what scientists or novelists you have in view. Darwin or Gauss were as deeply and rapturously involved in their work as Browning or Joyce. On the other hand, we have in both camps those crowds of imitators, those technicians and administrators and career boys who cannot really be called scientists and artists.
JM: As BB reminds us by quoting Nabokov, both real scientists and real novelists are equally "rapturously involved in their work" and yet, this might be as far as their offspring can be compared. Scientific reports obey standards that are obviously disregarded in fictional writings.For a pragmatist, probably VN's scientific texts shall correctly inform aboyt his exact views about nature as it is viewd by an "observer" (sometimes a human, sometimes an extraneous godly eye). For those more mystically inclined, VN's novels may provide enough inexact hints, mainly because his views are, indeed, "separated and unarticulated." qua logical or common-sense vocabulary. In between we find VN's direct answers to his interviwers, such as those presented in S.O. - these statements are hard to place.
Should we imagine a scientist, that is also a novelist, under the guise of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde could we understand one without the other, inspite of their split? Take something else, "Pale Fire" for eg. (ponder the egg).
Can we understand Shade's poem without Kinbote's delirious commentary, foreword and the index if we want to read the novel as a whole?
If we agree that this is impossible to achieve without grave distortions or further splits, then we must discover what tools we must use. They cannot be either a scientist's nor a novelist's: perhaps they are waiting to be invented.
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/