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Fw: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] A muderder's fancy prose
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VN-Forum (August 21, 2008) related to HH's "fancy prose style":
J. Aisenberg: Nabokov[...] was uncomfortable with outright obscenity and had to come up with a way to mitigate the lewd material, similiar to Anthony Burgess use of the nadsat slang in A Clockwork Orange[...] so he could allow himself to penetrate as deeply into the subject as he did. What other reasons can there be for H.H.'s often untranslated French pornographic poetry, or having Humbert censor Lolita in their last scene together when she tells him she refused to "blow" Clare Quilty's "beastly boys"? [...]. H.H. can casually destroy a little girl's life[...]but he's too prissy to be able to deal with the girl's slangy sexual vulgarisms [...] Nabokov turned what I think was an aesthetic limitation into an amazing advantage, a way to dramatize the character's slimy self-serving dishonesty, which makes H.H. rather like Eichman if you think about it.
J.Mello: I was trying to follow things effable and ineffable in VN's style, but your comment brought up a very important point: HH's prurience in relation to obscene words, not matched by any constraint in relation to "unsocial" acts.
In the internet, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology holds, for the obscene:"offensive to the senses, or to taste and refinement," from M.Fr. obscène, from L. obscenus "offensive," especially to modesty, originally "boding ill, inauspicious," perhaps from ob "onto" + cænum "filth".
And yet, many Brazilian scholars describe the obscene as pertaining to what lies "ouside the scene", perhaps following George Bataille's definition of "erotism as that which questions humankind's innermost being". In this case, obscenity implies a break of a social pact in order to express freedom from specific spaciotemporal moralistic determinants.
Eichmann, The Toad, HH are "obscene" ( in its most casual "evil" sense), independently of erotic/pornographic acts or words.
Nabokov, according to you, "turns an aesthetic limitation into an amazing advantage" by applying it to "dramatize the character´s slimy self-serving dishonesty." but it also remains possible to create legitimate erotic/obscene art that lies "outside the scene" of a culture or an epoch - as, for example, we find in VN's reference to Ben Sirine, "The Perfumed Garden" and "A Thousand Nights and one Night" (I'm quoting from memory, only). Nabokov mentions Japanese engravings, Rabelais, Swift, Sappho ( and its French imitation "Les Chansons de Bilitys") usually, as in Rabelais and Swift, in association to "filth" (like the eery scenes of a landlord in KQK, disgustingly similar to Gradus' in front of a mirror). Kinbote, on the contrary, often enjoys a margin of freedom of euphemisms when he describes Charles, the Beloved's adventures in Zembla.
Pretty is as pretty does? Anyway, the mistery remains: what's in a "fancy prose style" ?
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J. Aisenberg: Nabokov[...] was uncomfortable with outright obscenity and had to come up with a way to mitigate the lewd material, similiar to Anthony Burgess use of the nadsat slang in A Clockwork Orange[...] so he could allow himself to penetrate as deeply into the subject as he did. What other reasons can there be for H.H.'s often untranslated French pornographic poetry, or having Humbert censor Lolita in their last scene together when she tells him she refused to "blow" Clare Quilty's "beastly boys"? [...]. H.H. can casually destroy a little girl's life[...]but he's too prissy to be able to deal with the girl's slangy sexual vulgarisms [...] Nabokov turned what I think was an aesthetic limitation into an amazing advantage, a way to dramatize the character's slimy self-serving dishonesty, which makes H.H. rather like Eichman if you think about it.
J.Mello: I was trying to follow things effable and ineffable in VN's style, but your comment brought up a very important point: HH's prurience in relation to obscene words, not matched by any constraint in relation to "unsocial" acts.
In the internet, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology holds, for the obscene:"offensive to the senses, or to taste and refinement," from M.Fr. obscène, from L. obscenus "offensive," especially to modesty, originally "boding ill, inauspicious," perhaps from ob "onto" + cænum "filth".
And yet, many Brazilian scholars describe the obscene as pertaining to what lies "ouside the scene", perhaps following George Bataille's definition of "erotism as that which questions humankind's innermost being". In this case, obscenity implies a break of a social pact in order to express freedom from specific spaciotemporal moralistic determinants.
Eichmann, The Toad, HH are "obscene" ( in its most casual "evil" sense), independently of erotic/pornographic acts or words.
Nabokov, according to you, "turns an aesthetic limitation into an amazing advantage" by applying it to "dramatize the character´s slimy self-serving dishonesty." but it also remains possible to create legitimate erotic/obscene art that lies "outside the scene" of a culture or an epoch - as, for example, we find in VN's reference to Ben Sirine, "The Perfumed Garden" and "A Thousand Nights and one Night" (I'm quoting from memory, only). Nabokov mentions Japanese engravings, Rabelais, Swift, Sappho ( and its French imitation "Les Chansons de Bilitys") usually, as in Rabelais and Swift, in association to "filth" (like the eery scenes of a landlord in KQK, disgustingly similar to Gradus' in front of a mirror). Kinbote, on the contrary, often enjoys a margin of freedom of euphemisms when he describes Charles, the Beloved's adventures in Zembla.
Pretty is as pretty does? Anyway, the mistery remains: what's in a "fancy prose style" ?
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/