Subject
THOUGHTS: Black giant
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Date
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Sergei responds:
Dear Matt,
I was distraught. I appreciate very much (I am very serious)
your truly scientific approach including criticism of your
own theories.
> It was I, not Jansy, who advanced a theory about the "black giant." Is
it
> true that VN didn't like folklore and never employs allusions to
folklore?
> Citation? Might there have been other versions of this tale elsewhere in
Eastern Europe?
I think in this case Jansy (truly) provided a very good citation:
>While "googling" to check this issue I found an old VN-posting of 1994: "
>Roy
>Johnson's book on VN's short stories: In 'The Thunderstorm' (July 1924),
>Nabokov
>took as his central idea the Russian folk belief that the Old Testament
>prophet
>Elijah rode his chariot in the sky during thunderstorms. He pushed the
>element of
>narrative ambiguity to a point which makes it difficult for the reader to
>understand
>exactly what has happened in any realistic sense. This particular type of
>ambiguity,
>and the fact that the story involves a character from the Bible, are
>features which
>Nabokov did not repeat in any of his subsequent stories...."
I would add to it that contrary to some of his contemporaries
(Remisov, for example) VN works are, I think, consciously "cleaned"
of any reference to folklore. Not, of course, to litterary tradition!
>I tend to doubt that "black" was a racial reference, as you
> imply. Kinbote fetishizes his gardener's race (thinks of him as moorish)
>but I don't see any evidence that he sees black people as threatening.
>That's why the phrase "black giant" strikes me as odd--it shouldn't be
a >simple reference to race (meaning a large black man), so it must come
>from somewhere else.
I don't think that he himself sees black people as threatening. My
reconstruction is that he understands that in America (it is 1959!)
many people still see blacks as threatening, and he is amused
and provocative. (And jalous.)I think we underestimate how provocative were
his references to homosexuality (again, in America of 1959).
As far as I remember, H. W. Auden had to marry
("marriage of mutual convenience") when he migrated to the US.
In homosexual context it could be also an ironic reference to
Otello and also to King Kong.
Best regards,
Sergei
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Dear Matt,
I was distraught. I appreciate very much (I am very serious)
your truly scientific approach including criticism of your
own theories.
> It was I, not Jansy, who advanced a theory about the "black giant." Is
it
> true that VN didn't like folklore and never employs allusions to
folklore?
> Citation? Might there have been other versions of this tale elsewhere in
Eastern Europe?
I think in this case Jansy (truly) provided a very good citation:
>While "googling" to check this issue I found an old VN-posting of 1994: "
>Roy
>Johnson's book on VN's short stories: In 'The Thunderstorm' (July 1924),
>Nabokov
>took as his central idea the Russian folk belief that the Old Testament
>prophet
>Elijah rode his chariot in the sky during thunderstorms. He pushed the
>element of
>narrative ambiguity to a point which makes it difficult for the reader to
>understand
>exactly what has happened in any realistic sense. This particular type of
>ambiguity,
>and the fact that the story involves a character from the Bible, are
>features which
>Nabokov did not repeat in any of his subsequent stories...."
I would add to it that contrary to some of his contemporaries
(Remisov, for example) VN works are, I think, consciously "cleaned"
of any reference to folklore. Not, of course, to litterary tradition!
>I tend to doubt that "black" was a racial reference, as you
> imply. Kinbote fetishizes his gardener's race (thinks of him as moorish)
>but I don't see any evidence that he sees black people as threatening.
>That's why the phrase "black giant" strikes me as odd--it shouldn't be
a >simple reference to race (meaning a large black man), so it must come
>from somewhere else.
I don't think that he himself sees black people as threatening. My
reconstruction is that he understands that in America (it is 1959!)
many people still see blacks as threatening, and he is amused
and provocative. (And jalous.)I think we underestimate how provocative were
his references to homosexuality (again, in America of 1959).
As far as I remember, H. W. Auden had to marry
("marriage of mutual convenience") when he migrated to the US.
In homosexual context it could be also an ironic reference to
Otello and also to King Kong.
Best regards,
Sergei
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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