Subject
Re: BIRTHDAY: Don Quixote and VN's future acrobatics
From
Date
Body
Prescient timing, Jansy. I’m just reading, for the first time, VN’s
“Lectures on Don Quixote” (Harvest/HBJ, 1983). On the master’s
birthday, I ponder his ‘Apologia pro sua Vita,’ which, of course, is not
saying ‘Sorry!’
“Now, tragedy wears better than comedy. Drama endures in amber; the
guffaw is dispelled in space and time. The nameless thrill of art is
certainly closer to the manly shudder of sacred awe, or to the moist
smile of feminine comparison, than it is to the casual chuckle; and of
course in that line there is something still better than the roar of
pain or the roar of laughter — and that is the supreme purr, of pleasure
produced by the impact of sensuous thought -- sensuous thought — which
is another term for authentic art.”
Those who simply dismiss VN as ‘anti-Cervantes,’ should note the
sentence that follows his ‘definition’ of authentic art:
“Of this there is in our book [Don Quixote] a small but infinitely
precious supply.”
Stan Kelly-Bootle
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
“Lectures on Don Quixote” (Harvest/HBJ, 1983). On the master’s
birthday, I ponder his ‘Apologia pro sua Vita,’ which, of course, is not
saying ‘Sorry!’
“Now, tragedy wears better than comedy. Drama endures in amber; the
guffaw is dispelled in space and time. The nameless thrill of art is
certainly closer to the manly shudder of sacred awe, or to the moist
smile of feminine comparison, than it is to the casual chuckle; and of
course in that line there is something still better than the roar of
pain or the roar of laughter — and that is the supreme purr, of pleasure
produced by the impact of sensuous thought -- sensuous thought — which
is another term for authentic art.”
Those who simply dismiss VN as ‘anti-Cervantes,’ should note the
sentence that follows his ‘definition’ of authentic art:
“Of this there is in our book [Don Quixote] a small but infinitely
precious supply.”
Stan Kelly-Bootle
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