Subject
Fwd: RE: Query: Lolita and Keats-Bailey correspondence?
From
Date
Body
Dear Jansy and All,
I would agree that the second part of the passage Alexander Dolinin quotes is
not so relevant to Proust, though the first part obviously is. Nabokov would
have been interested in the whole passage, including the preceding lines that
Proffer quoted, "But as I was saying--the simple Imaginative Mind may have its
rewards in the repetition of its own silent working coming continually on the
Spirit with a fine Suddenness--to compare great things with small--have you
never" etc. There's some smoke with the white heat of Keats's ideas, but what
other twenty-one-year-old has ever worked at that level?
Brian Boyd
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Mon 3/21/2005 7:25 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Query: Lolita and Keats-Bailey correspondence?
Dear List, and Brian Boyd
Concerning the line quoted here:
"that the Prototype must be here after--that delicious face you will see..."
I´m unable to see a connection between this vision by Keats and a Proustian
memory, nor a "here after" in VN. Could you help me?
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2005 2:33 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Query: Lolita and Keats-Bailey correspondence?
> Dear All,
> This was identified and quoted in Carl R. Proffer's Keys to Lolita (1968),
136.
>
> BB
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
> Sent: Sun 3/20/2005 2:43 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Query: Lolita and Keats-Bailey correspondence?
>
>
>
> Dear List,
> Looking through my annotations to Russian Lolita (Moscow, 1991), I noticed
> that I had identified the Proustian theme in the most famous letter of
> Keats to Bailey dated November 22, 1817:
>
> "...have you never by being surprised with an old Melody--in a delicious
> place--by a delicious voice, fe[l]t over again your very speculations and
> surmises at the time it first operated on your soul--do you remember
> forming to yourself the singer's face more beautiful tha[n] it was
possible
> and yet with the elevation of the Moment you did not think so--even then
> you were mounted on the Wings of Imagination so high--that the Prototype
> must be here after--that delicious face you will see..."
>
> A feeling Keats describes here is very close to the Proustian concept of
> recreating the past through a combination of a present sensation with some
> sensuous recollection.
> An old Melody that suddenly evokes an image rising from the past in one's
> imaginative memory parallels the theme of "the little musical phrase" in
> Proust that Nabokov discussed in his lectures (238--239).
>
> Alexander Dolinin
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----
I would agree that the second part of the passage Alexander Dolinin quotes is
not so relevant to Proust, though the first part obviously is. Nabokov would
have been interested in the whole passage, including the preceding lines that
Proffer quoted, "But as I was saying--the simple Imaginative Mind may have its
rewards in the repetition of its own silent working coming continually on the
Spirit with a fine Suddenness--to compare great things with small--have you
never" etc. There's some smoke with the white heat of Keats's ideas, but what
other twenty-one-year-old has ever worked at that level?
Brian Boyd
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
Sent: Mon 3/21/2005 7:25 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Query: Lolita and Keats-Bailey correspondence?
Dear List, and Brian Boyd
Concerning the line quoted here:
"that the Prototype must be here after--that delicious face you will see..."
I´m unable to see a connection between this vision by Keats and a Proustian
memory, nor a "here after" in VN. Could you help me?
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2005 2:33 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Query: Lolita and Keats-Bailey correspondence?
> Dear All,
> This was identified and quoted in Carl R. Proffer's Keys to Lolita (1968),
136.
>
> BB
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of Donald B. Johnson
> Sent: Sun 3/20/2005 2:43 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Query: Lolita and Keats-Bailey correspondence?
>
>
>
> Dear List,
> Looking through my annotations to Russian Lolita (Moscow, 1991), I noticed
> that I had identified the Proustian theme in the most famous letter of
> Keats to Bailey dated November 22, 1817:
>
> "...have you never by being surprised with an old Melody--in a delicious
> place--by a delicious voice, fe[l]t over again your very speculations and
> surmises at the time it first operated on your soul--do you remember
> forming to yourself the singer's face more beautiful tha[n] it was
possible
> and yet with the elevation of the Moment you did not think so--even then
> you were mounted on the Wings of Imagination so high--that the Prototype
> must be here after--that delicious face you will see..."
>
> A feeling Keats describes here is very close to the Proustian concept of
> recreating the past through a combination of a present sensation with some
> sensuous recollection.
> An old Melody that suddenly evokes an image rising from the past in one's
> imaginative memory parallels the theme of "the little musical phrase" in
> Proust that Nabokov discussed in his lectures (238--239).
>
> Alexander Dolinin
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----
----- End forwarded message -----