Subject
Re: Fwd: Re: Mick Glynn: Dissertation-A novelist of Delusion:
Vladimir Nabokov's Bergsonian and Russian Formalist
Affinities
Vladimir Nabokov's Bergsonian and Russian Formalist
Affinities
From
Date
Body
A non-expert question:
Nabokov, in "Ada" seems to ridicule Parnassian poets ( through Mlle Ida
Monparnasse and her best-selling rivers of diamonds plus the insistence on
"mount Ida" or "Parnassus" where all the muses lived - and I think Cowley
was included in this group). Would this critical attitude on VN´s part
indicate a special positioning of his toward the Symbolist poets?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 7:29 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Mick Glynn: Dissertation-A novelist of Delusion: Vladimir
Nabokov's Bergsonian and Russian Formalist Affinities
> I'm interpolating:
>
> > From: "MIck Glynn" <MGLYNN@pcfe.ac.uk>
> ...
>
> > I shall preface my
> > discussion of Nabokov's Bergsonian and Shklovskyite affinities by
> > countering
> > the idea, now something of a critical orthodoxy, that Nabokov was in
> > effect
> > a Symbolist writer concerned with a transcendent, extra-mundane reality.
> ...
>
> I'm not entirely happy to learn that part of what I argued in my
> recent postings was "now something of a critical orthodoxy". I
> guess that's the advantage of reading a list where experts share
> their knowledge. However, to defer to Nabokov's statements about
> schools and to gloss over my lack of knowledge, I would take out
> the words "in effect a Symbolist writer".
>
> > Both Bergson and Shklovsky held that art acts to
> > deautomatise perception. The artist performs a special function in that
> > he
> > or she may effect an epistemological reawakening, may counter the mind's
> > tendency towards delusion.
> ...
>
> > In Lolita, Pale
> > Fire and Despair, we are presented with deluded minds. In these
> > narratives,
> > individual artist figures actively distort reality. In Bend Sinister,
> > Invitation to a Beheading and King Queen Knave we are presented with
> > deluded
> > worlds. In each of these novels, an undeluded artist figure is situated
> > in
> > a deluded realm, in a world peopled by automata.
>
> Do you think _Pale Fire_ also contains a largely undeluded artist
> figure, namely Shade? One thing he's undeluded about is that there
> is "a more veridical world", as you put it, than the one he
> perceives. I believe the purpose of his art is precisely to awaken his
> readers to it and that his method does not devalue "that golden paste"
> to which he is as attached as Nabokov.
>
> (My earlier postings were
> <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0503&L=nabokv-l&P=R38760>
> and quoted at
> <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0503&L=nabokv-l&P=R48525>
> --I can't find the original.)
>
> Jerry Friedman
>
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----