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Fw: Nabokov & Rilke
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----- Original Message -----
From: Jacob Wilkenfeld
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 7:28 AM
Subject: Nabokov & Rilke
In his lecture on Kafka, Nabokov says that Rilke is a "plaster saint" compared to the inimitable Czech fictionist. As an admirer of Rilke (as well as a steadfast Nabokovian), I wonder if anyone can furnish more information on Nabokov's contact with Rilke's poetry. I'm interested in whether VN's dislike for the poet is related to the possibility of his having read Rilke during the period of his strongest aversion to German, whether he read Rilke in bad English or French translations, or in the original German. Or, whether he considered Rilke's work to be full of highly-praised, cloying clichés of the cosmic/mystical (but really comic & mystifying) sort.
I thought that a poet who deals with such carefully and (to my mind) originally rendered images and metaphors as Rilke would meet even VN's soaring standards for art. I know Nabokov disapproved of interviewers broaching the subject of his literary likes (preferring to air his dislikes instead), so I hope you'll forgive me this breach. Not to suggest that my well-being depends on knowing that Nabokov enjoyed Rilke's work, but I've wondered about the question for some time now, and would be pleased to satisfy this rather mundane itch of my literary curiosity. Please take into account that I'm still an undergraduate, still very much trying to make out of the literary universe "not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense."
Incidentally, this listserv has been my most thrilling discovery in Nabokovia since I came across Professor Boyd's biography in the college library some years back. Thanks for making it possible, and Cheers!
Sincerely,
Jacob Wilkenfeld
".The world is immense
and like a word that is still growing in the silence."
-Rilke
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