Subject
Re: VNCollation#21 (fwd)
From
Date
Body
From: Suellen Stringer-Hye <Stringers@LIBRARY.Vanderbilt.edu>
In an attempt to rush publication of a new collation to
coincide with Nabokov's birthday, technical problems caused
the inadvertent deletion of a section and the jumbling of format.
This then is the restored VNCollation #21.
Happy Birthday VN!
Just a single rose atop the every growing bouquet, this edition of the
VNcollation is dedicated to Vladimir Nabokov on the centennial of his birth.
Nabokov's friendship with William F. Buckley has always seemed to me
paradoxical. Buckley, a leading figure in conservative American
politics and thought represents for many, the antithesis of Nabokovian
perspectives, and yet the self-proclaimed liberal Nabokov's politics, to the
extent that he entertained them, often appear "conservative" in the
American context. On February 1, Buckley, during an interview in
which he was asked to discuss the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, recalls a
dinner conversation with Nabokov:
TWENTY years ago I dined with Vladimir Nabokov, who told me
that the smile on his face traced to his having executed his
"OSS" in his writing session that afternoon. Of course I asked,
What is an OSS? "The obligatory sex scene," he explained
patiently.
In January of this year, it was widely reported, that Paul Mellon,
the inventive benefactor to the nation's cultural life died.
Nabokovians and World Literature are indebted to him for the founding
of the Bollingen Series and the selection of Nabokov's translation of
Eugene Onegin for it.
From the February 3, NEW YORK TIMES, Obituary for Mellon:
He was curious about mysticism, so he studied with Carl Jung.
He liked deep, expansive books, so he began to publish the best
he could discover. Bollingen Series, his book venture,
eventually put out 275 well-made volumes, among them the I
Ching, Andre Malraux's "Museum Without Walls," Ibn Khaldu^n's
"The Muqadimah," Vladimir Nabokov's translations from Pushkin,
and Kenneth Clark's "The Nude."
As notes another obituary :
The Bollingen Foundation, which he established, not only created
the nation's top poetry prize but also published an
idiosyncratic array of elegantly designed books in a series
that has no parallel in this country. The series included the
complete works of Jung and Coleridge; a four-volume edition of
Pushkin's ''Eugene Onegin,'' translated into English and
annotated by Vladimir Nabokov; the ''I Ching''; Joseph
Campbell's ''Hero With a Thousand Faces,'' and scores of other
studies in esthetics, cultural and art history, mythology and
religion.
EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEWS
In the Winter 1999 issue of the Wilson Quarterly , a publication of
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Lewis M. Dabney
interview with Isiah Berlin is published. Conducted shortly before his death
in 1997, Berlin discusses his friendship with Edmund Wilson who he found "a
greatly gifted and morally impressive man." Throughout the 1950s and 60s
the two saw each other frequently. During the interview Dabney asked
Berlin about Nabokov, Wilson, and Russian Literature
D: What do you think of Wilson's criticism of Russian
literature?
Berlin: He had some inner feeling, some extraordinary
understanding of what the Russians meant. Sometimes he talked
nonsense. For example, the two pieces on Zhivago. The first
article
D: Was wonderful. The second was lousy.
Berlin: Yes, all that philological stuff, he got from those two
ladies, those two White Russian ladies, whoever they were,
egged him on by saying "Ham-let," "Little Ham." He didn't really
know the language well. In the famous row with Nabokov he was
wrong.
D: Yes, he was wrong about words. But did you think he was
wrong about Nabokov's translation? I thought the translation of
Eugene Onegin was "perversepedantic-impossible," as Edmund said.
Berlin: Absolutely right about it. It was an absolute
monstrosity. He was a moral being, Edmund was, whose approach
to life was indelibly moral, as is that of the Russian writers.
Ultimately, the Russian approach is the moral approach. Nabokov
was purely aesthetic-Edmund admired him, liked him, was amused
by him. Don't think he meant much to him. Still, anybody
Russian was of interest to Edmund. He had this terrific sense
of the greatness of Russian literature. Wonderful people,
wonderful literature, he used to say.
Melanie Griffith , who played, Charlotte Haze in Adrian Lyne's recent
film adaptation of LOLITA was interviewed in October of 1998 by
Justine Elias. Excerpts from this interview conveying Griffith's
perception of the part follow.
JE: Charlotte seems to style herself after big-screen stars and
on what she sees in her favorite movie magazines. And as the
film begins, her little girl is becoming fascinated by those
same images.
MG: Charlotte was one of those women who realized that Lolita,
her daughter, looks like she used to look, and she, Charlotte,
is no longer that. And I can almost see it - not that it's the
same - with my mother [actress Tippi Hedren] and me, and with my
daughter, Dakota, who's eight, who looks exactly like I did at
that age, except she's much more beautiful. And it's tough.
Well, not tough - it's just a little bit weird. For Charlotte,
it was tough.
JE: Charlotte and Lolita bicker and snipe at each other like
sisters, like rivals.
MG: Well, Charlotte was very selfish. She would much rather
have had Humbert to herself. Sending her daughter off to
boarding school was a bit harsh. But at the same time, when she
finds out what the reality is, that Humbert was just using her
to get close to her daughter, it's really sad.
JE: I always thought that in the Kubrick film, as in the book,
Charlotte was depicted too unkindly. She was seen entirely
through Humbert's eyes, and he was disgusted by her.
MG: Well, this movie is pretty cruel, too. It's so sad she's
such a dupe. Charlotte's trying so hard to please Humbert.
JE: Did you feel, then, that you needed to do right by
Charlotte, to humanize her? Was Lyne willing to support you on
this?
MG: Yeah, I did feel that. But Adrian can shoot forever, and so
when I had to do the scene with Charlotte telling Humbert she
knows what's going on, just before she is killed, I said,
"Adrian, look, I'll do it eight different ways for you. Please
don't cut the camera, just start all over again. But I can't do
it forty times, because I won't have that much in me to give."
And he let me do it that way.
JE: As an actress, is it your job to judge a character like
Humbert?
MG: No, I don't think you can do that. You have to see him from
within the story. I just did my job. I tried my best to give
Charlotte dimensions. It was weird enough being offered the role
at age thirty-seven, because all of a sudden I felt like "Oh, my
God, is this it'? I'm now a matron?"
LAUGHTER IN THE DARK
Gregory Mosher will make his feature film directorial debut with
"Laughter in the Dark" for Larry Meistrich's the Shooting Gallery and
Haft Entertainment. with a film adaptation of Nabokov's LAUGHTER IN
THE DARK. Mosher, who is the former head of the Lincoln Center
Theatre has directed the premieres of David Mamet's "American
Buffalo,", "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed the Plow. Mosher has
produced, and often directed, new works by such writers as Samuel
Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Elaine May, David Rabe
and Stephen Sondheim. His recent production of John Leguizamo's
"Freak" won both Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards In.
Mosher stated:
"It's a pleasure to be working with the bold and innovative
Larry Meistrich and his company," said Mosher. "Their enthusiasm
for Nabokov's astonishing novel and their expertise in New York
filmmaking, where this film is set, is everything anyone could
ask for."
Production on "Laughter in the Dark " will begin in the spring.
POETRY
Robin Pemantles a professor of Mathematics at the University of
Wisconsin--Madison whose area of research is "Probability and
Stochastic Processes" publishes song parodies family photos and light
verse in the Higgledy Pigledy verse collection of his website
http://conley.math.wisc.edu/~pemantle/Higgeldy.html Here is the one
entitled Nabokov:
Higgeldy-Piggeldy
Vladimir Nabokov
twentieth-century
master of wit
Altered forever the
face of American
heterosexual
pedophile lit. . -RP (1994)
Billy Collins, a highly regarded poet whose work has appeared in
POETRY, AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW, AMERICAN SCHOLAR,HARPER's,PARIS
REVIEW, and THE NEW YORKER entitled his 1998 collection of poems
PICNIC, LIGHTNING. Here is the title poem, originally published in the
PARIS REVIEW:
PICNIC, LIGHTNING
BILLY COLLINS
My very photogenic mother died in a
freak accident (picnic, lightning)
when I was three . . . -- Lolita
It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass. And
we know the message can be delivered
from within. The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch, the power
shut off like a switch, or a tiny dark
ship is unmoored into the flow of the
body's rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore. This is
what I think about when I shovel
compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
I fill the long flower boxes, then
press into rows the limp roots of red
impatiens -- the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth from the
sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
the soil is full of marvels, bits of
leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
clouds a brighter white, and all I
hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone, the small
plants singing with lifted faces, and
the click of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next. Copyright
(c) Billy Collins. From The Paris
Review
WEB LINKS
Ken Lopez, a bookseller who specializes in 20th century literature
often carries Nabokov First editions as well a other collectible works
by Nabokov.
http://www.lopezbooks.com/94/94-7.html
Online excerpts from a cross section of Nabokov's works can be found at:
http://www.logos.it/literature/literatureenva.html
Vladimir Nabokov - Articles about butterflies
Vladimir Nabokov - Conversation Piece
Vladimir Nabokov - First Love
Vladimir Nabokov - Gods
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov - That in Aleppo Once
Vladimir Nabokov - The Assistant Producer
Vladimir Nabokov - The Dragon
BUTTERFLIES
Nabovov's fame as a lepidopterist, carries on, as if in a parallel
universe. The Karner blue, named by Nabokov after the now banished
hamlet in the Adirondack foothills just north of Saratoga Springs,
New York, was officially placed on the endangered species list in
1992. In the January 14, NEW YORK TIMES, Joseph Berger; reports on
one town's efforts to say this now endangered butterfly. Because of
the butterflies "mystique', the town was able to gain support for
preservation of the butterfly's habitat and thus preserve some of
their own in the process.
The Karner blue, with characteristic iridescent blue wings, was
named after a now-vanished nearby hamlet by Vladimir Nabokov, a
lepidopterist as well as the author of ''Lolita.'' Like
11-year-olds who will dine only on chicken nuggets and plain
pasta, the Karner blue is a picky eater. Its caterpillar savors
only the leaf of the wild blue lupine, a wildflower with
violet-blue blossoms that thrives in sunny meadows. The adult
female, which has all of a one-inch wingspan, lays its eggs on
the blue lupine's leaves before it dies.
Ms. LaMontagne, who is executive director of what has become the
Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park, estimates that $1.4 million has
come in from New York State, the conservancy and private donors for
land purchases. Five hundred acres have already been acquired; an
additional 615 acres are under negotiation.
An investment banker using the plight of the butterlflies to help
establish a nature Conservancy for the town said.
''If I didn't have the butterfly, 'I would have to invent
something like it.''
It is said that swarms of the butterfly, like great "clouds of blue
snowflakes" used to appear across the Midwest.
COMING SOON TO ZEMBLA AND NABOKV-L
An interview with Stacy Schiff, author of the newly published
biography of Vera Nabokov.
Suellen Stringer-Hye
Jean and Alexander Heard Library
Vanderbilt University
stringers@library.vanderbilt.edu
In an attempt to rush publication of a new collation to
coincide with Nabokov's birthday, technical problems caused
the inadvertent deletion of a section and the jumbling of format.
This then is the restored VNCollation #21.
Happy Birthday VN!
Just a single rose atop the every growing bouquet, this edition of the
VNcollation is dedicated to Vladimir Nabokov on the centennial of his birth.
Nabokov's friendship with William F. Buckley has always seemed to me
paradoxical. Buckley, a leading figure in conservative American
politics and thought represents for many, the antithesis of Nabokovian
perspectives, and yet the self-proclaimed liberal Nabokov's politics, to the
extent that he entertained them, often appear "conservative" in the
American context. On February 1, Buckley, during an interview in
which he was asked to discuss the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, recalls a
dinner conversation with Nabokov:
TWENTY years ago I dined with Vladimir Nabokov, who told me
that the smile on his face traced to his having executed his
"OSS" in his writing session that afternoon. Of course I asked,
What is an OSS? "The obligatory sex scene," he explained
patiently.
In January of this year, it was widely reported, that Paul Mellon,
the inventive benefactor to the nation's cultural life died.
Nabokovians and World Literature are indebted to him for the founding
of the Bollingen Series and the selection of Nabokov's translation of
Eugene Onegin for it.
From the February 3, NEW YORK TIMES, Obituary for Mellon:
He was curious about mysticism, so he studied with Carl Jung.
He liked deep, expansive books, so he began to publish the best
he could discover. Bollingen Series, his book venture,
eventually put out 275 well-made volumes, among them the I
Ching, Andre Malraux's "Museum Without Walls," Ibn Khaldu^n's
"The Muqadimah," Vladimir Nabokov's translations from Pushkin,
and Kenneth Clark's "The Nude."
As notes another obituary :
The Bollingen Foundation, which he established, not only created
the nation's top poetry prize but also published an
idiosyncratic array of elegantly designed books in a series
that has no parallel in this country. The series included the
complete works of Jung and Coleridge; a four-volume edition of
Pushkin's ''Eugene Onegin,'' translated into English and
annotated by Vladimir Nabokov; the ''I Ching''; Joseph
Campbell's ''Hero With a Thousand Faces,'' and scores of other
studies in esthetics, cultural and art history, mythology and
religion.
EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEWS
In the Winter 1999 issue of the Wilson Quarterly , a publication of
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Lewis M. Dabney
interview with Isiah Berlin is published. Conducted shortly before his death
in 1997, Berlin discusses his friendship with Edmund Wilson who he found "a
greatly gifted and morally impressive man." Throughout the 1950s and 60s
the two saw each other frequently. During the interview Dabney asked
Berlin about Nabokov, Wilson, and Russian Literature
D: What do you think of Wilson's criticism of Russian
literature?
Berlin: He had some inner feeling, some extraordinary
understanding of what the Russians meant. Sometimes he talked
nonsense. For example, the two pieces on Zhivago. The first
article
D: Was wonderful. The second was lousy.
Berlin: Yes, all that philological stuff, he got from those two
ladies, those two White Russian ladies, whoever they were,
egged him on by saying "Ham-let," "Little Ham." He didn't really
know the language well. In the famous row with Nabokov he was
wrong.
D: Yes, he was wrong about words. But did you think he was
wrong about Nabokov's translation? I thought the translation of
Eugene Onegin was "perversepedantic-impossible," as Edmund said.
Berlin: Absolutely right about it. It was an absolute
monstrosity. He was a moral being, Edmund was, whose approach
to life was indelibly moral, as is that of the Russian writers.
Ultimately, the Russian approach is the moral approach. Nabokov
was purely aesthetic-Edmund admired him, liked him, was amused
by him. Don't think he meant much to him. Still, anybody
Russian was of interest to Edmund. He had this terrific sense
of the greatness of Russian literature. Wonderful people,
wonderful literature, he used to say.
Melanie Griffith , who played, Charlotte Haze in Adrian Lyne's recent
film adaptation of LOLITA was interviewed in October of 1998 by
Justine Elias. Excerpts from this interview conveying Griffith's
perception of the part follow.
JE: Charlotte seems to style herself after big-screen stars and
on what she sees in her favorite movie magazines. And as the
film begins, her little girl is becoming fascinated by those
same images.
MG: Charlotte was one of those women who realized that Lolita,
her daughter, looks like she used to look, and she, Charlotte,
is no longer that. And I can almost see it - not that it's the
same - with my mother [actress Tippi Hedren] and me, and with my
daughter, Dakota, who's eight, who looks exactly like I did at
that age, except she's much more beautiful. And it's tough.
Well, not tough - it's just a little bit weird. For Charlotte,
it was tough.
JE: Charlotte and Lolita bicker and snipe at each other like
sisters, like rivals.
MG: Well, Charlotte was very selfish. She would much rather
have had Humbert to herself. Sending her daughter off to
boarding school was a bit harsh. But at the same time, when she
finds out what the reality is, that Humbert was just using her
to get close to her daughter, it's really sad.
JE: I always thought that in the Kubrick film, as in the book,
Charlotte was depicted too unkindly. She was seen entirely
through Humbert's eyes, and he was disgusted by her.
MG: Well, this movie is pretty cruel, too. It's so sad she's
such a dupe. Charlotte's trying so hard to please Humbert.
JE: Did you feel, then, that you needed to do right by
Charlotte, to humanize her? Was Lyne willing to support you on
this?
MG: Yeah, I did feel that. But Adrian can shoot forever, and so
when I had to do the scene with Charlotte telling Humbert she
knows what's going on, just before she is killed, I said,
"Adrian, look, I'll do it eight different ways for you. Please
don't cut the camera, just start all over again. But I can't do
it forty times, because I won't have that much in me to give."
And he let me do it that way.
JE: As an actress, is it your job to judge a character like
Humbert?
MG: No, I don't think you can do that. You have to see him from
within the story. I just did my job. I tried my best to give
Charlotte dimensions. It was weird enough being offered the role
at age thirty-seven, because all of a sudden I felt like "Oh, my
God, is this it'? I'm now a matron?"
LAUGHTER IN THE DARK
Gregory Mosher will make his feature film directorial debut with
"Laughter in the Dark" for Larry Meistrich's the Shooting Gallery and
Haft Entertainment. with a film adaptation of Nabokov's LAUGHTER IN
THE DARK. Mosher, who is the former head of the Lincoln Center
Theatre has directed the premieres of David Mamet's "American
Buffalo,", "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed the Plow. Mosher has
produced, and often directed, new works by such writers as Samuel
Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Elaine May, David Rabe
and Stephen Sondheim. His recent production of John Leguizamo's
"Freak" won both Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards In.
Mosher stated:
"It's a pleasure to be working with the bold and innovative
Larry Meistrich and his company," said Mosher. "Their enthusiasm
for Nabokov's astonishing novel and their expertise in New York
filmmaking, where this film is set, is everything anyone could
ask for."
Production on "Laughter in the Dark " will begin in the spring.
POETRY
Robin Pemantles a professor of Mathematics at the University of
Wisconsin--Madison whose area of research is "Probability and
Stochastic Processes" publishes song parodies family photos and light
verse in the Higgledy Pigledy verse collection of his website
http://conley.math.wisc.edu/~pemantle/Higgeldy.html Here is the one
entitled Nabokov:
Higgeldy-Piggeldy
Vladimir Nabokov
twentieth-century
master of wit
Altered forever the
face of American
heterosexual
pedophile lit. . -RP (1994)
Billy Collins, a highly regarded poet whose work has appeared in
POETRY, AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW, AMERICAN SCHOLAR,HARPER's,PARIS
REVIEW, and THE NEW YORKER entitled his 1998 collection of poems
PICNIC, LIGHTNING. Here is the title poem, originally published in the
PARIS REVIEW:
PICNIC, LIGHTNING
BILLY COLLINS
My very photogenic mother died in a
freak accident (picnic, lightning)
when I was three . . . -- Lolita
It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass. And
we know the message can be delivered
from within. The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch, the power
shut off like a switch, or a tiny dark
ship is unmoored into the flow of the
body's rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore. This is
what I think about when I shovel
compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
I fill the long flower boxes, then
press into rows the limp roots of red
impatiens -- the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth from the
sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
the soil is full of marvels, bits of
leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
clouds a brighter white, and all I
hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone, the small
plants singing with lifted faces, and
the click of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next. Copyright
(c) Billy Collins. From The Paris
Review
WEB LINKS
Ken Lopez, a bookseller who specializes in 20th century literature
often carries Nabokov First editions as well a other collectible works
by Nabokov.
http://www.lopezbooks.com/94/94-7.html
Online excerpts from a cross section of Nabokov's works can be found at:
http://www.logos.it/literature/literatureenva.html
Vladimir Nabokov - Articles about butterflies
Vladimir Nabokov - Conversation Piece
Vladimir Nabokov - First Love
Vladimir Nabokov - Gods
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov - That in Aleppo Once
Vladimir Nabokov - The Assistant Producer
Vladimir Nabokov - The Dragon
BUTTERFLIES
Nabovov's fame as a lepidopterist, carries on, as if in a parallel
universe. The Karner blue, named by Nabokov after the now banished
hamlet in the Adirondack foothills just north of Saratoga Springs,
New York, was officially placed on the endangered species list in
1992. In the January 14, NEW YORK TIMES, Joseph Berger; reports on
one town's efforts to say this now endangered butterfly. Because of
the butterflies "mystique', the town was able to gain support for
preservation of the butterfly's habitat and thus preserve some of
their own in the process.
The Karner blue, with characteristic iridescent blue wings, was
named after a now-vanished nearby hamlet by Vladimir Nabokov, a
lepidopterist as well as the author of ''Lolita.'' Like
11-year-olds who will dine only on chicken nuggets and plain
pasta, the Karner blue is a picky eater. Its caterpillar savors
only the leaf of the wild blue lupine, a wildflower with
violet-blue blossoms that thrives in sunny meadows. The adult
female, which has all of a one-inch wingspan, lays its eggs on
the blue lupine's leaves before it dies.
Ms. LaMontagne, who is executive director of what has become the
Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park, estimates that $1.4 million has
come in from New York State, the conservancy and private donors for
land purchases. Five hundred acres have already been acquired; an
additional 615 acres are under negotiation.
An investment banker using the plight of the butterlflies to help
establish a nature Conservancy for the town said.
''If I didn't have the butterfly, 'I would have to invent
something like it.''
It is said that swarms of the butterfly, like great "clouds of blue
snowflakes" used to appear across the Midwest.
COMING SOON TO ZEMBLA AND NABOKV-L
An interview with Stacy Schiff, author of the newly published
biography of Vera Nabokov.
Suellen Stringer-Hye
Jean and Alexander Heard Library
Vanderbilt University
stringers@library.vanderbilt.edu