Subject
Thank you, Brian Boyd (fwd)
From
Date
Body
From: Rodney Welch <RWelch@scjob.sces.org>
Brian Boyd's wonderful take-that-Peter-Kartsev note confirmed my earlier
suspicions, to which I need only add the following.
I re-read DESPAIR last weekend, and was struck anew by the thought that
a number of Nabokov's narrators -- Hermann, Humbert, Kinbote, to name
only the most obvious -- are suffering from serious delusions of
grandeur. Their narratives are self-styled depositions in their own
defense, in which they take credit for triumphs that exist only in the
mad playground of their minds.
It comes as no surprise, really, that Nabokov would be attracted to the
Shakespeare controversy: has not the ghost of Edward deVere, thanks to
his many scholarly friends, taken on the shadings of one of these
perfectly loony (or, if you prefer, Looney, as in Thomas) narrators?
What was it the narrator of THE EYE said: "After death, human life gains
momentum"?
Rodney Welch
Columbia, SC
Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> >From Chrisopher Berg
>
> Perhaps Dr. Boyd has better things to do than explore the rather sterile
> subject of whether or not the Earl of Oxford is the author of Will
> Shakespeare's plays. Sterile only in that the plays themselves offer more
> questions than the answer of alternative authorship could ever resolve. I do
> not mean to say, of course, that this subject should be left in the hands of
> such as Joseph Sobran -- but on the other hand, perhaps that sort of mediocre
> mind is the type most attracted to it. In any case, Dr. Boyd does seem have a
> great deal to do, and he seems to do it superlatively well. Perhaps there
> should be a Brian-Boyd-flame-L: some in this discussion group lately seem to
> be all too ready -- and it seems to me often on the basis of less-than-
> sufficient knowledge -- to dismiss his fine work, not to mention try his quite
> remarkable good nature.
Brian Boyd's wonderful take-that-Peter-Kartsev note confirmed my earlier
suspicions, to which I need only add the following.
I re-read DESPAIR last weekend, and was struck anew by the thought that
a number of Nabokov's narrators -- Hermann, Humbert, Kinbote, to name
only the most obvious -- are suffering from serious delusions of
grandeur. Their narratives are self-styled depositions in their own
defense, in which they take credit for triumphs that exist only in the
mad playground of their minds.
It comes as no surprise, really, that Nabokov would be attracted to the
Shakespeare controversy: has not the ghost of Edward deVere, thanks to
his many scholarly friends, taken on the shadings of one of these
perfectly loony (or, if you prefer, Looney, as in Thomas) narrators?
What was it the narrator of THE EYE said: "After death, human life gains
momentum"?
Rodney Welch
Columbia, SC
Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
>
> >From Chrisopher Berg
>
> Perhaps Dr. Boyd has better things to do than explore the rather sterile
> subject of whether or not the Earl of Oxford is the author of Will
> Shakespeare's plays. Sterile only in that the plays themselves offer more
> questions than the answer of alternative authorship could ever resolve. I do
> not mean to say, of course, that this subject should be left in the hands of
> such as Joseph Sobran -- but on the other hand, perhaps that sort of mediocre
> mind is the type most attracted to it. In any case, Dr. Boyd does seem have a
> great deal to do, and he seems to do it superlatively well. Perhaps there
> should be a Brian-Boyd-flame-L: some in this discussion group lately seem to
> be all too ready -- and it seems to me often on the basis of less-than-
> sufficient knowledge -- to dismiss his fine work, not to mention try his quite
> remarkable good nature.