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Re: Nabokov and Pedophilia (fwd)
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From: Robert Cook <rcook@rhi.hi.is>
I dislike writing under the rubric Nabokov and Pedophilia, but am pleased
that a number of sensible voices on the net have trashed the notion that VN
"identified" in any vulgar sense of the word with his aberrant characters.
To bolster the sane comments already made, may I cite two authorities:
(1) T.S. Eliot, in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," published in The
Sacred Wood, 1920, wrote well about how the poet does not express his own
personality in his poetry. "The progress of the artist is a continual
self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality." He illustrates this
by means of a chemical analogy, of a reaction that takes place only in the
presence of a platinum catalyst, and then continues: "The poet's mind is in
fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases,
images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form
a new compound are present together. . . . For it is not the 'greatness,'
the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the
artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes
place, that counts."
(2) Vladimir Nabokov, in his Cornell lecture published as "Good Readers and
Good Writers," warned students against identifying with literary
characters, and it would be surprising if this admonition did not relate to
his role as a creative writer. Shortly after dismissing "The reader should
identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine" as one of the ten
possible definitions of a good reader (p. 3 of Lectures on Literature), he
says: "Or, and this is the worst thing a reader can do, he identifies
himself with a character in the book. This lowly variety is not the kind of
imagination I would like readers to use" (p. 4).
Robert Cook, University of Iceland
I dislike writing under the rubric Nabokov and Pedophilia, but am pleased
that a number of sensible voices on the net have trashed the notion that VN
"identified" in any vulgar sense of the word with his aberrant characters.
To bolster the sane comments already made, may I cite two authorities:
(1) T.S. Eliot, in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," published in The
Sacred Wood, 1920, wrote well about how the poet does not express his own
personality in his poetry. "The progress of the artist is a continual
self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality." He illustrates this
by means of a chemical analogy, of a reaction that takes place only in the
presence of a platinum catalyst, and then continues: "The poet's mind is in
fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases,
images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form
a new compound are present together. . . . For it is not the 'greatness,'
the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the
artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes
place, that counts."
(2) Vladimir Nabokov, in his Cornell lecture published as "Good Readers and
Good Writers," warned students against identifying with literary
characters, and it would be surprising if this admonition did not relate to
his role as a creative writer. Shortly after dismissing "The reader should
identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine" as one of the ten
possible definitions of a good reader (p. 3 of Lectures on Literature), he
says: "Or, and this is the worst thing a reader can do, he identifies
himself with a character in the book. This lowly variety is not the kind of
imagination I would like readers to use" (p. 4).
Robert Cook, University of Iceland