Subject
Nabokov and Stendhal (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Matt Morris - Forsyth Technical Community College
<mmorris@riscy.forsyth.tec.nc.us>
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Has any one ever noticed that, of all of the writers VN disparaged, Stendhal
was the one--if we are to judge by his shrouded appearances in LATH--that VN
could never quite finish off cleanly? (See the extended, and to my
knowledge, unearthed, parody of Chartreuse de Parme in the last three
paragraphs of Ch.2, Part One of LATH; see also the second paragraph of ch. 4
in connection with these parpagraphs in Ch. 2)
Yes inversion (and thus Proust) is brought in as a final touch at the close
of two, but the main parody is Chartreuse: the English footman Fabrice does
not shoot, Mosca, the hero's aunt-mother, the party-faced Marchese del
Dongo, nepotism, a grand affair, diamonds in pouches, politics and exile,
adventurous escapces, "autobiographical" fiction (both Stendhal and Proust
in this last case).
And does the parody work? This realization somewhat spoiled LATH for me
(otherwise perhaps VN's greatest work, with Ada); a parody of a work
superior to the parody itself should at the very least hit upon a central
weakness or exaggeration in the thing being parodied...but to go at as VN
does, is not, it seems to me, exactly an example of intellectual (and
therefore artistic) fireworks....
<mmorris@riscy.forsyth.tec.nc.us>
------------------
Has any one ever noticed that, of all of the writers VN disparaged, Stendhal
was the one--if we are to judge by his shrouded appearances in LATH--that VN
could never quite finish off cleanly? (See the extended, and to my
knowledge, unearthed, parody of Chartreuse de Parme in the last three
paragraphs of Ch.2, Part One of LATH; see also the second paragraph of ch. 4
in connection with these parpagraphs in Ch. 2)
Yes inversion (and thus Proust) is brought in as a final touch at the close
of two, but the main parody is Chartreuse: the English footman Fabrice does
not shoot, Mosca, the hero's aunt-mother, the party-faced Marchese del
Dongo, nepotism, a grand affair, diamonds in pouches, politics and exile,
adventurous escapces, "autobiographical" fiction (both Stendhal and Proust
in this last case).
And does the parody work? This realization somewhat spoiled LATH for me
(otherwise perhaps VN's greatest work, with Ada); a parody of a work
superior to the parody itself should at the very least hit upon a central
weakness or exaggeration in the thing being parodied...but to go at as VN
does, is not, it seems to me, exactly an example of intellectual (and
therefore artistic) fireworks....