Subject
New Critics & Nabokov (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. The reply below to Trysh Travis is one of the best (and
quickest) responses I have seen to a query posted on Nabokv-L. The range
of information among the 400 subscribers to NABOKV-L is inestimable
and one never knows what's out there. My particular thanks to Alphonse
Vinh of NPR for his information.
------------------------------------------------------
From: AVINH@npr.org
This message was originally submitted by AVINH@NPR.ORG to the NABOKV-L list at
UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU. If you simply forward it back to the list, using a mail
command that generates "Resent-" fields (ask your local user support or consult
the documentation of your mail program if in doubt), it will be distributed and
the explanations you are now reading will be removed automatically. If on the
other hand you edit the contributions you receive into a digest, you will have
to remove this paragraph manually. Finally, you should be able to contact the
author of this message by using the normal "reply" function of your mail
program.
Hi Trish:
You are talking about two subjects dear to my heart: Nabokov and the New
Critics. I was close to Cleanth Brooks during the last years of his life and
helped put together his last book which was published by the University of
Missouri Press. The Southern Agrarian-New Critics are my people.
Mr Brooks met Nabokov once he told me at a small dinner party given by Allen
Tate, a close friend and associate in the New Critics group. Mr Tate was
friendly with Nabokov during the forties and fifties.When the poet moved to
Henry Holt in New york he became Nabokov's editor and accepted for Holt the
manuscript to BEND SINISTER. Allen Tate thought the novel was absolutely first
rate, the best he had ever read as an editor. He later wrote the blurb for the
jacket of BEND SINISTER.
Although the New Critics' approach to the study of the text paralleled
Nabokov's theories, Only Tate and probably Robert Penn Warren read much of
Nabokov's writings. Mr Brooks never wrote on Nabokov--and--as the premier
Faulkner critic of our time and a great champion of the Southern Renascence,
would not have been sympathetic to Nabokov's indifference to Southern
literature. V.V.'s antipathy to the great Mississippian is well known.
Of the major New Critics in the Southern Agrarian camp--Ransom, Brooks, Tate,
Warren--only Tate and Warren had interest in modern European literature. Mr
Ransom and Mr Brooks were great lovers of English poetry as well as
American; moreover, like all true Southern gentlemen, they read their Greek and
Latin classics (Allen Tate was himself a superb classicist and translator).
Between Tate and Nabokov there was mutual professional respect and a warm
regard I think. Their taste for formal poetry and careful reading of the text
would match point for point; however, the moralist quality to the Southern New
Critics, their traditionalist--classicist worldview which they shared with
their friend T.S. Eliot (whom Nabokov detested and parodied in various
works)--would make it very difficult for them to critique Nabokov's works.
I believe I tried to get Cleanth Brooks to read Nabokov's lectures, believing
that Mr Brooks would enjoy them. Over many a mug of Bass ale or glass of
bourbon, I verbally paraphrased Nabokov's lectures for Mr Brooks who heartily
approved of the Maestro's pedagogic technique. On the other hand, Nabokov's
superior manner and dismissal of second-raters and poeticules and critical
mystagogues (I'm thinking here of Mochulskii) would not have been Mr Brooks or
Mr Ransom's style--being Southerners.
One final note. There was, however, another personal convergence between the
Russian formalism of the Twenties which Nabokov would have been exposed to with
my Southern New Critics. Beginning in the forties, Cleanth Brooks and Allen
Tate became good friends with Rene Wellek who had been one of the Prague
critics and studied Russian formalism very deeply. Mr Wellek had close ties to
Russian scholars and formalists and through him, Brooks and Tate were
introduced to writers who were working out the problem of literature in
*parallel* ways. Mr Brooks told me a number of times that the theoretical book
closest to his critical ideas was "Theory of Literature", written by Austin
Warren and Rene Wellek. In this book, Anglo-American New Criticism joins hands
with East European formalism. A little oversimplication, perhaps, but a
starting point.
Alphonse Vinh
p.s. I have just completed editing the correspondence of Allen Tate and Cleant
Brooks. God willing, it will appear in 1997.
quickest) responses I have seen to a query posted on Nabokv-L. The range
of information among the 400 subscribers to NABOKV-L is inestimable
and one never knows what's out there. My particular thanks to Alphonse
Vinh of NPR for his information.
------------------------------------------------------
From: AVINH@npr.org
This message was originally submitted by AVINH@NPR.ORG to the NABOKV-L list at
UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU. If you simply forward it back to the list, using a mail
command that generates "Resent-" fields (ask your local user support or consult
the documentation of your mail program if in doubt), it will be distributed and
the explanations you are now reading will be removed automatically. If on the
other hand you edit the contributions you receive into a digest, you will have
to remove this paragraph manually. Finally, you should be able to contact the
author of this message by using the normal "reply" function of your mail
program.
Hi Trish:
You are talking about two subjects dear to my heart: Nabokov and the New
Critics. I was close to Cleanth Brooks during the last years of his life and
helped put together his last book which was published by the University of
Missouri Press. The Southern Agrarian-New Critics are my people.
Mr Brooks met Nabokov once he told me at a small dinner party given by Allen
Tate, a close friend and associate in the New Critics group. Mr Tate was
friendly with Nabokov during the forties and fifties.When the poet moved to
Henry Holt in New york he became Nabokov's editor and accepted for Holt the
manuscript to BEND SINISTER. Allen Tate thought the novel was absolutely first
rate, the best he had ever read as an editor. He later wrote the blurb for the
jacket of BEND SINISTER.
Although the New Critics' approach to the study of the text paralleled
Nabokov's theories, Only Tate and probably Robert Penn Warren read much of
Nabokov's writings. Mr Brooks never wrote on Nabokov--and--as the premier
Faulkner critic of our time and a great champion of the Southern Renascence,
would not have been sympathetic to Nabokov's indifference to Southern
literature. V.V.'s antipathy to the great Mississippian is well known.
Of the major New Critics in the Southern Agrarian camp--Ransom, Brooks, Tate,
Warren--only Tate and Warren had interest in modern European literature. Mr
Ransom and Mr Brooks were great lovers of English poetry as well as
American; moreover, like all true Southern gentlemen, they read their Greek and
Latin classics (Allen Tate was himself a superb classicist and translator).
Between Tate and Nabokov there was mutual professional respect and a warm
regard I think. Their taste for formal poetry and careful reading of the text
would match point for point; however, the moralist quality to the Southern New
Critics, their traditionalist--classicist worldview which they shared with
their friend T.S. Eliot (whom Nabokov detested and parodied in various
works)--would make it very difficult for them to critique Nabokov's works.
I believe I tried to get Cleanth Brooks to read Nabokov's lectures, believing
that Mr Brooks would enjoy them. Over many a mug of Bass ale or glass of
bourbon, I verbally paraphrased Nabokov's lectures for Mr Brooks who heartily
approved of the Maestro's pedagogic technique. On the other hand, Nabokov's
superior manner and dismissal of second-raters and poeticules and critical
mystagogues (I'm thinking here of Mochulskii) would not have been Mr Brooks or
Mr Ransom's style--being Southerners.
One final note. There was, however, another personal convergence between the
Russian formalism of the Twenties which Nabokov would have been exposed to with
my Southern New Critics. Beginning in the forties, Cleanth Brooks and Allen
Tate became good friends with Rene Wellek who had been one of the Prague
critics and studied Russian formalism very deeply. Mr Wellek had close ties to
Russian scholars and formalists and through him, Brooks and Tate were
introduced to writers who were working out the problem of literature in
*parallel* ways. Mr Brooks told me a number of times that the theoretical book
closest to his critical ideas was "Theory of Literature", written by Austin
Warren and Rene Wellek. In this book, Anglo-American New Criticism joins hands
with East European formalism. A little oversimplication, perhaps, but a
starting point.
Alphonse Vinh
p.s. I have just completed editing the correspondence of Allen Tate and Cleant
Brooks. God willing, it will appear in 1997.