Subject
Nabstract: Kilcup (MLA94)
Date
Body
EDITOR'S NOTE. The following abstract continues the series devoted to
Nabokov papers read at the MLA and AATSEEL annual conventions held in San
Diego in December, 1994. I urge those of you who have not yet submitted
your abstracts to NABOKV-L and to THE NABOKOVIAN do so now.
Jodi Kilcup, the author of the paper described below, has no e-mail
address, but queries may be sent to her at: Dept. of English /University
of Alaska Anchorage /3211 Providence Drive / Anchorage, Alaska 99508-8252.
Phone-Fax 907/561-7082.
--------------------
"Blending Fiction and Fact: Nabokov's Painterly Definition of
Autobiographical Truth"
by
Jodi Kilcup
SPEAK, MEMORY, Vladimir Nabokov's "Autobiography Revisited," reveals that
its author thougth deeply about the complex symbiosis between painters
and writers. In this, he was influenced by the modernist era's efforts to
dissolve the boundaries between media and by its efforts to redefine the
human experience of space and time. Nabokov reproduces his past with
urgent fidelity to detail using painterly language that becomes a
mnemonic device designed both to recapture the past and render it into
material for artisitic recreation. This apaper argues that the
Impressionists' (chiefly Monet's) pursuit of the elusive, atmospheric
_instant_, served as a model for Nabokov as he addressed questions about
the limits of aetheticism and the extent to which autobiography may be
considered a work of nonfiction.
What, after all, are we to make of an autobiographer who
confidently asserts that the word "reality" should never appear without
accompanying quotation marks, one whose autobiography records scenes he
never witnessed but, rather, creates by assembling familiar components
into "memories"? At such moments, Nabokov forces the recognition that
artistic representations both construct and subvert our notions of fact
and fiction. A similar trajectory of insight can be traced through
Monet's letters and conversations, especially after 1890 when the painter
retreated to Giverny and, despite encroaching blindness, strove to
recapitulate his life's work in summary paintings--a painter's version
of artistic memoir. Having earlier posited faith in the possibility of
painting with the "innocent eye" hypothesized by John Ruskin, Monet
finally saw that painting, like language, cannot replicate reality, but
has enormous power to structure it.
E.H. Gombrich explains, in his comments on the problems faced by
painters who wish to represent "reality," that the painter's inquiry
focuses not so much on the physical world, but on our reactions to it.
Just as Impressionist painters devised new ways to exploit the mechanism
of certain effects in the viewer's mind, Nabokov self-consciously deploys
a painterly strategy as he mingles a spectrum of realities upon his
verbal palette. Further, the issue of "truth" carries entirely different
criteria for judgment when applied to verbal versus pictorial works.
While statements are subject to logical truth tests, paintings, as
Gombrich notes, "can no more be true or false than a statement can be
blue or green." In "painting" his autobiography, the Impressionist
Nabokov has found an artistic escape hatch out of the fact/fiction
conundrum. He refuses to be trapped by his medium. This paper explores
the issues and questions that prompt Nabokov to portray himself as a
verbal painter, a visual artist who wields the memory-laden brush of
language.
Nabokov papers read at the MLA and AATSEEL annual conventions held in San
Diego in December, 1994. I urge those of you who have not yet submitted
your abstracts to NABOKV-L and to THE NABOKOVIAN do so now.
Jodi Kilcup, the author of the paper described below, has no e-mail
address, but queries may be sent to her at: Dept. of English /University
of Alaska Anchorage /3211 Providence Drive / Anchorage, Alaska 99508-8252.
Phone-Fax 907/561-7082.
--------------------
"Blending Fiction and Fact: Nabokov's Painterly Definition of
Autobiographical Truth"
by
Jodi Kilcup
SPEAK, MEMORY, Vladimir Nabokov's "Autobiography Revisited," reveals that
its author thougth deeply about the complex symbiosis between painters
and writers. In this, he was influenced by the modernist era's efforts to
dissolve the boundaries between media and by its efforts to redefine the
human experience of space and time. Nabokov reproduces his past with
urgent fidelity to detail using painterly language that becomes a
mnemonic device designed both to recapture the past and render it into
material for artisitic recreation. This apaper argues that the
Impressionists' (chiefly Monet's) pursuit of the elusive, atmospheric
_instant_, served as a model for Nabokov as he addressed questions about
the limits of aetheticism and the extent to which autobiography may be
considered a work of nonfiction.
What, after all, are we to make of an autobiographer who
confidently asserts that the word "reality" should never appear without
accompanying quotation marks, one whose autobiography records scenes he
never witnessed but, rather, creates by assembling familiar components
into "memories"? At such moments, Nabokov forces the recognition that
artistic representations both construct and subvert our notions of fact
and fiction. A similar trajectory of insight can be traced through
Monet's letters and conversations, especially after 1890 when the painter
retreated to Giverny and, despite encroaching blindness, strove to
recapitulate his life's work in summary paintings--a painter's version
of artistic memoir. Having earlier posited faith in the possibility of
painting with the "innocent eye" hypothesized by John Ruskin, Monet
finally saw that painting, like language, cannot replicate reality, but
has enormous power to structure it.
E.H. Gombrich explains, in his comments on the problems faced by
painters who wish to represent "reality," that the painter's inquiry
focuses not so much on the physical world, but on our reactions to it.
Just as Impressionist painters devised new ways to exploit the mechanism
of certain effects in the viewer's mind, Nabokov self-consciously deploys
a painterly strategy as he mingles a spectrum of realities upon his
verbal palette. Further, the issue of "truth" carries entirely different
criteria for judgment when applied to verbal versus pictorial works.
While statements are subject to logical truth tests, paintings, as
Gombrich notes, "can no more be true or false than a statement can be
blue or green." In "painting" his autobiography, the Impressionist
Nabokov has found an artistic escape hatch out of the fact/fiction
conundrum. He refuses to be trapped by his medium. This paper explores
the issues and questions that prompt Nabokov to portray himself as a
verbal painter, a visual artist who wields the memory-laden brush of
language.