Subject
Re: Pages of VN lecture still AWOL?
From
Date
Body
On Jul 12, 2012, at 2:27 PM, Brian wrote: The tantalizing lacuna:
"...That human life is but a first installment of the serial soul and
that one’s individual secret is not lost in the process of earthly
dissolution ..."
Dear Mr Tomba,
Odd that you should send this in just at this time, as I have recently
been wondering if VN's antagonism to Freud hasn't been mis-
interpreted. In other words I wonder if it isn't Freud's belief in
what he called Todestrieb, that is the death drive, that VN actually
objected to. Jansy kindly published two essays on music that I had
written back in the '90s on her web site aetern.us. One of them is
entitled "Purcell - death and the music." In this essay I quote my
great mentor Vladimir Markov's belief that at the heart of Mozart's
music lay death, and also Mozart's own words, "Death is the true goal
of our existence, and mankind’s best friend. The thought of it does
not frighten me, but comforts me and brings me peace."
Personally I find this a very sane and healthy attitude, and if I may
be allowed my own prejudices, I find it rather 'Jewish,' although we
too have our seekers after immortality. This inability to allow nature
to take her age-old course I find very distasteful in VN. It is in an
odd way a life defeating attitude. Our works should live on after us,
not our selves.
In this case, I think Freud got it right.
Carolyn Kunin
p.s. But all seriousness aside, did you hear that when Beethoven's
grave was dug up, they found the great composer going through scores
of his music erasing, erasing, erasing. When asked what he thought he
was doing, with a straight face the old man explained that he was de-
composing.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/