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Re: surrender and exile...
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Victor Fet: [JM: 'VN gives us to understand that he cannot become an exile'] In Nabokov’s own words (1944):[...] "My spirit is still quick, still exile-hungry,/I’m still a poet, count me out!" [...] "He was an exile (and more than once), as well as millions of others."
JM: Victor Fet's reproduction of VN's 1944 poem helped me to enjoy the shimmer of Nabokov's verses in the light of different contextualizations.
The use of "quick" set close to "spirit" tickled me* - before I began to wonder at this "exile-hungry" poet because, when Nabokov writes that Art is his passport and emphasizes the strong links he cultivates to his Russian childhood, I understand that he's not indicating his exile from a nation's terrestrial geography or even history, but he is restating his choice of keeping alive an "arcadian" golden past and of exploring a road to the hereafter.
Enlisting the help of Priscilla Meyer's words ("See What the Sailor" p.195): "Earthly life is equivalent to a play inasmuch as both are illusions of reality. Since we are caught in life with no access to the other world, life, and hence the language we use to express it, is a metaphorical prison house. Nabokov's understanding is similar to that of the Russian symbolists: the forms of this world are indistinct semblances of their ideal counterparts in the other world. Art is a means of expressing what little can be known" [...] "The Gift is the perfect original for 'Ultima Thule,' 'Solus Rex,' 'The Pole,' and 'Terra Incognita,' two pairs of stories based on the themes of geographic and textual exploration of the other world
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* From the Book of Common Prayer's version of the Apostle's Creed, which says that Jesus "shall come to judge the quick and the dead".www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/08/changes-meaning
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JM: Victor Fet's reproduction of VN's 1944 poem helped me to enjoy the shimmer of Nabokov's verses in the light of different contextualizations.
The use of "quick" set close to "spirit" tickled me* - before I began to wonder at this "exile-hungry" poet because, when Nabokov writes that Art is his passport and emphasizes the strong links he cultivates to his Russian childhood, I understand that he's not indicating his exile from a nation's terrestrial geography or even history, but he is restating his choice of keeping alive an "arcadian" golden past and of exploring a road to the hereafter.
Enlisting the help of Priscilla Meyer's words ("See What the Sailor" p.195): "Earthly life is equivalent to a play inasmuch as both are illusions of reality. Since we are caught in life with no access to the other world, life, and hence the language we use to express it, is a metaphorical prison house. Nabokov's understanding is similar to that of the Russian symbolists: the forms of this world are indistinct semblances of their ideal counterparts in the other world. Art is a means of expressing what little can be known" [...] "The Gift is the perfect original for 'Ultima Thule,' 'Solus Rex,' 'The Pole,' and 'Terra Incognita,' two pairs of stories based on the themes of geographic and textual exploration of the other world
................................................................................................
* From the Book of Common Prayer's version of the Apostle's Creed, which says that Jesus "shall come to judge the quick and the dead".www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/08/changes-meaning
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/