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Re: Distortions and slanting views
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JM: However, what do you mean by "searching for the "real" in Nabokov's fiction"? I'm sure you don't mean pseudo-psycoanalytic interpretations (that's not "the real", surely). Nabokov seems to have been a veritable Perseus who could wield his pen-sword and his fiction-shield to describe, and therefore kill, his Medusa.
I was referring to those interpretations that, like mine, attempt to separate the fact from the fictive within the fictional world--those efforts to find the "real story" that underlies the narration (the recent articles about internal authorship in Pale Fire come to mind). It seems to me that many of these papers might be said to seek, ultimately, the terra firma in the fictional world--or they try to bring us as close as we can get to that place. Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:59:30 -0300
From: jansy@AETERN.US
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Distortions and slanting views
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
JM: Yesterday, after I read American writer J.C.Oates
expounding on Nabokov and Plath (and their "egos"), I felt a sudden craving for
a sober Encyclopedia. It was when I remembered J. L. Borges's Celestial
Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which animals are classified as:
"1. those that belong to the Emperor, 2.embalmed ones, 3.those that are
trained, 4.suckling pigs, 5.mermaids, 6.fabulous ones, 7.stray dogs, 8.those
included in the present classification, 9.those that tremble as if they were
mad, 10.innumerable ones, 11.those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12.others, 13 those that have just broken a flower vase, 14.those that from a
long way off look like flies" - and I felt my "ego" (or my
"ontological stability," or whatever) recover its pulse....
N-L
policies recommend that more than two L-participants exchange thoughts and
opinions on a regular basis, as in ping-pong, so as to distribute the
postings in a fair way among everybody else. However, quite often, we have a
succession of monologues. A dialogue is preferrable and, with the EDs
permitission I'd like to address "Bruce Stone" and write "you," instead of
directing myself to his sentences (as I, inadvertently, did in my last
posting, while trying to get more impersonal).
I wish others would join in, as it happened when the debates
about "twelve-year olds" blossomed away.
Bruce Stone has addressed some of my sentences, one by
one. The first concerns an 'unobstructed view' and 'ontological stability'
(which I consider to be seldom attainable) and, while he agrees with it, he
also makes it clear that "this seems to have been Nabokov's insight--one of
the things his fiction discloses."
The first item (the unobstructed view) was comically presented in Pale
Fire by Kinbote's "cavesdropping" with his Zemblan translations,
or while directly "eavesdropping" on Shade, like the shadow of a
sun-dial.
In relation to Bruce Stone's second item, on the
reader's need to identify a stable and consistent external referent
(even when it's only another fiction or "reality"), there's Kinbote again,
and Humbert Humbert, those wonderfully "unreliable narrators" ...
.
Another point is related to "existential
evasiveness...pernicious or benign: when is the time ripe to take an
attitude and interfere?" and the example from Nabokov's
intervention "to save Krug by visiting madness upon him, and granting him a
glimpse into his creator's 'paradise'."
Bruce Stone wonders, in his reply: "what kind of intervention
you're suggesting, but maybe the many articles that speak to these
issues--searching for the "real" in Nabokov's fiction--can be counted as acts of
such intervention." As I see it, once again the limits between life and fiction
are intertwined, or they are flat-mirror reflections of one another.
I was thinking how often, in a reader's or in a
writer's life, difficult questions are evaded
and how Nabokov might have shied away, or hesistated
too long before taking a step, as the one that could re-approach
him to Sergey (aso).
However, what do you mean by "searching for the "real" in Nabokov's
fiction"? I'm sure you don't mean pseudo-psycoanalytic interpretations
(that's not "the real", surely). Nabokov seems to have been a veritable
Perseus who could wield his pen-sword and his fiction-shield to
describe, and therefore kill, his Medusa.
I fully agree with your opinion that it doesn't necessarily follow
that, "because Nabokov tampers so thoroughly with the real, his work ends in
nihilism or complete moral relativism (or a Nietzschean amorality). On the
contrary, there seems to be an essential link between anamorphism and both art
and immortality," but, after you described "Anamorphosis seems to be the
precondition for the former, and offers intimations of the latter" (a marvellous
insight!), and you attempted to "work out some sort of ethical
equation: that is, N's fiction asks us to separate the pernicious from the
benign delusion, or that it defines the pernicious as the imposition of one's
own delusion onto another (which would link Humbert to Paduk, in a way)," you
realized that it's not "necessary to go that far (or at least, this is
where I prefer to get off the train)" and so will I!
btw: Without having any profund readings and wise information, I
was struck by your coupling "nihilism" and "complete moral relativism",
or a "Nietzschean amorality". I always thought that one of the stark
defenders of Nabokov's humanism and morality was Richard Rorty - who is a
"moral relativist".
Corrections are welcome!
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