Content-Type: message/rfc822 Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:10:54 -0400 From: "laurence hochard" To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" Subject: RE: [NABOKV-L] A misguided mission in behalf of Vladimir Nabokov ... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="=__PartC7EEEA3E.1__=" --=__PartC7EEEA3E.1__= Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=__PartC7EEEA3E.2__=" --=__PartC7EEEA3E.2__= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:11:24 -0400From: spklein52@HOTMAIL.COMSubject: = [NABOKV-L] A misguided mission in behalf of Vladimir Nabokov ...To: = NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU =20 Another of "Mr Goodman's effort", "doomed with the rest of its kind to = oblivion [...] (in) The Lethean Library" as V puts it in RLSK. "Khrushcheva professes to love Nabokov but she puts much more heart into = thrashing him" (Steve Coates writes) and like Mr Goodman she seems to = derive "grim satisfaction" from it! I must admit I haven't read the book yet but it's so funny to see once = more how relevant VN's characters can be! Laurence Hochard Culture http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/28/arts/IDLEDE28.php = Book review: A misguided mission in behalf of Vladimir Nabokov=20 =20 Horst Tappe/Ullstein Bild/Roger-Viollet Vladimir Nabokov, at the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland.=20 By Steve Coates - Published: June 27, 2008 =20 Imagining Nabokov Russia Between Art and Politics By Nina L. Khrushcheva = Illustrated. 233 pages. $28; =A318.99. Yale University Press.=20 =20 'A work of art has no importance whatever to society," Vladimir Nabokov = insisted. "It is only important to the individual, and only the individual = reader is important to me." Nabokov was in fact notoriously averse to = groups or "movements" of any sort, whether political, artistic or social. = So it's hard not to be amused at Nina L. Khrushcheva's contortionate = attempts to recruit him as a sociopolitical figurehead for the land of his = birth in her earnest and urgent "Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and = Politics." "The 'American' Nabokov of the second half of the 20th century = is the most important cultural and literary phenomenon for Russia in the = first half of the 21st," Khrushcheva contends, hailing Nabokov as a = "prophet" and proclaiming herself his "missionary." With his independent, = self-sufficient characters, "he is our textbook and our road map for = today's transitional period from a closed and communal terrain to its = Western alternative, one open and competitive." Khrushcheva is a master of = such stirring but ultimately hollow declarations, delivered up in a = dizzying whirl of academic formalism, "intensely personal" reflection and = wholesale generalization, often involving national characteristics - = Russians are romantic, emotional, soulful, spiritual, impractical and so = forth. The result is a "dialogue" with Nabokov that becomes all too = literal when Khrushcheva travels to Montreux, Switzerland, to converse = with the novelist's bronze statue in an unfortunate heart-to-heart = blending quotations from the writer's own work and lines composed for him = by Khrushcheva. As protean as he may have been, the real Nabokov was never = so humorless as this grim puppet. Khrushcheva, an associate professor of = international affairs at the New School, should be better placed than most = to imagine the novelist and to assess his impact on Russian readers. Like = him, she is a lover of literature, a multilingual expatriate, a "thoroughly= middle class" college teacher and a member of a "deposed elite": Nikita = Khrushchev was her great-grandfather. And she is well aware that her = claims to spiritual kinship with the author of "Bend Sinister" and = "Invitation to a Beheading" will be ridiculed by those who find little to = compare between her free passage out of Russia and the Nabokov family's = flight for their lives before the Bolsheviks. Khrushcheva's interest in = promoting Nabokov in Russia is a worthy one. In 2001, teaching a course at = Moscow State University called "Nabokov and Us," she detected a direct = relationship between her Russian students' enthusiasm for her subject and = an atmosphere of hope, openness and freedom in the country. Alas, five = years later she discovers that Putin's Russia "has all but given Nabokov = up, along with his characters and his master classes, as it has given up = the democratic reforms, growing too impatient to see them through." This = picture of Nabokov's precipitately aborted adoption by his homeland is = gripping, but it may be only a mirage. Khrushcheva's impression seems = almost entirely based on the opinions of the 30 students in her Moscow = class on the one hand and, on the other, the mood at a small gathering she = addressed at the Nabokov Museum in St. Petersburg in 2006. The skeptical = reader is entitled to suspect that the question of Nabokov's Russian = readership is far more complex than the glimpse his missionary allows us. = Khrushcheva is evidently sincere in her belief that Nabokov's Westernizing = tendencies, in his character and especially in his writings, could somehow = show her country the way to a modern, that is, Westernized, future. = Americans might assume that's an ennobling role, but they would be = mistaken: Nabokov the individualist, in Khrushcheva's view, became an = American success story precisely because of the self-centered indifference = and the relentless self-promotion she finds everywhere in his life and = work. Nabokov, she argues at length, was "Salieri to Pushkin's innocent = Mozart," but only Salieris are likely to offer a road map of "how to = survive and succeed in this Western world," which for Khrushcheva, in the = abstract at least, seems a harsh, even hellish place, quite the opposite = of Nabokov's America. Khrushcheva professes to love Nabokov, but she puts = much more heart into thrashing him: for his "conceit, coldness and = emphatic indifference to all us ordinary folks, unworthy of his genius"; = for his "contempt of the Russian tradition of socially minded literature"; = for his "heartlessness," his "unmitigated arrogance," his "vanity and = airs" and his skewering of other writers; for his "lack of 'physical' = heroism" in contrast to Osip Mandelstam, dead in the gulag; for his = aristocratic birth and for much else besides. Nabokov may be the first = prophet to be anointed with vitriol. Khrushcheva is in part echoing a = familiar aesthetic case against Nabokov, and her book can also be seen as = an extension of the discourse about the author's "real" personality and = the role it played in his work (memorably reflected in the titles of such = literary-journal articles as "Nabokov and Nastiness"). Aesthetics are = always debatable, but "Imagining Nabokov" does not succeed as an attempt = to come to grips with the many puzzles presented by the life of a man who = was profoundly complex by nature, by circumstance and by art. Too often, = Khrushcheva builds a castle on a grain of sand. For example, her puzzling = insistence that Nabokov arrogantly "slammed the door shut" on readers of = "Speak, Memory," one of the most acclaimed memoirs of the 20th century, = appears to be based solely on the fact that he addresses it, in two senses = of the word, to his wife, V=E9ra, the regular dedicatee of his books. = Elsewhere, hyperbole destroys Khrushcheva's case. It is fair to deplore = Nabokov's calculated dismissals of authors of whom he disapproved, but to = contend that he "has kind words for no one" is to grossly mislead readers = - as it is to maintain that he had "no sympathy for political martyrs." = And Khrushcheva, of course, brings some baggage of her own; she notes that = Nabokov, as anti-Soviet a cold warrior as there was, spoke ill of her = great-grandfather, both in his fiction and elsewhere. But to get to the = real crux of Khrushcheva's study, what about that road map and its = cartographer? How does she spiritually (in the Russian sense, of course) = justify appointing an American narcissist as her Russo-cosmopolitan = savior? Her case is built on Nabokov's "artistic kindness," more specifical= ly on the kindness of two of his characters, Dolores Haze and, above all, = on the Americanizing Russian exile Timofey Pnin. "Kindness is immortal," = she writes, "especially when it's a kindness that breaks through hurt and = injustice." Khrushcheva is surely right to say that it is ultimately for = such heroes "that we read and love Nabokov." Indeed, innocent, considerate,= victimized, tender-hearted or kind heroes seem to lie mysteriously at the = axis of many of Nabokov's stories, even as they are regularly outshone not = only by his "charming villains" - the Kinbotes, the Humbert Humberts, the = Van Veens - but by his own dazzling literary style. Though Khrushcheva = seems surprised at her discovery, this is far from a new observation, and = she might easily have added other big-hearted innocents: Lucette in "Ada"; = Cynthia and Sybil Vane in "The Vane Sisters"; John Shade and that "poor = little person" his daughter, Hazel, in "Pale Fire"; even Klara in "Mary," = his very first novel. But to Khrushcheva, the significance of such heroes = (many, incidentally, unambiguously American) seems to be that through = them, "generously, in the Russian way," Nabokov "counterbalanced the = indifference of democracy." In the end, this seems too frayed a rope to = rescue a man as inhumane as Khrushcheva paints Nabokov, in a portrait that = his best readers won't recognize. If Russians really need a prophet, they = could surely do better than Khrushcheva's ugly American. Steve Coates, an = editor at The New York Times Book Review, is a co-author of "Nabokov's = Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius." =20 Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both = co-editors.=20 _________________________________________________________________ Avec Hotmail, vos e-mails vous suivent partout ! Mettez Hotmail sur votre = mobile ! http://www.messengersurvotremobile.com/?d=3Dhotmail Search archive with Google: http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=3Dsite:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=3Den 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/ Search archive with Google: http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=3Dsite:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=3Den 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/ --=__PartC7EEEA3E.2__= Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Description: HTML

Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:11:24 -0400
From: spklein52@HOTMAIL.COM
Sub= ject: [NABOKV-L] A misguided mission in behalf of Vladimir Nabokov = ...
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU

 
 Another of "Mr Goodman's effort", "doomed with the rest of its kind = to oblivion [...] (in) The Lethean Library" as V puts it in RLSK.
 "Khrushcheva professes to love Nabokov but she puts much more heart = into thrashing him" (Steve Coates writes) and like Mr Goodman she seem= s to derive "grim satisfaction" from it!
I must admit I haven't read the book yet but it's so funny to see once = more how relevant VN's characters can be!
Laurence Hochard
3D"Int=   Culture 
 <= BR> http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/28/arts/IDLEDE28.php=
 
Book review: A = misguided mission in behalf of Vladimir Nabokov
 
3D""=20
Horst Tappe/Ullstein Bild/Roger-Vi= ollet
= Vladimir Nabokov, at the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland.
3D""
3D""
By Steve Coates - Published: June 27, 2008
 
3D""
=
Imagining Nabokov Russia Between Art = and Politics By Nina L. Khrushcheva Illustrated. 233 = pages. $28; =A318.99. Yale University Press.  =20

'A work of art has no importance whatever to = society," Vladimir Nabokov insisted. "It is only important to the = individual, and only the individual reader is important to me." Nabokov = was in fact notoriously averse to groups or "movements" of any sort, = whether political, artistic or social. So it's hard not to be amused at = Nina L. Khrushcheva's contortionate attempts to recruit him as a sociopolit= ical figurehead for the land of his birth in her earnest and urgent = "Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics."
 
"The 'American' = Nabokov of the second half of the 20th century is the most important = cultural and literary phenomenon for Russia in the first half of the = 21st," Khrushcheva contends, hailing Nabokov as a "prophet" and proclaiming= herself his "missionary." With his independent, self-sufficient characters= , "he is our textbook and our road map for today's transitional period = from a closed and communal terrain to its Western alternative, one open = and competitive."
 
Khrushcheva is a master of such stirring but ultimately = hollow declarations, delivered up in a dizzying whirl of academic = formalism, "intensely personal" reflection and wholesale generalization, = often involving national characteristics - Russians are romantic, = emotional, soulful, spiritual, impractical and so forth.
 
The result is a = "dialogue" with Nabokov that becomes all too literal when Khrushcheva = travels to Montreux, Switzerland, to converse with the novelist's bronze = statue in an unfortunate heart-to-heart blending quotations from the = writer's own work and lines composed for him by Khrushcheva. As protean as = he may have been, the real Nabokov was never so humorless as this = grim puppet.
 
Khrushcheva, an associate professor of international = affairs at the New School, should be better placed than most to imagine = the novelist and to assess his impact on Russian readers. Like him, she is = a lover of literature, a multilingual expatriate, a "thoroughly middle = class" college teacher and a member of a "deposed elite": Nikita Khrushchev= was her great-grandfather. And she is well aware that her claims to = spiritual kinship with the author of "Bend Sinister" and "Invitation to a = Beheading" will be ridiculed by those who find little to compare between = her free passage out of Russia and the Nabokov family's flight for their = lives before the Bolsheviks.

 
Khrushcheva's interest in = promoting Nabokov in Russia is a worthy one. In 2001, teaching a course at = Moscow State University called "Nabokov and Us," she detected a direct = relationship between her Russian students' enthusiasm for her subject and = an atmosphere of hope, openness and freedom in the country.
Alas, five years later she discovers that Putin's Russia = "has all but given Nabokov up, along with his characters and his master = classes, as it has given up the democratic reforms, growing too impatient = to see them through." This picture of Nabokov's precipitately aborted = adoption by his homeland is gripping, but it may be only a mirage. = Khrushcheva's impression seems almost entirely based on the opinions of = the 30 students in her Moscow class on the one hand and, on the other, the = mood at a small gathering she addressed at the Nabokov Museum in St. = Petersburg in 2006.
 
<= FONT color=3D#000000>The skeptical reader is entitled to suspect that the = question of Nabokov's Russian readership is far more complex than the = glimpse his missionary allows us.
Khrushch= eva is evidently sincere in her belief that Nabokov's Westernizing = tendencies, in his character and especially in his writings, could somehow = show her country the way to a modern, that is, Westernized, future. = Americans might assume that's an ennobling role, but they would be = mistaken: Nabokov the individualist, in Khrushcheva's view, became an = American success story precisely because of the self-centered indifference = and the relentless self-promotion she finds everywhere in his life = and work.
 
Nabokov, she argues at length, was "Salieri to Pushkin's = innocent Mozart," but only Salieris are likely to offer a road map of "how = to survive and succeed in this Western world," which for Khrushcheva, in = the abstract at least, seems a harsh, even hellish place, quite the = opposite of Nabokov's America.
=  
Khrushcheva professes to love Nabokov, but = she puts much more heart into thrashing him: for his "conceit, coldness = and emphatic indifference to all us ordinary folks, unworthy of his = genius"; for his "contempt of the Russian tradition of socially minded = literature"; for his "heartlessness," his "unmitigated arrogance," his = "vanity and airs" and his skewering of other writers; for his "lack of = 'physical' heroism" in contrast to Osip Mandelstam, dead in the gulag; for = his aristocratic birth and for much else besides. Nabokov may be the first = prophet to be anointed with vitriol.
<= /FONT> 
Khrushcheva is in part echoing a = familiar aesthetic case against Nabokov, and her book can also be seen as = an extension of the discourse about the author's "real" personality and = the role it played in his work (memorably reflected in the titles of such = literary-journal articles as "Nabokov and Nastiness"). Aesthetics are = always debatable, but "Imagining Nabokov" does not succeed as an attempt = to come to grips with the many puzzles presented by the life of a man who = was profoundly complex by nature, by circumstance and by art. 
Too often, = Khrushcheva builds a castle on a grain of sand. For example, her puzzling = insistence that Nabokov arrogantly "slammed the door shut" on readers of = "Speak, Memory," one of the most acclaimed memoirs of the 20th century, = appears to be based solely on the fact that he addresses it, in two senses = of the word, to his wife, V=E9ra, the regular dedicatee of his books.<= /FONT>
 
Else= where, hyperbole destroys Khrushcheva's case. It is fair to deplore = Nabokov's calculated dismissals of authors of whom he disapproved, but to = contend that he "has kind words for no one" is to grossly mislead readers = - as it is to maintain that he had "no sympathy for political martyrs." = And Khrushcheva, of course, brings some baggage of her own; she notes that = Nabokov, as anti-Soviet a cold warrior as there was, spoke ill of her = great-grandfather, both in his fiction and elsewhere.
 
But to get to the = real crux of Khrushcheva's study, what about that road map and its = cartographer? How does she spiritually (in the Russian sense, of course) = justify appointing an American narcissist as her Russo-cosmopolitan = savior? Her case is built on Nabokov's "artistic kindness," more specifical= ly on the kindness of two of his characters, Dolores Haze and, above all, = on the Americanizing Russian exile Timofey Pnin. "Kindness is immortal," = she writes, "especially when it's a kindness that breaks through hurt = and injustice."
 
Khrushcheva is surely right to say that it is ultimately = for such heroes "that we read and love Nabokov." Indeed, innocent, = considerate, victimized, tender-hearted or kind heroes seem to lie = mysteriously at the axis of many of Nabokov's stories, even as they are = regularly outshone not only by his "charming villains" - the Kinbotes, the = Humbert Humberts, the Van Veens - but by his own dazzling literary sty= le.
 
= Though Khrushcheva seems surprised at her discovery, this is far from a = new observation, and she might easily have added other big-hearted = innocents: Lucette in "Ada"; Cynthia and Sybil Vane in "The Vane Sisters"; = John Shade and that "poor little person" his daughter, Hazel, in "Pale = Fire"; even Klara in "Mary," his very first novel. But to Khrushcheva, the = significance of such heroes (many, incidentally, unambiguously American) = seems to be that through them, "generously, in the Russian way," Nabokov = "counterbalanced the indifference of democracy." In the end, this seems = too frayed a rope to rescue a man as inhumane as Khrushcheva paints = Nabokov, in a portrait that his best readers won't recognize. 
If Russians = really need a prophet, they could surely do better than Khrushcheva's = ugly American.
 
Steve Coates, an editor at The New = York Times Book Review, is a co-author of "Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific = Odyssey of a Literary Genius."
 
 
 
 =
 
 
 
 
Se= arch the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscripti= on options

All private = editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors. =


Discutez gratuitement avec vos amis en = vid=E9o ! T=E9l=E9chargez Messenger, c'est gratuit !
Search the archive Contact the = Editors Visit "Nabokov = Online Journal"
Vi= sit Zembla View = Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription = options

All = private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

--=__PartC7EEEA3E.2__=-- --=__PartC7EEEA3E.1__= Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="Header" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Header" UmV0dXJuLXBhdGg6IDw+DQpSZWNlaXZlZDogZnJvbSBiYXkwLW9tYzEtczM1LmJheTAuaG90bWFp bC5jb20gKGJheTAtb21jMS1zMzUuYmF5MC5ob3RtYWlsLmNvbSBbNjUuNTQuMjQ2LjEwN10pDQoJ YnkgdXhhMi5pc2MudWNzYi5lZHUgKDguMTMuOC84LjEzLjgpIHdpdGggRVNNVFAgaWQgbTVVQUF1 TFEwMjc2NjYNCglmb3IgPG5hYm9rdi1sQGxpc3RzZXJ2LnVjc2IuZWR1PjsgTW9uLCAzMCBKdW4g MjAwOCAwMzoxMDo1NiAtMDcwMCAoUERUKQ0KUmVjZWl2ZWQ6IGZyb20gQkFZMTM3LVc0OSAoWzY0 LjQuNDguODRdKSBieSBiYXkwLW9tYzEtczM1LmJheTAuaG90bWFpbC5jb20gd2l0aCBNaWNyb3Nv ZnQgU01UUFNWQyg2LjAuMzc5MC4zOTU5KTsNCgkgTW9uLCAzMCBKdW4gMjAwOCAwMzoxMDo1NSAt MDcwMA0KTWVzc2FnZS1JRDogPEJBWTEzNy1XNDlBODJENTJGQzQzQjM4QkFEQzkxNUU4OUYwQHBo eC5nYmw+DQpDb250ZW50LVR5cGU6IG11bHRpcGFydC9hbHRlcm5hdGl2ZTsNCglib3VuZGFyeT0i X2RmNzgxZGMzLWRiY2QtNDAyMC04Y2I2LThkYWQ2N2MxMGIzZF8iDQpYLU9yaWdpbmF0aW5nLUlQ OiBbOTAuMjcuMTU5LjI0NV0NCkZyb206IGxhdXJlbmNlIGhvY2hhcmQgPGxhdXJlbmNlLmhvY2hh cmRAaG90bWFpbC5mcj4NClRvOiBWbGFkaW1pciBOYWJva292IEZvcnVtIDxuYWJva3YtbEBsaXN0 c2Vydi51Y3NiLmVkdT4NClN1YmplY3Q6IFJFOiBbTkFCT0tWLUxdIEEgbWlzZ3VpZGVkIG1pc3Np b24gaW4gYmVoYWxmIG9mIFZsYWRpbWlyIE5hYm9rb3YgLi4uDQpEYXRlOiBNb24sIDMwIEp1biAy MDA4IDEyOjEwOjU0ICswMjAwDQpJbXBvcnRhbmNlOiBOb3JtYWwNCkluLVJlcGx5LVRvOiA8QkFZ MTI3LVc1MTU1MDEyOTZDNENDODI2NjhEOEUxQUU5RDBAcGh4LmdibD4NClJlZmVyZW5jZXM6IDxC QVkxMjctVzUxNTUwMTI5NkM0Q0M4MjY2OEQ4RTFBRTlEMEBwaHguZ2JsPg0KTUlNRS1WZXJzaW9u OiAxLjANClgtT3JpZ2luYWxBcnJpdmFsVGltZTogMzAgSnVuIDIwMDggMTA6MTA6NTUuMDE1MCAo VVRDKSBGSUxFVElNRT1bOTU2Nzg0RTA6MDFDOERBOTldDQo= --=__PartC7EEEA3E.1__=--