----- Original Message ----
From: laurence hochard <laurence.hochard@HOTMAIL.FR>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 5:31:16 AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Coates review of Krushcheva's IMAGINING RUSSIA
JS, Well, as far as I know, VN never played the prophet, nor vied with Jesus Christ! it is Khrushcheva who says he is one and then anoints him with vitriol.
As for her reproaches, they are very similar to those addressed to S Knight by Mr Goodman in chapter 12 p 115 (RLSK, Vintage International): "Aloofness is a cardinal sin in an age when a perplexed humanity eagerly turns to its writers and thinkers, and demands of them attention to, if not cure of, its woes and wounds..." I can't quote the whole passage but I think it is hilariously appropriate.
There is also in chapter 2 p 18: " (Mr G)"SK was so [...] incapable of caring for their (things') serious core that he managed [...] to make fun of intimate emotions, rightly held sacred by the rest of humanity."
With regard to Khrushcheva's reproaches, I think SK's answer is very much to the point: "There are in fact not many things in life comparable to the delight of satire, and when
I imagine the humbug's face as he reads (and read he shall) that particular passage and know as well as we do that it is the truth, then delight reaches its sweetest climax" chapter 6 p 53.
V (SK's resuscitated alter ego), less provokingly but as aptly adds: "As often was the way with SK, he used parody as a kind of spring-board for leaping into the highest region of serious emotion" chapter 10 p 89; also: "No wonder this solemn biographer is out of tune with his hero at every point of the story" chapter 2 p 18.
In other words, VN uses parody and satire to ridicule and get rid of sham, shallow, hypocritical so-called deep feelings and concerns so as to really address "serious emotion".
Laurence Hochard
> Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:16:40 -0400
> From: NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Coates review of Krushcheva's IMAGINING RUSSIA
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>
> EDNOTE. From
Coates's review. -- SES] 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.
>
> James Studdard writes in response to Laurence Hochard:
>
> L.H., I agree with some of your evaluation of the book but I am constrained to believe that any author who calls Dostoyevski a hack, pamphleteer; relegates Oscar Wilde to a "writer of children's books," criticises his (O.W.'s) french; and for the 'look down the nose,
denouement' say that Freud was a Viennese quack, might be thought of as an insufferable, arrogant, popinjay. I think it is rather naieve of Mr. Coates to even suggest that Nabokov is the first prophet to be anointed with vitriol. How about Jesus? JStud
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