Dear List,
Here, at the dead center of the
year, we find VN's readers (&, as G.Shimanovich reminds us, as VN's
very lively fictions), evolving like like potatoes around
his works and opinions - along with Kinbote's own
noisy merry-go-rounds.
I'm a little ashamed because it took me so long to conclude that VN
was not undervaluing the "social" significance of art ( "A work of art has no importance whatever to
society"), he was simply stressing that a true artist should not aim
his work at something as vague as a philosopher's conceptualization of
"society" (Aisenberg's "received wisdom"), but at society's very
constituents: citiziens, artists, readers, and his "fictions"
("It is only important to the individual, and only
the individual reader is important to me.").
I'm honored to share this discussion with you all and, in
particular, I want to congratulate our EDS for their patience and
creativity to encourage our "symposium".
Below a summary of some issues presented today:
J. Aisenberg re to Khrushcheva and
Studdard: clearly for the woman to have made remarks like those above
about Nabokov's contempt for common folks, as opposed to say "received
wisdom", seems like the mark of a shallow
reader. And Nabokov's contempt for the tradition of socially
minded literature (itself a complicated matter) was, I thought, a
healthy response to those solemn types who go around putting all sorts
of "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" on everything and everybody, types embarrassed
that literature might be fun or amusing, that it might not seem to be
"respectably employed"; who inist the only serious literature builds
houses for the homeless and frees the world of slavery, itself a kind of grim
ignoble slavery (it's funny that Nabokov's liberated view of
art should somehow have been turned around by so many concerned
critics and made to seem constrictive and inhuman, when it's
plaster the great busts and frowning sanctimony he was fleeing).
"Heartless"? Poor Dolores Haze is hardly the invention a heartless
arrogant brute[...] K's taking Nabokov to task for his physical cowardice
and flogging him with his survival of history, unlike Mandelshtam, is
particularly annoying and offensive.[...]Unlike Studdard I think its great
fun to read Nabokov taking pot shots at "great" writers.
Laurence Hochard (
To J.STuddard) 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 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".
G.Shimanovich: her
Dad [K's], as one recalls, patronized arts and took artists to task for being
... not socially minded. All the while VN's lineage is consistently unordinary
in cultural sense. Isn't it why he remains a sore eye for some ordinary
folk (this invented group isn't so numerous) and closed minded members of
writers guilt (quite ordinary minded, numerous and self-appointed speakers for
"ordinary" - to inflate their speaking
value)...