JM: Thanks, again, Sandy for bringing to the
Nab-L diverse and fascinating articles and reviews about Nabokov, like
this intelligent appraisal of Nabokov's Berlin, which shows, among
other things, the historical importance of his depiction of this
central German city to situate, in time-space, not only Germany,
but Western world's vulgarity in-between WWI and WWII and at present,
the pains of immigration, the meanders of economic pressures, politics
and fantasy in Art.
Chamberlain's sensibilty is equally revelatory when she dwells on
how Nabokov's "brutal insights produced their own kind of beauty on
the page," since the key lies in "Light-heartedness and a
tendency to fairytale," and its "additional spin with the gift
of seeing everything symbolically."
For Chamberlain, Nabokov's fascination with the vices of modern
culture "would later almost overwhelm him in the US...As
consumerism and Hitler rose together so Nabokov treated totalitarian
politics principally as aesthetically repugnant," before she adds:
"Nabokov, who saw in art the possibility of redemption, was tempted
to think taste ruled out evil...Errancy from paradise preoccupied
him...With wit and imagery he makes us feel we are in paradise too,
though our entertainer is the devil," for if "the kindliness
of memory recreates Eden...perversity razes it to the ground...He made
it his task to find beautiful metaphors even for evil."
If "Post-war Berlin was the fallen city for Nabokov...so in a
concealed self-exploration he found out how to make his narcissists and
perverts and woman-haters (lots of those), as well as his humble
losers, lovable. He loathed the idea of Freudian intrusions into his
work. One can see why..." For Chamberlain, Nabokov "came
out of a time which could not contemplate the collapse of life as an
aesthetic paradise for the few. Yet collapse it did." and she
seems to suggest that Nabokov was able to recover Arcadia from the
ashes, not only to satisfy his demanding artistic taste, or to achieve
redepmtion through art, but to extend to the common people this
artistic form of metamorphosis ranging from philistinism
towards beauty, when she wistfully adds: "In Penguin’s sumptuous
new Nabokov Library, we can return to that paradise lost."
Umberto Eco in "
Amidst globalisation, what do we
read?" ( December 12th, 2010 - www.deccanchronicle.com/.../amidst-globalisation-what-do-we-read-)
picks up Harold Bloom’s definition of the (Western) literary
canon as
'the choice of books in our teaching institutions'
and Bloom's suggestion "that
the real question it prompts is:
'What shall the individual who still desires to read attempt to read,
this late in history?' " For Eco, there’s "
no doubt that
Western society and culture have been influenced by Shakespeare,
Dante’s Divine Comedy, and — moving backward in time — Homer, Virgil
and Sophocles. But are we influenced by them because we have actually
read them firsthand? ... it’s not essential to actually read a book
cover to cover in order to understand its larger importance. It’s clear
as day, for instance, that the Bible has had a profound influence both
on Jewish and Christian culture in the West, and even on the culture of
nonbelievers — but this doesn’t mean that all those who have been
influenced by it, have it, read it from beginning to end. The same can
be said of the writings of Shakespeare or James Joyce."
Eco considers that today "
the problem is more complicated than
ever...if, in short, the world has shrunk to provincial dimensions,
with immigrant students around the globe asking to be taught about
their own traditions — then what will the new canon look like? In
certain American universities, the answer has come in the form of a
movement that, rather than being 'politically correct', is politically
dumb. Since we have lots of black students, some people have suggested,
let’s teach them less Shakespeare and more African literature."
He adds that "
it wouldn’t be a bad thing if, in addition to their
lessons on ancient Greek civilisation, high school students learned
something about the great Arab, Indian and Japanese literary
traditions. Today, however, this ecumenical ideal comes up against
certain difficulties...how can you interest those students in the
Sanskrit epic poem The Mahabharata, or the poems in The Rubaiyat of
Omar Khayyam in such a way that these works linger on in their
memories? Can we really tailor education to suit the globalised world
when the vast majority of cultured Westerners are wholly unaware that,
for Georgians, one of the greatest poems in literary history is Shota
Rustaveli’s The Knight in the Panther’s Skin? When scholars can’t even
agree on whether, in the original Georgian version, the knight in the
poem is in fact wearing a panther’s skin, and not a tiger’s or a
leopard’s? Will we even get that far, or shall we continue to wonder
simply: 'Shota who?'. ”
Somehow Umberto Eco's questionings, ending with a student's
puzzled "Shota who?," reminded me of Nabokov's amusing vision
of "Fulmerford who?," after having described his supposition that,
although his name might not be forgotten by the new generations, his
work would stay unread. Leslie Chamberlain's arguments helped me to
hold an optimistic vision of how Nabokov's writings, more than his
name, shall fare in the future: not only by its kind of anthropological
source into the Western world's habits and way of life, but as a way of
"redeption through art" and a road into beauty.
..............................
A P.S to Leslie Chamberlain's remark
about how Nabokov with "wit and imagery he makes us feel we are in
paradise too, though our entertainer is the devil," and my
conclusion that Nabokov's writings represent a source of "redemption
through art and a road into beauty," for I'd wanted to add,
then, a vaguelly recollected sentence which, while I was checking
it, was left out when, inadvertently, I posted away my message to the
list.
Here it is "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."*
The lines, as I remembered them, would belong to an Arab proverb
that reads something like "the road to hell is paved with
primroses."
My search only directed me to Johnson's words, whereas it's the
Arabian proverb which would make sense ( by its reference to flowers)
instead of a comment about "good intentions" (which I don't think were
present in Nabokov's overall project).
My intention is not to emphasize Chamberlain's irony about how "
our
entertainer is the devil." to dismiss, as a pervert's
fantasy, our archetypal cravings for paradise, to which Nabokov gives
expression so dangerously and poignantly. It lies in my attempt to
bring out her proposition of "redemption through art" and the hardships
that await those who set out in a search for paradise.
...........................................................................................................................................
* - Cf.
www.answers.com
› ... › Proverbs
- . The Samuel Johnson Sound
Bite page - apocrypha. "Although many people believe that Samuel
Johnson said "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," he
shouldn't get credit for this one. Johnson said something close, but he
was following in others' footsteps. In Boswell's Life of Johnson, in an
entry marked April 14, 1775, Boswell quotes Johnson as saying (on some
other occasion), "Hell is paved with good intentions." Note, no
prefatory "the road to..." Boswell's editor, Malone, added a footnote
indicating this is a 'proverbial sentence,' and quoting an earlier 1651
source (yet still not in the common wording). Robert Wilson, in the
newsgroup alt.quotations, provided two other sources prior to Johnson.
John Ray, in 1670, cited as a proverb "Hell is paved with good
intentions." Even earlier than that, it's been attributed to Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), as "Hell is full of good intentions
or desires." Just how it got to the road to Hell being paved this way,
and not Hell itself, I don't know."