"Now 'happy' is something extremely
subjective. One of our sillier Zemblan proverbs says: the lost glove is
happy."* (PF) Tto do Nabokov justice, I remain with James Camp's
observation: "...it is true, Nabokov does rapture
better than just about any other writer, ever. (He does rape, sadism and suicide
pretty well, too.) and with A.Therouxh's sentence: "What Nabokov valued, perhaps above
all else, was what he could preserve in memory and save from oblivion. He
located and fixed the past in much the way that in his lepidopteral
experiments he fixed hisbeloved butterflies..."
I might have strayed from these two reviewers points (because
Nabokov almost always metamorphs me into "a lost glove"), had I not just
finished reading the painful dark-comedy sequence from "The Defence", Ch.
Nine. It is vaguely reminiscent of a scene in the Marx Brother's movie, "A Night
at the Opera," which Nabokov explicitly admired **
"The sidewalk skidded, reared up at a right angle and swayed back
again....'I'm telling you Karl is there,' repeated Günther sulkily. And truly a
man was sitting on the edge of the sidewalk with his head lowered. They
miscalculated their impetus and were carried past. When they succeeded in
approaching him the man smacked his lips and slowly turned toward them...
'Here's another,' said Kurt. A fat man without a hat lay all hunched up on the
sidewalk, beside a garden fence. 'That's probably Pulvermacher,' muttered
Kurt....The man was
evidently sound asleep..'Let's wait for a taxi,' said Kurt and followed the
example of Karl, who had squatted on the curbing....'Bac berepom,' read Kurt mistaking
the Russian letters for Latin ones, which was excusable...On the door large
chess squares — the blazon of Berlin taxis — showed in the light of the
streetlamp. Finally the jam-packed motorcar moved off....A key
grated in the lock and the door opened. On the sidewalk with his back to the
steps lay a stout man in black.Meanwhile
the staircase continued to spawn people.... They were seen
at once in all the rooms...They were found on all the divans, in the bathroom
and on the trunk in the hallway, and there was no way of getting rid of them.
Their number was unclear — a fluctuating, blurred number. But after a while they
disappeared..."
Luzhin's tormented
relation with external reality and with thechallenges he found in
some games of chess are masterful renderings of mental anguish. One can
almost follow the meanderings of anguish and befuddlement from inside the
mad person's mind while, at the same time, we can also see how comic this
may appear to passers-by (even the well-wishing ones).
In fact, as I see
it, Nabokov's works are about two extremes: ecstasy and pain and not really
about "happiness.".
..............................................................................................................................................................................
# - Excerpts:
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2011/05/02/the_exquisite_pleasures_of_being_nabokov/
A satisfying look at Nabokov, the literary
‘Enchanter’ by Carmela Ciuraru. May 2, 2011: "To seek a greater understanding of
happiness by way of Vladimir Nabokov is no typical self-help path, to say the
least. Yet that’s what author Lila Azam Zanganeh attempts in “The Enchanter,’’ a
witty, illuminating examination of desire, fulfillment, and passion in Nabokov’s
work and life. ...One of the book’s greatest virtues is that the author
cultivated a connection with Nabokov’s son (and only child), Dmitri, who is now
77. He is a fascinating character: an opera singer, a translator, a former race
car driver, and the zealous guardian of his father’s legacy and literary estate.
He generously provides some of the beautiful family photographs seen in this
book, and shares intimate memories of what it was like to be the son of a
literary giant. Clearly, he was impressed enough by Azam Zanganeh’s devotion and
intellect to offer such access."
...Lila Azam Zanganeh's The Enchanter: Nabokov and
Happiness (Norton, 228 pages, $23.95)...is something of a collage. There are
paraphrases, biographical vignettes, interviews and drawings. There are also
kooky components, like dream sequences. There are also kinky
components...
From these disparate parts, the contours of a
single idea emerge. Roughly, this is it: "VN's happiness is a singular way of
seeing, marveling, and grasping, in other words, of netting the light particles
around us." ..."How did he do it? "It has to do with the wiles of a new
language," she hints....Something to do with language...Ms. Zanganeh has interviewed Nabokov's son, Dimitri, and she has
made pilgrimages to various sites sacred to Nabokovians, where she recorded her
impressions.... The Enchanter is a book that is mostly about reading other
books... wonderful anecdotes, and all appear in The Enchanter. None of them
is originally Ms. Zanganeh's...All the show pieces in this book are out on
loan....What remains is Ms. Zanganeh's thesis on happiness. And it is true,
Nabokov does rapture better than just about any other writer, ever. (He does
rape, sadism and suicide pretty well, too.) Alas, Nabokovians tend to interact
awkwardly with the conventions of literary criticism...Creative reading, as she
means it, describes the attempt to channel a great writer's authority by
imitating him in your writing about his writing. It is a form that is like
pastiche, but equally like karaoke...Nabokov ...said: "Style and structure are
the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash."....Here is Ms. Zanganeh: "To observant men, these Nabokovian
patterns, magically, will offer the inkling of an 'otherworld,' the ineffable
beauty and concord of which is cause for infinite happiness." The most
compelling statement of this position appears in Nabokov's book on Gogol, where
he defines art as "the dazzling combination of drab parts." (Adam Thirlwell made
this phrase the leitmotif of his excellent recent book The Delighted
States.)This point about drabness tends to get lost. Nabokovians talk about
patterns, but what their writing usually suggests is an obsession with décor.
Instead of dazzling combinations of drab parts, we get drab combinations of
dazzling parts. ... "Don't be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a
lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov," Geoff Dyer wrote in The Guardian last year.
In 1969, in the midst of givingAda a bad review, John Updike noted, "This deadly
style is infectious!" Updike thought Nabokov's style had gone sour; but he was
imitating it anyway, helplessly. "We read to reenchant the world," Ms. Zanganeh
declares. And so we do. But the unromantic truth may be that successful writing,
even if done in the name of creative reading, requires disenchantment. If you
are going to cast a spell, you cannot be under one yourself."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703551304576261481445813412.html?mod=googlenews_wsTrouble
With Ardor by Alexander Therouuxh: "
Happiness is not the first
word that comes to my mind when the name VladimirNabokov is invoked. A
genius but also a snob and curmudgeon, Nabokov wasfrequently competitive
and unkind, belittling the likes of Faulkner,Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Conrad,
Jane Austen, Cervantes, Hemingway and HenryJames. (In the early 1970s,
when asked by an interviewer, "What is yourposition in the world of
letters?" Nabokov replied: "Jolly good view from uphere.") He went to war
over matters of translation and "topical trash." He rejected edits with
devilish diligence. "I carry proudly my ineffablehappiness," he once
boasted, and gasconading may well bring pleasure...For Lila Azam Zanganeh,
the "experience of happiness" is to be found in
readingNabokov...Throughout "The Enchanter," Ms. Zanganeh appropriates
Nabokov's arch and ornate phrases and strains to capture his style in what
one assumes to be an attempt at homage...Adopting the persona of a
"creative reader,"Ms.Zanganeh explores the magical worlds of three of Nabokov's
major works... grabs details from Brian Boyd's biography of Nabokov, from
Nabokov's own interviews and from her encounters with Dmitri, Nabokov's son
and literary executor, whom she hunts down, interviews and frankly
exalts."I looked at Dmitri's clear blue gaze, tuned in to the grain of his
voice,so close to his father's as one may catch it in
recordings."...Oversimplying the Nabokovian equation, Ms. Zanganeh sees
this Russian-American author almost exclusively as "the great writer of
happiness."... At one point, Ms.Zanganeh unabashedly confesses that she
proceeded to buy a net and shorts to go out catching butterflies.But she
misses the core. What Nabokov valued, perhaps above all else, was what he
could preserve in memory and save from oblivion. He located and fixed the
past in much the way that in his lepidopteral experiments he fixed
hisbeloved butterflies..."
* "You’ll be happy to know, Dr. Kinbote, that
Professor So-and-so [one of the members of the Shade committee] has consented to
act as our adviser in editing the stuff."Of students’ papers:
Now "happy" is something extremely subjective.
One of our sillier Zemblan proverbs says: the lost glove is happy. Promptly I
refastened the catch of my briefcase and betook myself to another
publisher.
Another reference to "Happiness" in Pale
Fire: "I am generally very benevolent [said
Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive." Kinbote: "For
instance?" "Not having read the required book. Having read it like an idiot.
Looking in it for symbols; example: ‘The author uses the striking image green leaves because green is the symbol
of happiness and frustration.’ I am also in the habit of lowering a student’s
mark catastrophically if he uses ‘simple’ and ‘sincere’ in a commendatory sense;
examples: ‘Shelley’s style is always very simple and good’; or ‘Yeats is always
sincere.’
** "The Marx Brothers were
wonderful. The opera, the crowded cabin [A Night at the Opera], which is pure
genius… I must have seen that film three times!" www.jstor.org/stable/1345118