From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Wed, April 10, 2013 1:26:38 PM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: VN on compassion in PNIN
C. Kunin:" So 'compassionate' might have struck VN as
a complete misunderstanding of his real intent of expiation, and thus an insult.
The narrator/author is not compassionate, is he? He is dispassionate, selfish
and capable of cruelty. The subject of this darker side of VN has been discussed
on the List before, but it's been a while. It was kind of the author, though, in
Pale Fire, to let us see that Pnin himself survived his author's best intentions
to do away with him."
Brian " I bet Stephen is absolutely
correct. McConkey probably would have been better off saying he
hated Pnin. Not to say that VN couldn't have been more charitable, but
he did have a visceral aversion to platitudes."
Jansy Mello: The interactions between Nabokov and his
occasional interviewers strike me as instrumental to expose a
particular VNian trait. Namely, he seems to be always hoping that
someone got at least one of his most cherished points
(the hidden patterns, for example). This hope was stronger than any
pedagogical project or demonstration (this is what Jay Epstein's article showed
to me).
.
We all know that VN's writings are multi-level and enclose or
disclose different intentions and feelings. We can assume that VV Nabokov was as
capable of compassion (even charity,on occasion) as he was able
to understand and exert cruelty. In his writings we encounter his
extraordinary talent to portray the minds of criminals and victims alike,
or innocence and guilt, that is, to portray humanity's mixture
of conflicting emotions and virtues (this is why I wonder
about any predominant penitential intentions in "Pnin") - without
excluding an ineffable striving for transcendence.in both "good-bad" and
"strong-weak" characters.
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read by both co-editors.