Haphazard trouvailles seem to be piling up to validate my suspicion that Nabokov was a Hoffman reader at some time.
Dear Jansy,
I too have been a cat person in the past - but these days it's all dogs and horses. You suspect N of being a secret admirer of Hoffmann, and I suspect his German was much better than he let on. Why?
Keine Ahnung. No, actually I am sure that he read Goethe in the original and Hoffmann, too,. I do believe that the "von Lichberg" Lolita was probably read by VN in Berlin in '23 when it came out. The German is very simple. I only have high school German and I could read it easily.
I love the "burst appendix" in your attic. I too have books coming out of the seams - but, I am proud to announce that Westminster Cottage (where I live now) is being transformed into a Library which will become part of the UC library system after my passing on. After I die - why not say it. By the
end of the summer, the transformation will be complete and WC (oh dear) will be ready to admit readers. Some of you may be aware that my alma mater, UCLA, owns a very beautiful and important library in the West Adams district (close to USC, as it happens), a sort of mimiatura version of the Huntington Library, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, which is the repository of the largest and most important collection of Oscar Wildeana in the world. "Westminster Cottage" will be a branch library, so to speak, of the Clark.
The first tenant of my house (he rented) was Ralph Freud - no relation to Jansy's Freud, so far as I know (and it's pronounced frood), one of the founders of the
Pasadena Play House and the founder of the theater arts department at UCLA. Most of my book collecting was in the area of modern illustrated books and fine bindings, music, dance and Russian literature of course. But I am now collecting in the area of theater as well. My most prized acquisition is a 1705 printing of Shakespeare plays - the first illustrated Shakespear (that's how it's spelled) ever published. The texts of the plays are considerably shorter than in the more famous First Folios, and I suspect that they are closer to the actual text of the plays as they were performed at that time, and Shakespear's of course.
Forgive my rambling on - but I am really proud of myself in this regard. When the library is ready, I will invite the List members to visit, so I hope you all will forgive my prolixity this morning. And
now it's back to KP!
From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Sat, May 4, 2013 8:56:59 AM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Kater Murr
C. Kunin: Murli-kat'! (to purr in
Russian, n'est-ce-pas?). Well, I don't know if E T A Hoffmann (one n or two?)
knew Russian or not, but his pussy is indeed a learned Tom -- and not
unNabokovian, you may agree - perhaps even a bit Pale Fireish: The Life And
Opinions Of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of
Kappelmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper is a complex
satirical novel by Prussian Romantic-era author E.T.A. Hoffmann. It was first
published in 1819-1821 as Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr nebst
fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufälligen
Makulaturblättern, in two volumes. A planned third volume was never completed.
It was Hoffmann's final novel and is considered his masterpiece. It reflected
his concepts of aesthetics, and predated post-modern literary techniques in its
unusual structure. Critic Alex Ross writes of the novel, "If the phantasmagoric
'Kater Murr' were published tomorrow as the work of a young Brooklyn hipster, it
might be hailed as a tour de force of postmodern fiction."
Jansy Mello: What a find, Carolyn. It
seems to anticipate Kinbote's muddling of Zembla and Shade's life in New
Wye. I had already posted something about certain similarities and
references in the VN-L concerning "Hoffmann's short story 'My Cousin's Corner
Window' [ in Berlin, that] is the dominant feature of a "small room
with a low ceiling, high above the street" "That is the usual custom of writers
and poets," writes Hoffmann. "What does the low ceiling matter? Imagination
soars aloft and builds a high and cheerful dome that rises to the radiant blue
sky.".and, recently, about the doll Olympia and the Sandman (from Freud's
article on the "Uncanny"). Haphazard trouvailles seem to be piling up
to validate my suspicion that Nabokov was a Hoffman reader at some
time.
Since I used to be a cat-person (now there's Stark in
my life, a devilish black shipperke dog) and collected many stories about
them, I'll start to read a forgotten collection of ."Feline Fairy Tales" [ The
King of the Cats and other... edited by John Richard Stephens, Faber and
Faber] following your original push.I wish I could remember the plot
of a cat one in Karel Kapek's (or find his book "Nine Fairy Tales and one
thrown in for good measure" that's lost in "the burst appendix" of my
attic).
Perhaps there are other cats in VN besides Hodges
(there's the intriguing cat with celadon eyes that spurns milk in
RLSK) Some who understand human language and act as spies all over
the house retelling gossip for example, written by ???
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