Mary H. Efremov "exile abounds in VN's writing...most of
his Russian characters are ex-pats, the dream of a nobleman to see buckwheat in
bloom inspires the young man in glory,all of the nostalgia and dreams of the
past, are about losing one's beloved home( and past).".
Jansy Mello: Reading M.H.E's observation
that "exile abounds in VN's writing," I was reminded of how
contagious an ex-patriate's nostalgia can be. The Lieder my
great-grandparents valued ( Goethe's "Nur wer die Sennsuch kennt weiss
was Ich leide" or the popular "nun ade Du mein lieb Heimatland",
aso) still strike a "nostalgic" note in my heart (an echo of the Romantic
spirit that moved them at that time).
Mary's
observation about "losing one's past" is pertinent and, in VN's case, it's a
central issue, together with his writer's distress at having
to abandon his native Russian and write in another language and cultural
context*.
However the
XXIth Century world is, in a way, the world of exiles (voluntary or involuntary,
spatial or ideological), often experienced in all sorts of non-literary
ways. . .
.............................................................
* - From the recently
mentioned article by Vladimir Zoric "Radiating Nests: metalingual Tropes in
Poetry of Exile": "There is, meanwhile, another trope of unhomeliness
in modernist perceptions of language, one according to which the very act of
signification represents a trespass in a foreign land. The world we once dully
tried to objectify through the use of symbolic substitutes has changed its
aspect: it cannot house us anymore. or, as Rilke acknowledged in “The Duino
Elegies” (“Duineser Elegien”): “wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind / in der
gedeuteten Welt” ( “we don’t feel very securely at home / in this interpreted
world.”)