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Re: VN and Freud
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Jim Twiggs:One thing I’m especially curious about is how TK, and also JF and anyone else who cares to comment, might connect Shade’s “text not texture” insight with his stated belief at the end of the poem that Hazel “somewhere is alive.” ...And anyhow, what started off as thoughts about “life everlasting” has turned into thoughts about design (and the possibility of poetry). Unless I’ve missed or forgotten something, it’s not till the end of the poem that immortality re-enters the picture. Once again, what’s the connection? As for Yeats and VN, the question of VN’s own beliefs is of some importance because Brian Boyd has made it so:.
JM: I have the impression that Jim Twiggs ( following Boyd and Don Johnson) considers it necessary that a good writer be a good, even wise, individual, one who doesn't entertain preposterous beliefs or adhere to extremist political views. Dante's Divine Comedy was construed around a Copernican (Catholic Church) vision of the Earth as the center of the universe. Conan Doyle was convinced that fairies roamed the English countryside. Why spiritualism or a belief in metempsychosis should be anathema in a writer?
Besides, Nabokov seldom states his beliefs unambiguously ( "tatata...tata"). He mocks things he takes seriously and he is serious about derisory matters. The assertion that "Hazel somewhere is alive" has a very ironical coloring (he pairs it with his certainty that he, Shade, will wake up the next day...) whereas Kinbote, for all his madness, shows a reasonable knowledge about St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, including a respectful attitude towards other pepople's epiphanies ( he might not be as enemical to T.S.Eliot religious choices as Shade might be). .
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JM: I have the impression that Jim Twiggs ( following Boyd and Don Johnson) considers it necessary that a good writer be a good, even wise, individual, one who doesn't entertain preposterous beliefs or adhere to extremist political views. Dante's Divine Comedy was construed around a Copernican (Catholic Church) vision of the Earth as the center of the universe. Conan Doyle was convinced that fairies roamed the English countryside. Why spiritualism or a belief in metempsychosis should be anathema in a writer?
Besides, Nabokov seldom states his beliefs unambiguously ( "tatata...tata"). He mocks things he takes seriously and he is serious about derisory matters. The assertion that "Hazel somewhere is alive" has a very ironical coloring (he pairs it with his certainty that he, Shade, will wake up the next day...) whereas Kinbote, for all his madness, shows a reasonable knowledge about St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, including a respectful attitude towards other pepople's epiphanies ( he might not be as enemical to T.S.Eliot religious choices as Shade might be). .
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/