Subject
Re: "Sex" to Sebastian Knight and Kinbote--and VN
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Date
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Chaz/JA/JM: it is quite strange that certain words sound ugly to certain
ears without upsetting others. Is it the combination of sound and meaning
that grates? Apart from a few onomatopoeic words, sounds and meanings have
no innate connection. Recall Saussure¹s key notion that the mapping from
signifier to signified is quite arbitrary, a point that VN and some
Nabokovians choose to ignore. It¹s fine to indulge in puns and word games as
long as you don¹t start attaching mystical significance to accidental
resonances and anagrams. Thus, when VN is discussing tribal antagonisms (in
one of his Literary Lecture anthologies ref to follow), he adds the
warning: remember that stranger rhymes with danger. And so it does, but it
also rhymes with manger, a place of rest for budding messiahs. The example
also loses ³punch² when you consider semantic drift: in Chaucer¹s day danger
meant aloofness! Yes, VN is playfully weaving verbal ³conceits² with no
serious claim that strangers are dangerous because of a few shared
syllables. Yet one must remain alert against endowing words and sounds with
fanciful extra-linguistic and a-historical ³baggage.²
Judging sounds as sweet or sour is very much a cultural exercise. The Finns
love their rat-a-tat delivery; those harsh grunts you hear watching Japanese
manga movies may well be sublime declarations of undying love; a Xhosa
clicked lullaby can set your teeth on edge. We develop the stereotypes: sing
in Italian; make love in French; pray in Latin; drill in German; soul-search
in Russian; joke in Yiddish; and in English? I find that hard to pin down.
As the lingua franca, it¹s become truly ³general purpose.²
So, why does sex sound ugly while the same sibilants and gutturals in
exciting (literally) sound so exciting?
Is there a lurking puritanical objection to the sex act itself? Exactly!
skb
On 15/09/2008 17:56, "Charles Nicol" <chaznicol@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>
> Joseph Aisenberg notes that Edmund Wilson also disliked the sound of the word
> "sex," writing to VN "as if Nabokov's and the narrator's opinions were one and
> the same." In fact, they are. See the early (1964) Playboy interview, where
> VN essentially repeats what V says.
>
> Chaz
>
>
> --- On Sat, 9/13/08, joseph Aisenberg <vanveen13@SBCGLOBAL.NET> wrote:
>> From: joseph Aisenberg <vanveen13@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
>> Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] [QUERY] Sebastian Knight
>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>> Date: Saturday, September 13, 2008, 4:02 PM
>>
>>
>>
>> --- On Thu, 9/11/08, jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
>>> From: jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US>
>>> Subject: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] [QUERY] Sebastian Knight
>>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>>> Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008, 9:42 AM
>>>
>>> The book "V" is writing, very probably the one I happen to be reading, is
>>> named "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight".
>>> Mr. Goodman's biography ( it doesn't mention SK's half-brother, our "V", who
>>> is therefore publicly turned into a "garrulous impostor") received the title
>>> "Tragedy of Sebastian Knight."
>>>
>>> Query: The choice of omitting a more familiar "The" has a special meaning or
>>> context for English-speaking folks?
>>> J.A. In my Library of America edition of the book, pg. 53, the title to
>>> Goodman's biography reads The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight, with the article
>>> out front, and also lists it that way on page 49 as well. Even if it did
>>> not, aside from a certain awkwardness, there would be no special meaning
>>> that I could think of. On your second query, I have not read any full
>>> articles myself comparing them, but Michael Wood in his discussion of the
>>> TRLSK, "Lost Souls", in The Magician's doubts, does make one little
>>> connection that I thought was interesting. He points out that this line:
>>> 'Naturally, I cannot touch upon the intimate side of their relationship,
>>> firstly, because it would be ridculous to discuss what no one can definitely
>>> assert, and secondly because the very sound of the word "sex" with its
>>> hissing vulgarity and the "ks, ks" catcall at the end, seems so inane to me
>>> that I cannot help doubting whether there is any real idea behind the word.'
>>> (pg. 81 Library of Americ ed.)--has a certain similarity to the hysterical
>>> hypocritical prissy tone of some of Kinbote's writing. Off the subject, in
>>> Emund Wilson's letter to Nabokov responding to the book he said he also
>>> thought "sex" was an ugly word too, as if Nabokov's and the narrator's
>>> opinions were one and the same. There definitely does seem to be an odd echo
>>> between V. and Kinbote, except that V. is a mild mannered and completely
>>> ethical person set adrift by mourning for a lost loved one and Kinbote a
>>> freak without much in the way of scruples, though both of them try to
>>> appropriate their subjects in a strange internal way for personal purposes
>>> that are hard to grasp. In both books Nabokov lets an ambiguity about the
>>> dramatis personae hang over them at the end. In both he suggests that either
>>> the narrators invented their subjects, or that conversely that the narrators
>>> were the ones invented by their subjects, then suddenly at the end hints, in
>>> both TRLSK and PF, that the whole thing was invented by Nabokov himself so
>>> that separations between narrator and subject melt together without entirely
>>> dissolving them; in these books he doesn't go as far as he did in Bend
>>> Sinister. I've never been exactly sure why he does this half-measure version
>>> of self-revelation. Seems meant to suggest something cosmic while
>>> simultaneously funning illusionism without ever quite doing either, probably
>>> because he was trying to acheive both. Or maybe he wanted to have it point
>>> to a truth outside the book while retaining a kind of psychological
>>> coherence--this melting of themselves into the other is what the narrators
>>> would like to do and at the end, once we've seen their utter failures in
>>> this department, ironically claim to have acheived.
>>>
>>> A second (minor) query: Could anyone inform me if there are articles that
>>> compare "V" and Charles Kinbote?
>>> (The first paragraph, revealing Olga Olegovna Orlov's name and filled with
>>> personal garrulous insertions looks very kinbotean in my eyes...)
>>> Search the archive
>>> <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
>>> "Nabokov Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com/>
>>> Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View Nabokv-L
>>> Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage subscription
>>> options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>>>
>>> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
>>> co-editors.
>>> Search the archive
>>> <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
>>> "Nabokov Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com/>
>>> Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View Nabokv-L
>>> Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage subscription
>>> options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>>> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
>>> co-editors.
>>
>>
>> Search the archive
>> <http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu=en> Contact
>> the Editors <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu> Visit "Nabokov
>> Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com>
>> Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View
>> Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage
>> subscription options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
>> co-editors.
>>
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/
ears without upsetting others. Is it the combination of sound and meaning
that grates? Apart from a few onomatopoeic words, sounds and meanings have
no innate connection. Recall Saussure¹s key notion that the mapping from
signifier to signified is quite arbitrary, a point that VN and some
Nabokovians choose to ignore. It¹s fine to indulge in puns and word games as
long as you don¹t start attaching mystical significance to accidental
resonances and anagrams. Thus, when VN is discussing tribal antagonisms (in
one of his Literary Lecture anthologies ref to follow), he adds the
warning: remember that stranger rhymes with danger. And so it does, but it
also rhymes with manger, a place of rest for budding messiahs. The example
also loses ³punch² when you consider semantic drift: in Chaucer¹s day danger
meant aloofness! Yes, VN is playfully weaving verbal ³conceits² with no
serious claim that strangers are dangerous because of a few shared
syllables. Yet one must remain alert against endowing words and sounds with
fanciful extra-linguistic and a-historical ³baggage.²
Judging sounds as sweet or sour is very much a cultural exercise. The Finns
love their rat-a-tat delivery; those harsh grunts you hear watching Japanese
manga movies may well be sublime declarations of undying love; a Xhosa
clicked lullaby can set your teeth on edge. We develop the stereotypes: sing
in Italian; make love in French; pray in Latin; drill in German; soul-search
in Russian; joke in Yiddish; and in English? I find that hard to pin down.
As the lingua franca, it¹s become truly ³general purpose.²
So, why does sex sound ugly while the same sibilants and gutturals in
exciting (literally) sound so exciting?
Is there a lurking puritanical objection to the sex act itself? Exactly!
skb
On 15/09/2008 17:56, "Charles Nicol" <chaznicol@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>
> Joseph Aisenberg notes that Edmund Wilson also disliked the sound of the word
> "sex," writing to VN "as if Nabokov's and the narrator's opinions were one and
> the same." In fact, they are. See the early (1964) Playboy interview, where
> VN essentially repeats what V says.
>
> Chaz
>
>
> --- On Sat, 9/13/08, joseph Aisenberg <vanveen13@SBCGLOBAL.NET> wrote:
>> From: joseph Aisenberg <vanveen13@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
>> Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] [QUERY] Sebastian Knight
>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>> Date: Saturday, September 13, 2008, 4:02 PM
>>
>>
>>
>> --- On Thu, 9/11/08, jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
>>> From: jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US>
>>> Subject: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] [QUERY] Sebastian Knight
>>> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
>>> Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008, 9:42 AM
>>>
>>> The book "V" is writing, very probably the one I happen to be reading, is
>>> named "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight".
>>> Mr. Goodman's biography ( it doesn't mention SK's half-brother, our "V", who
>>> is therefore publicly turned into a "garrulous impostor") received the title
>>> "Tragedy of Sebastian Knight."
>>>
>>> Query: The choice of omitting a more familiar "The" has a special meaning or
>>> context for English-speaking folks?
>>> J.A. In my Library of America edition of the book, pg. 53, the title to
>>> Goodman's biography reads The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight, with the article
>>> out front, and also lists it that way on page 49 as well. Even if it did
>>> not, aside from a certain awkwardness, there would be no special meaning
>>> that I could think of. On your second query, I have not read any full
>>> articles myself comparing them, but Michael Wood in his discussion of the
>>> TRLSK, "Lost Souls", in The Magician's doubts, does make one little
>>> connection that I thought was interesting. He points out that this line:
>>> 'Naturally, I cannot touch upon the intimate side of their relationship,
>>> firstly, because it would be ridculous to discuss what no one can definitely
>>> assert, and secondly because the very sound of the word "sex" with its
>>> hissing vulgarity and the "ks, ks" catcall at the end, seems so inane to me
>>> that I cannot help doubting whether there is any real idea behind the word.'
>>> (pg. 81 Library of Americ ed.)--has a certain similarity to the hysterical
>>> hypocritical prissy tone of some of Kinbote's writing. Off the subject, in
>>> Emund Wilson's letter to Nabokov responding to the book he said he also
>>> thought "sex" was an ugly word too, as if Nabokov's and the narrator's
>>> opinions were one and the same. There definitely does seem to be an odd echo
>>> between V. and Kinbote, except that V. is a mild mannered and completely
>>> ethical person set adrift by mourning for a lost loved one and Kinbote a
>>> freak without much in the way of scruples, though both of them try to
>>> appropriate their subjects in a strange internal way for personal purposes
>>> that are hard to grasp. In both books Nabokov lets an ambiguity about the
>>> dramatis personae hang over them at the end. In both he suggests that either
>>> the narrators invented their subjects, or that conversely that the narrators
>>> were the ones invented by their subjects, then suddenly at the end hints, in
>>> both TRLSK and PF, that the whole thing was invented by Nabokov himself so
>>> that separations between narrator and subject melt together without entirely
>>> dissolving them; in these books he doesn't go as far as he did in Bend
>>> Sinister. I've never been exactly sure why he does this half-measure version
>>> of self-revelation. Seems meant to suggest something cosmic while
>>> simultaneously funning illusionism without ever quite doing either, probably
>>> because he was trying to acheive both. Or maybe he wanted to have it point
>>> to a truth outside the book while retaining a kind of psychological
>>> coherence--this melting of themselves into the other is what the narrators
>>> would like to do and at the end, once we've seen their utter failures in
>>> this department, ironically claim to have acheived.
>>>
>>> A second (minor) query: Could anyone inform me if there are articles that
>>> compare "V" and Charles Kinbote?
>>> (The first paragraph, revealing Olga Olegovna Orlov's name and filled with
>>> personal garrulous insertions looks very kinbotean in my eyes...)
>>> Search the archive
>>> <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
>>> "Nabokov Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com/>
>>> Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View Nabokv-L
>>> Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage subscription
>>> options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>>>
>>> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
>>> co-editors.
>>> Search the archive
>>> <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
>>> "Nabokov Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com/>
>>> Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View Nabokv-L
>>> Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage subscription
>>> options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>>> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
>>> co-editors.
>>
>>
>> Search the archive
>> <http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu=en> Contact
>> the Editors <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu> Visit "Nabokov
>> Online Journal" <http://www.nabokovonline.com>
>> Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm> View
>> Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm> Manage
>> subscription options <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/>
>> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
>> co-editors.
>>
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/