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Re Sandy Klein: Chekhov and Nabokov
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From the address http://www.hindu.com/lr/2007/03/04/stories/2007030400250500.htm, Sandy Klein posted a Literary Review: SECOND THOUGHTS
Poet of the hopeless , written by NAVTEJ SARNA
I selected one of the last paragraphs: "In Chekhov's stories, Gorky felt, "everything is strange, lonely, motionless, helpless. The horizon, blue and empty, melts into the pale sky, and its breath is terribly cold upon the earth, which is covered with frozen mud." As for Nabokov, Chekhov wrote "the way one person relates to another the most important things in his life, slowly and yet without a break, in a slightly subdued voice." And many others - Virginia Woolf, Faulkner, John Gardner - acknowledged the Russian master who had made mood the predominant vehicle of conveying emotion, who said everything by leaving out more than he put in. And so in that faraway winter, as over the last month, the slim volume proved the truth of V.S. Pritchett's words that the real short story is "something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing."
Nabokov's sentence about Chekhov offers us something about Nabokov himself ( slow, important and uninterrupted self-revelation, softly narrated). There is a word that was sufficiently ambiguous to make me stop and wonder: " one person relates to another". He is describing not only the obvious meaning of " a person narrates to another" but the secondary sense in "relates", i.e, establishes a connection that becomes as important as what is being conveyed btween the two participants.
Pritchett's words also demanded attention because a "glimpse from the corner of the eye" is not always "a passing glimpse".
Again, spealists are invited to correct me, but I remember that our eye uses various areas to register photo-sensations. The most sensitive receptors are situated almost at "the corner of the eye". When there are too many stars taking part of a clear night, to better be able to watch a single one, the astronomer has to look at it in a slightly out-of-focus way, to put into operation the more sensitive receptors. Those that will discern "a real short story" among many often brilliant others.
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Poet of the hopeless , written by NAVTEJ SARNA
I selected one of the last paragraphs: "In Chekhov's stories, Gorky felt, "everything is strange, lonely, motionless, helpless. The horizon, blue and empty, melts into the pale sky, and its breath is terribly cold upon the earth, which is covered with frozen mud." As for Nabokov, Chekhov wrote "the way one person relates to another the most important things in his life, slowly and yet without a break, in a slightly subdued voice." And many others - Virginia Woolf, Faulkner, John Gardner - acknowledged the Russian master who had made mood the predominant vehicle of conveying emotion, who said everything by leaving out more than he put in. And so in that faraway winter, as over the last month, the slim volume proved the truth of V.S. Pritchett's words that the real short story is "something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing."
Nabokov's sentence about Chekhov offers us something about Nabokov himself ( slow, important and uninterrupted self-revelation, softly narrated). There is a word that was sufficiently ambiguous to make me stop and wonder: " one person relates to another". He is describing not only the obvious meaning of " a person narrates to another" but the secondary sense in "relates", i.e, establishes a connection that becomes as important as what is being conveyed btween the two participants.
Pritchett's words also demanded attention because a "glimpse from the corner of the eye" is not always "a passing glimpse".
Again, spealists are invited to correct me, but I remember that our eye uses various areas to register photo-sensations. The most sensitive receptors are situated almost at "the corner of the eye". When there are too many stars taking part of a clear night, to better be able to watch a single one, the astronomer has to look at it in a slightly out-of-focus way, to put into operation the more sensitive receptors. Those that will discern "a real short story" among many often brilliant others.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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