Subject
Re: Nabokov & [the] Poe[etesque]?
Date
Body
af369@acorn.net
Donald Barton Johnson <chtodel@humanitas.ucsb.edu> wrote:
>In return for the recommendation [of Lee Siegel's Love in a Dead
>Language], I ask only that you share a favorite "Nabokovesque" title with
>me and NABOKV-L.
"I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy--I had nearly
said for the pity--of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I
have been in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control.
I would wish them to seek out for me, in the details I am about to give,
some little oasis of _fatality_ amid a wilderness of error."
In this narrative, a depraved character is mocked, shadowed, and thwarted
by a mysterious double. Humbert Humbert and Clare Quilty? No, William
Wilson and his namesake in Poe's story with the same name.
Having suggested that a work of Poe is Nabokovesque, it seems only fair to
ask what works (what other works, besides LOLITA, in whole or part) of
Nabokov might be described as Poelike.
Jeff Farmer
Donald Barton Johnson <chtodel@humanitas.ucsb.edu> wrote:
>In return for the recommendation [of Lee Siegel's Love in a Dead
>Language], I ask only that you share a favorite "Nabokovesque" title with
>me and NABOKV-L.
"I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy--I had nearly
said for the pity--of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I
have been in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control.
I would wish them to seek out for me, in the details I am about to give,
some little oasis of _fatality_ amid a wilderness of error."
In this narrative, a depraved character is mocked, shadowed, and thwarted
by a mysterious double. Humbert Humbert and Clare Quilty? No, William
Wilson and his namesake in Poe's story with the same name.
Having suggested that a work of Poe is Nabokovesque, it seems only fair to
ask what works (what other works, besides LOLITA, in whole or part) of
Nabokov might be described as Poelike.
Jeff Farmer