Subject
Re: Query: Bronte's influence (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Holtie <mmorris@netunlimited.net>
On the Bronte influence question---perhaps we all need to take the cold
bath of reality (or "reality") here. Knowing what we know about Nabokov's
opinion of women writers--to say nothing of the Bronte's as "text" over
"texture" writers (where are the Dickensian/Gogolian stylistics in
_Wuthering Heights_, to say nothing of the--in my humble opinion--vastly
inferior _Jane Eyre_?), I would be willing to bet my first edition of _Pale
Fire_ that Nabokov found the Brontes as cold and dull as a foggy night in
a Gothic novel, and completely useless as referential source material.
This is not to say that Nabokov, in his vigorous aesthetic principles, did
not deny himself the pleasures of Emily's genius--I think he probably did,
just as he missed out on the fun of Stendhal's novels, and _The Sound And
The Fury_....but that's another question, another discusssion...
On the Bronte influence question---perhaps we all need to take the cold
bath of reality (or "reality") here. Knowing what we know about Nabokov's
opinion of women writers--to say nothing of the Bronte's as "text" over
"texture" writers (where are the Dickensian/Gogolian stylistics in
_Wuthering Heights_, to say nothing of the--in my humble opinion--vastly
inferior _Jane Eyre_?), I would be willing to bet my first edition of _Pale
Fire_ that Nabokov found the Brontes as cold and dull as a foggy night in
a Gothic novel, and completely useless as referential source material.
This is not to say that Nabokov, in his vigorous aesthetic principles, did
not deny himself the pleasures of Emily's genius--I think he probably did,
just as he missed out on the fun of Stendhal's novels, and _The Sound And
The Fury_....but that's another question, another discusssion...