Subject
Re: Nabokov and Pedophilia (fwd)
Date
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From: Rahat Glass-Husain <rahat@sprintmail.com>
I apologize for the unnecessarily acid tone of my last email. Also for
incorrect use of the word "naive" which I meant in the sense of "new to
Nabokov" rather than "unsophisticated."
I don't think it's vulgar or naive (in the usual sense) to talk about
identifying with VN's "victim" characters. I just think it's a mistake.
In what follows I'm speaking only for myself, a non-academic reader.
A large part of the poignancy of VN's writing is the agonizing sense of
separation from the important or tragic events which is felt by the
central character, and by the reader through the narration. To use just
one example, part of what's so awful about David's death in Bend
Sinister is that we really don't know exactly what was done to him AND
DON'T WANT TO. The only knowledge we can have of what took place must be
filtered through "therapeutic" jargon. By the time we learn of it, the
event is already over and irrevocable. What little of it we see is
through Krug's eyes, but he is relying on the doctor for his own
knowledge. At this particular point in the book, I find identification
with David to be impossible. He's too far away.
My impression is that the any real identification taking place in VN's
novels is a three-way cross between the author, the reader and whichever
character happens to be the spectator of tragic events. Sometimes it's
the spectator who actually causes the events (Humbert and Van) and this
often creates confusion. I can find, offhand, only one novel character
who is both victim and observer, Cincinnatus, and even he can somehow
walk away from the action in the end. There are a couple of other
characters like this in the short stories. However, the real tragedy is
usually at one remove from the narrator/spectator, who is in turn
separated from the reader because of his own vagaries. Sure, we can id
with poor Dolores but we've got to fight our way through several frames
of reference first.
Besides, how can the reader separate out one individual to stick with
consistently? We hardly ever reach the level of full immersion, we're
whisked around from point of view to point of view, we live in the past,
we look back on the present from the future, we focus at one moment on
the baby-toes of a piece of biscuit and the next we're omniscient. It's
precisely the fleeting nature of identification with any fragment in
this kaleidoscope that gives the writing its impact. Nabokov is his own
genre. It may be possible to work out a useful study of his
identification with various characters, but I believe it'd be incredibly
complex.
Thanks for letting me babble on,
Rahat Glass-Husain
I apologize for the unnecessarily acid tone of my last email. Also for
incorrect use of the word "naive" which I meant in the sense of "new to
Nabokov" rather than "unsophisticated."
I don't think it's vulgar or naive (in the usual sense) to talk about
identifying with VN's "victim" characters. I just think it's a mistake.
In what follows I'm speaking only for myself, a non-academic reader.
A large part of the poignancy of VN's writing is the agonizing sense of
separation from the important or tragic events which is felt by the
central character, and by the reader through the narration. To use just
one example, part of what's so awful about David's death in Bend
Sinister is that we really don't know exactly what was done to him AND
DON'T WANT TO. The only knowledge we can have of what took place must be
filtered through "therapeutic" jargon. By the time we learn of it, the
event is already over and irrevocable. What little of it we see is
through Krug's eyes, but he is relying on the doctor for his own
knowledge. At this particular point in the book, I find identification
with David to be impossible. He's too far away.
My impression is that the any real identification taking place in VN's
novels is a three-way cross between the author, the reader and whichever
character happens to be the spectator of tragic events. Sometimes it's
the spectator who actually causes the events (Humbert and Van) and this
often creates confusion. I can find, offhand, only one novel character
who is both victim and observer, Cincinnatus, and even he can somehow
walk away from the action in the end. There are a couple of other
characters like this in the short stories. However, the real tragedy is
usually at one remove from the narrator/spectator, who is in turn
separated from the reader because of his own vagaries. Sure, we can id
with poor Dolores but we've got to fight our way through several frames
of reference first.
Besides, how can the reader separate out one individual to stick with
consistently? We hardly ever reach the level of full immersion, we're
whisked around from point of view to point of view, we live in the past,
we look back on the present from the future, we focus at one moment on
the baby-toes of a piece of biscuit and the next we're omniscient. It's
precisely the fleeting nature of identification with any fragment in
this kaleidoscope that gives the writing its impact. Nabokov is his own
genre. It may be possible to work out a useful study of his
identification with various characters, but I believe it'd be incredibly
complex.
Thanks for letting me babble on,
Rahat Glass-Husain