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[THOUGHTS] Inventing Reality
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JM: As an addendum to a former posting concerning the reality of the great invented poet John Shade, now promoted by Gingko Press and, in particular, by the first paragraphs of Brian Boyd's accompanying article, I now bring up Leland de La Durantaye's considerations on fantasy and reality in his article Kafka's Reality and Nabokov's Fantasy. On Dwarves, Saints, Beetles, Symbolism, and Genius.
Writes Leland de la Durantaye: "Nabokov says at the outset of his Lectures on Literature ..."that great novels are great fairy tales"... For him, "we do not judge fairy tales by how accurately they reproduce a world we know-that is, we do not criticize fairy tales ...Nabokov does not wish his 'good readers' to judge Austen, Dickens, Flaubert, Stevenson, Proust, Joyce, or Kafka on the basis of how accurately they reflect the psychology and values of specific persons in the landscape of a specific place at a specific time."
Such assertion is quite distant from what one of Nabokov's characters understands as art and reality. Charles Kinbote's writes,: "without my notes Shade's text simply has no human reality at all since the human reality of such a poem as his ...has to depend entirely on the reality of its author and his surroundings...a reality that only my notes can provide," because for him the reality of Shade's poem depends of the reality of its author and his surroundings.
In this instance, Kinbote's opinion about art reflects a reality (an opinion) that is external to its fictional originator. Shade's reality, though, is of a different order, even when it's examined under the light of a literary testimony because his "near-death".vision of a white fountain "reeked with truth. It had the tone,/The quiddity and quaintness of its own/Reality. It was."
For Leland de La Durantaye, "the ample place Nabokov accords to "fantasy" is a direct result of the narrow space he accords to "reality." because, for Nabokov, the "creative writer. . . must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world.[...] "I tend more and more to regard the objective existence of all events as a form of impure imagination-hence my inverted commas around 'reality" {Strong Opinions 32]." *
There are other angles to examine Nabokov's ideas about reality, as expressed in Pale Fire: "The death of Oleg at fifteen, in a toboggan accident, helped to obliterate the reality of their adventure. A national revolution was needed to make that secret passage real again."
Here this idea seems to be at odds with most of his other observations and closer to a Freudian mechanism of "denial." It differs radically from what he adds in relation to Eystein's trompe l'oeil. In this instance the author warns the reader (even though the warning comes from Kinbote), that Eystein included a detail "which was really made of the material elsewhere imitated by paint" which represents "an essential flaw in Eystein's talent".For the narrator "reality" is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye." However I don't think that such an artistic "flaw" is exclusively Eystein's. We only need to recollect that his creator equally cultivates his own blend of fictional characters and real historical figures and this is a process that's roughly similar to adding 'a material usually imitated by paint'. It's in a later novel, when Van Veen discourses on artificial and real roses, that the reader will discover that this kind of mixture pertains to the field of enchanters and conjurers when Van Veen admits that he 'satisfied himself that those flowers were artificial and thought it puzzling that such imitations always pander so exclusively to the eye instead of also copying the damp fat feel of live petal and leaf. When he called next day...he touched a half-opened rose and was cheated of the sterile texture his fingertips had expected when cool life kissed them with pouting lips. 'My daughter,' said Mrs Tapirov, who saw his surprise, 'always puts a bunch of real ones among the fake pour attraper le client. You drew the joker.'
It's the joker that fools the client and the reader, as it's equally explained by Nabokov in Strong Opinions: "I am fond of chess but deception in chess, as in art, is only part of the game; it's part of the combination, part of the delightful possibilities, illusions, vistas of thought, which can be false vistas, perhaps. I think a good combination should always contain a certain element of deception."
My point is: In Nabokov's art can we safely distinguish natural "reality" and its element of "deception"? Can we trust Kinbote's instructions about the note-cards stolen from John Shade? Personally, I don't trust him.
Nevertheless the possibility of holding in my hands Gingko's real invented facsimile of Shade's cards is a fascinating privilege.
.........................................................................................................
* For someone who constantly rallies against psychoanalysis his conclusion is strange because it implicitly admits Freud's groundbreaking recognition of a "psychical reality" and of the importance of "fantasy."
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Writes Leland de la Durantaye: "Nabokov says at the outset of his Lectures on Literature ..."that great novels are great fairy tales"... For him, "we do not judge fairy tales by how accurately they reproduce a world we know-that is, we do not criticize fairy tales ...Nabokov does not wish his 'good readers' to judge Austen, Dickens, Flaubert, Stevenson, Proust, Joyce, or Kafka on the basis of how accurately they reflect the psychology and values of specific persons in the landscape of a specific place at a specific time."
Such assertion is quite distant from what one of Nabokov's characters understands as art and reality. Charles Kinbote's writes,: "without my notes Shade's text simply has no human reality at all since the human reality of such a poem as his ...has to depend entirely on the reality of its author and his surroundings...a reality that only my notes can provide," because for him the reality of Shade's poem depends of the reality of its author and his surroundings.
In this instance, Kinbote's opinion about art reflects a reality (an opinion) that is external to its fictional originator. Shade's reality, though, is of a different order, even when it's examined under the light of a literary testimony because his "near-death".vision of a white fountain "reeked with truth. It had the tone,/The quiddity and quaintness of its own/Reality. It was."
For Leland de La Durantaye, "the ample place Nabokov accords to "fantasy" is a direct result of the narrow space he accords to "reality." because, for Nabokov, the "creative writer. . . must possess the inborn capacity not only of recombining but of re-creating the given world.[...] "I tend more and more to regard the objective existence of all events as a form of impure imagination-hence my inverted commas around 'reality" {Strong Opinions 32]." *
There are other angles to examine Nabokov's ideas about reality, as expressed in Pale Fire: "The death of Oleg at fifteen, in a toboggan accident, helped to obliterate the reality of their adventure. A national revolution was needed to make that secret passage real again."
Here this idea seems to be at odds with most of his other observations and closer to a Freudian mechanism of "denial." It differs radically from what he adds in relation to Eystein's trompe l'oeil. In this instance the author warns the reader (even though the warning comes from Kinbote), that Eystein included a detail "which was really made of the material elsewhere imitated by paint" which represents "an essential flaw in Eystein's talent".For the narrator "reality" is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye." However I don't think that such an artistic "flaw" is exclusively Eystein's. We only need to recollect that his creator equally cultivates his own blend of fictional characters and real historical figures and this is a process that's roughly similar to adding 'a material usually imitated by paint'. It's in a later novel, when Van Veen discourses on artificial and real roses, that the reader will discover that this kind of mixture pertains to the field of enchanters and conjurers when Van Veen admits that he 'satisfied himself that those flowers were artificial and thought it puzzling that such imitations always pander so exclusively to the eye instead of also copying the damp fat feel of live petal and leaf. When he called next day...he touched a half-opened rose and was cheated of the sterile texture his fingertips had expected when cool life kissed them with pouting lips. 'My daughter,' said Mrs Tapirov, who saw his surprise, 'always puts a bunch of real ones among the fake pour attraper le client. You drew the joker.'
It's the joker that fools the client and the reader, as it's equally explained by Nabokov in Strong Opinions: "I am fond of chess but deception in chess, as in art, is only part of the game; it's part of the combination, part of the delightful possibilities, illusions, vistas of thought, which can be false vistas, perhaps. I think a good combination should always contain a certain element of deception."
My point is: In Nabokov's art can we safely distinguish natural "reality" and its element of "deception"? Can we trust Kinbote's instructions about the note-cards stolen from John Shade? Personally, I don't trust him.
Nevertheless the possibility of holding in my hands Gingko's real invented facsimile of Shade's cards is a fascinating privilege.
.........................................................................................................
* For someone who constantly rallies against psychoanalysis his conclusion is strange because it implicitly admits Freud's groundbreaking recognition of a "psychical reality" and of the importance of "fantasy."
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/