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Re: Distortions and slanting views
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JM: Yesterday, after I read American writer J.C.Oates expounding on Nabokov and Plath (and their "egos"), I felt a sudden craving for a sober Encyclopedia. It was when I remembered J. L. Borges's Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which animals are classified as: "1. those that belong to the Emperor, 2.embalmed ones, 3.those that are trained, 4.suckling pigs, 5.mermaids, 6.fabulous ones, 7.stray dogs, 8.those included in the present classification, 9.those that tremble as if they were mad, 10.innumerable ones, 11.those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, 12.others, 13 those that have just broken a flower vase, 14.those that from a long way off look like flies" - and I felt my "ego" (or my "ontological stability," or whatever) recover its pulse....
N-L policies recommend that more than two L-participants exchange thoughts and opinions on a regular basis, as in ping-pong, so as to distribute the postings in a fair way among everybody else. However, quite often, we have a succession of monologues. A dialogue is preferrable and, with the EDs permitission I'd like to address "Bruce Stone" and write "you," instead of directing myself to his sentences (as I, inadvertently, did in my last posting, while trying to get more impersonal).
I wish others would join in, as it happened when the debates about "twelve-year olds" blossomed away.
Bruce Stone has addressed some of my sentences, one by one. The first concerns an 'unobstructed view' and 'ontological stability' (which I consider to be seldom attainable) and, while he agrees with it, he also makes it clear that "this seems to have been Nabokov's insight--one of the things his fiction discloses."
The first item (the unobstructed view) was comically presented in Pale Fire by Kinbote's "cavesdropping" with his Zemblan translations, or while directly "eavesdropping" on Shade, like the shadow of a sun-dial.
In relation to Bruce Stone's second item, on the reader's need to identify a stable and consistent external referent (even when it's only another fiction or "reality"), there's Kinbote again, and Humbert Humbert, those wonderfully "unreliable narrators" ...
.
Another point is related to "existential evasiveness...pernicious or benign: when is the time ripe to take an attitude and interfere?" and the example from Nabokov's intervention "to save Krug by visiting madness upon him, and granting him a glimpse into his creator's 'paradise'."
Bruce Stone wonders, in his reply: "what kind of intervention you're suggesting, but maybe the many articles that speak to these issues--searching for the "real" in Nabokov's fiction--can be counted as acts of such intervention." As I see it, once again the limits between life and fiction are intertwined, or they are flat-mirror reflections of one another.
I was thinking how often, in a reader's or in a writer's life, difficult questions are evaded and how Nabokov might have shied away, or hesistated too long before taking a step, as the one that could re-approach him to Sergey (aso).
However, what do you mean by "searching for the "real" in Nabokov's fiction"? I'm sure you don't mean pseudo-psycoanalytic interpretations (that's not "the real", surely). Nabokov seems to have been a veritable Perseus who could wield his pen-sword and his fiction-shield to describe, and therefore kill, his Medusa.
I fully agree with your opinion that it doesn't necessarily follow that, "because Nabokov tampers so thoroughly with the real, his work ends in nihilism or complete moral relativism (or a Nietzschean amorality). On the contrary, there seems to be an essential link between anamorphism and both art and immortality," but, after you described "Anamorphosis seems to be the precondition for the former, and offers intimations of the latter" (a marvellous insight!), and you attempted to "work out some sort of ethical equation: that is, N's fiction asks us to separate the pernicious from the benign delusion, or that it defines the pernicious as the imposition of one's own delusion onto another (which would link Humbert to Paduk, in a way)," you realized that it's not "necessary to go that far (or at least, this is where I prefer to get off the train)" and so will I!
btw: Without having any profund readings and wise information, I was struck by your coupling "nihilism" and "complete moral relativism", or a "Nietzschean amorality". I always thought that one of the stark defenders of Nabokov's humanism and morality was Richard Rorty - who is a "moral relativist".
Corrections are welcome!
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N-L policies recommend that more than two L-participants exchange thoughts and opinions on a regular basis, as in ping-pong, so as to distribute the postings in a fair way among everybody else. However, quite often, we have a succession of monologues. A dialogue is preferrable and, with the EDs permitission I'd like to address "Bruce Stone" and write "you," instead of directing myself to his sentences (as I, inadvertently, did in my last posting, while trying to get more impersonal).
I wish others would join in, as it happened when the debates about "twelve-year olds" blossomed away.
Bruce Stone has addressed some of my sentences, one by one. The first concerns an 'unobstructed view' and 'ontological stability' (which I consider to be seldom attainable) and, while he agrees with it, he also makes it clear that "this seems to have been Nabokov's insight--one of the things his fiction discloses."
The first item (the unobstructed view) was comically presented in Pale Fire by Kinbote's "cavesdropping" with his Zemblan translations, or while directly "eavesdropping" on Shade, like the shadow of a sun-dial.
In relation to Bruce Stone's second item, on the reader's need to identify a stable and consistent external referent (even when it's only another fiction or "reality"), there's Kinbote again, and Humbert Humbert, those wonderfully "unreliable narrators" ...
.
Another point is related to "existential evasiveness...pernicious or benign: when is the time ripe to take an attitude and interfere?" and the example from Nabokov's intervention "to save Krug by visiting madness upon him, and granting him a glimpse into his creator's 'paradise'."
Bruce Stone wonders, in his reply: "what kind of intervention you're suggesting, but maybe the many articles that speak to these issues--searching for the "real" in Nabokov's fiction--can be counted as acts of such intervention." As I see it, once again the limits between life and fiction are intertwined, or they are flat-mirror reflections of one another.
I was thinking how often, in a reader's or in a writer's life, difficult questions are evaded and how Nabokov might have shied away, or hesistated too long before taking a step, as the one that could re-approach him to Sergey (aso).
However, what do you mean by "searching for the "real" in Nabokov's fiction"? I'm sure you don't mean pseudo-psycoanalytic interpretations (that's not "the real", surely). Nabokov seems to have been a veritable Perseus who could wield his pen-sword and his fiction-shield to describe, and therefore kill, his Medusa.
I fully agree with your opinion that it doesn't necessarily follow that, "because Nabokov tampers so thoroughly with the real, his work ends in nihilism or complete moral relativism (or a Nietzschean amorality). On the contrary, there seems to be an essential link between anamorphism and both art and immortality," but, after you described "Anamorphosis seems to be the precondition for the former, and offers intimations of the latter" (a marvellous insight!), and you attempted to "work out some sort of ethical equation: that is, N's fiction asks us to separate the pernicious from the benign delusion, or that it defines the pernicious as the imposition of one's own delusion onto another (which would link Humbert to Paduk, in a way)," you realized that it's not "necessary to go that far (or at least, this is where I prefer to get off the train)" and so will I!
btw: Without having any profund readings and wise information, I was struck by your coupling "nihilism" and "complete moral relativism", or a "Nietzschean amorality". I always thought that one of the stark defenders of Nabokov's humanism and morality was Richard Rorty - who is a "moral relativist".
Corrections are welcome!
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/