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Re: Pale Fire and Lolita: nympholepts and poetic epiphanies
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JM (a past VN-L posting) "...In Pale Fire, in a note by Charles Kinbote [to line 920:"little hairs stand on end"] remarks: "Alfred Housman (1859-1936), whose collection The Shropshire Lad vies with the In Memoriam of Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) in representing, perhaps (no, delete this craven "perhaps"), the highest achievement of English poetry in a hundred years, says somewhere (in a foreword?) exactly the opposite: The bristling of thrilled little hairs obstructed his barbering; but since both Alfreds certainly used an Ordinary Razor, and John Shade an ancient Gillette, the discrepancy may have been due to the use of different instruments." Calasso writes that Housman recommended that a person should check if a sequence of words, pronounced in a soft voice while the razor glides, in the early morning, over the skin of the face, can cause an erection of the hairs of the beard while, at the same time, "a shiver runs down the dorsal spine." [ ] Housman's words in "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (9 May 1933) are: "one of these symptoms was described in connexion with another object by Eliphaz the Temanite: 'A spirit passed before my face: the hair of my flesh stood up'. Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act. This particular symptom is accompanied by a shiver down the spine; there is another which consists in a constriction of the throat and a precipitation of water to the eyes; and there is a third which I can only describe by borrowing a phrase from one of Keats' s last letters, where he says, speaking of Fanny Brawne, 'everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear'. The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach."
Jansy Mello (another past VN-L posting, retrieved online, with no date nor my name): "Expressions related to an emotion that was stimulated by a great work of art ("a raising of the dorsal hairs" and a "spinal tingle" - with variants) were favored by Vladimir Nabokov. In a more general sense the "raising of the dorsal hairs" is employed by biologists to indicate an aggressive response from an animal...However, whenever this kind of physiological response is applied to a reaction to great art, I always thought it had originated from Nabokov's precepts (in his fiction and in his non-fiction). At times more recent writers employed it, but it always seemed that then they were making a reference to VN. Today I found its use in a 1986 text, with no Nabokovian tag, authored by Ray Bradbury (the translation and underlining are mine)." I wrote the title The Lake in the first page of a story...two hours after I'd been sitting in front of my typing-machine in a sunny verandah, with tears dropping from the tip of my nose and my dorsal hairs standing erect. Why was there an erection of hairs and a running nose? I perceived that, at last, I'd managed to write a really good story. The first one, in ten years of writing."...I now wonder if these expressions are regularly used in connection to "Art" - if they are a common idiom which as a foreginer I mistakenly attributed to Nabokov due to his appurtenance to the worlds of literature and science.(Cf. Ray Bradbury: "Run Fast, Stand Still, or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New Ghosts from Old Minds," How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by J. A. Williamson, Writers Digest Books, 1986; collected in Zen in the Art of Writing)
Jansy Mello (today): Calasso's description of Housman's erection of (facial) hairs and a spinal thrill led me to inquire, again, Nabokov's emphasis about his aesthetic reaction by an "erection of (the small dorsal) hairs." I tried to recover some of its occurrences in the internet. There are various curious entries.* After being referred to Leland de la Durantaye's book "Style is Matter, The moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov" (Cornell University Press,2007) I found out that his research into the theme is very thorough. He indicates AE Housman's "The Name and Nature of Poetry" in the bibliography. In a footnote, LD explains the reasons why he chose to dwell on the spinal issue and cites Rorty, who referred in passing to Nabokov's "Housman tingles" and mentions Housman's idea that "poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual."
Kinbote has noted well: The difference between Housman's bristlings and John Shade's must be related to their choice of an Ordinary Razor or an ancient Gillette blade. Anyway, Nabokov's and Bradbury's spinal reaction is independent of their relating poetry and shaving, or to any aggressive animal neural "horripilation"...
A few excerpts from LD's "The Phenomenology of the Spine"(p.57-59):
" [Nabokov] describes how this spinal reaction eclipses the colder, more cognitive aspects of reading. "In order to bask in that magic [of a brillian novel], Nabokov says, " a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading. Then with a pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass" (LL,6). The author notes that the "account above is anything but an isolated instance....in his discussion of Kafka, he states that 'no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled'."(LL,252)...In his lecture on Dickens... "All we have to do when reading with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades.The little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and science...The brain only continues the spine: the wick really goes through the whole length of the candle. If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing" (LL,54)..." I repeat again and again it is no use reading a book at all if you do not read it with your back" (LL, 64). ..."Appel remarked of Nabokov that "he would conclude a lecture with rhapsodic apostrophe to our writer's style: 'Feel it in your spine..the upper spine, the vertebrae tipped at the head with a divine flame!' "(Appel 1971,84). In Strong Opinions Nabokov refers to "the spinal twinge which is the only valid reaction to a new piece of poetry"... Leland de la Durantaye quotes from SO, p.134,41 and the 1967 interview in SO, 66. The author also recalls Pale Fire and Shade's aesthetic views...reported by Kinbote (note to line 172 "books and people",p;155) and Shade's final canto with "the shiver of 'a triple ripple' over the skin". LD mentions Nabokovs "The Poem" (1944) and lines in Speak,Memory, p.212. There are references to it in Ada (p.39), in Selected Letters,p.129, in Transparent Things (TT,75) and in Lolita (AL,52,172,36,126).
............................................................
* 1.:Delight is "the the sudden erection of your small dorsal hairs ... www.somethingchanged.com.au/.../delight-is-the...." http://www.wired. com/wiredscience/2011/07/why-does-beauty-exist/ "Ed Yong summarizes a new investigation into the neural substrate of beauty:
Tomohiro Ishizu and Semir Zeki from University College London watched the brains of 21 volunteers as they looked at 30 paintings and listened to 30 musical excerpts. All the while, they were lying inside an fMRI scanner, a machine that measures blood flow to different parts of the brain and shows which are most active. The recruits rated each piece as "beautiful", "indifferent" or "ugly"..."
2. June 5, 1988, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 3, Column 1; Book Review Desk SUMMER READING; TIME HAS BEEN KIND TO THE NYMPHET: 'LOLITA' 30 YEARS LATER by Erica Jong: "..People who cannot tell the difference between that sort of masturbatory stimulation and imaginative literature deserve, in fact, the garbage they get. The erection of small dorsal hairs is the issue here and not, as is commonly assumed, other sorts of tumescence. he New York Times: Book Review Search Article www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/20/.../16009.htm.
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Jansy Mello (another past VN-L posting, retrieved online, with no date nor my name): "Expressions related to an emotion that was stimulated by a great work of art ("a raising of the dorsal hairs" and a "spinal tingle" - with variants) were favored by Vladimir Nabokov. In a more general sense the "raising of the dorsal hairs" is employed by biologists to indicate an aggressive response from an animal...However, whenever this kind of physiological response is applied to a reaction to great art, I always thought it had originated from Nabokov's precepts (in his fiction and in his non-fiction). At times more recent writers employed it, but it always seemed that then they were making a reference to VN. Today I found its use in a 1986 text, with no Nabokovian tag, authored by Ray Bradbury (the translation and underlining are mine)." I wrote the title The Lake in the first page of a story...two hours after I'd been sitting in front of my typing-machine in a sunny verandah, with tears dropping from the tip of my nose and my dorsal hairs standing erect. Why was there an erection of hairs and a running nose? I perceived that, at last, I'd managed to write a really good story. The first one, in ten years of writing."...I now wonder if these expressions are regularly used in connection to "Art" - if they are a common idiom which as a foreginer I mistakenly attributed to Nabokov due to his appurtenance to the worlds of literature and science.(Cf. Ray Bradbury: "Run Fast, Stand Still, or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New Ghosts from Old Minds," How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by J. A. Williamson, Writers Digest Books, 1986; collected in Zen in the Art of Writing)
Jansy Mello (today): Calasso's description of Housman's erection of (facial) hairs and a spinal thrill led me to inquire, again, Nabokov's emphasis about his aesthetic reaction by an "erection of (the small dorsal) hairs." I tried to recover some of its occurrences in the internet. There are various curious entries.* After being referred to Leland de la Durantaye's book "Style is Matter, The moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov" (Cornell University Press,2007) I found out that his research into the theme is very thorough. He indicates AE Housman's "The Name and Nature of Poetry" in the bibliography. In a footnote, LD explains the reasons why he chose to dwell on the spinal issue and cites Rorty, who referred in passing to Nabokov's "Housman tingles" and mentions Housman's idea that "poetry indeed seems to me more physical than intellectual."
Kinbote has noted well: The difference between Housman's bristlings and John Shade's must be related to their choice of an Ordinary Razor or an ancient Gillette blade. Anyway, Nabokov's and Bradbury's spinal reaction is independent of their relating poetry and shaving, or to any aggressive animal neural "horripilation"...
A few excerpts from LD's "The Phenomenology of the Spine"(p.57-59):
" [Nabokov] describes how this spinal reaction eclipses the colder, more cognitive aspects of reading. "In order to bask in that magic [of a brillian novel], Nabokov says, " a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading. Then with a pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass" (LL,6). The author notes that the "account above is anything but an isolated instance....in his discussion of Kafka, he states that 'no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled'."(LL,252)...In his lecture on Dickens... "All we have to do when reading with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades.The little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and science...The brain only continues the spine: the wick really goes through the whole length of the candle. If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing" (LL,54)..." I repeat again and again it is no use reading a book at all if you do not read it with your back" (LL, 64). ..."Appel remarked of Nabokov that "he would conclude a lecture with rhapsodic apostrophe to our writer's style: 'Feel it in your spine..the upper spine, the vertebrae tipped at the head with a divine flame!' "(Appel 1971,84). In Strong Opinions Nabokov refers to "the spinal twinge which is the only valid reaction to a new piece of poetry"... Leland de la Durantaye quotes from SO, p.134,41 and the 1967 interview in SO, 66. The author also recalls Pale Fire and Shade's aesthetic views...reported by Kinbote (note to line 172 "books and people",p;155) and Shade's final canto with "the shiver of 'a triple ripple' over the skin". LD mentions Nabokovs "The Poem" (1944) and lines in Speak,Memory, p.212. There are references to it in Ada (p.39), in Selected Letters,p.129, in Transparent Things (TT,75) and in Lolita (AL,52,172,36,126).
............................................................
* 1.:Delight is "the the sudden erection of your small dorsal hairs ... www.somethingchanged.com.au/.../delight-is-the...." http://www.wired. com/wiredscience/2011/07/why-does-beauty-exist/ "Ed Yong summarizes a new investigation into the neural substrate of beauty:
Tomohiro Ishizu and Semir Zeki from University College London watched the brains of 21 volunteers as they looked at 30 paintings and listened to 30 musical excerpts. All the while, they were lying inside an fMRI scanner, a machine that measures blood flow to different parts of the brain and shows which are most active. The recruits rated each piece as "beautiful", "indifferent" or "ugly"..."
2. June 5, 1988, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 3, Column 1; Book Review Desk SUMMER READING; TIME HAS BEEN KIND TO THE NYMPHET: 'LOLITA' 30 YEARS LATER by Erica Jong: "..People who cannot tell the difference between that sort of masturbatory stimulation and imaginative literature deserve, in fact, the garbage they get. The erection of small dorsal hairs is the issue here and not, as is commonly assumed, other sorts of tumescence. he New York Times: Book Review Search Article www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/20/.../16009.htm.
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/