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Re: Fetching Jewels From The Deep ....
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Arnie Perlstein [to JM's posting] "Just to be clear, when I am speaking about JA's or Shakespeare's shadow stories, I am talking about their stories being completely anamorphic, i.e., two parallel fictional universes, with all the same characters, but where, in the shadow story, there is all sorts of "offstage" action involving important characters of which the reader/audience is never explicitly made aware...My guess is that at least some of Nabokov's fiction has this sort of separate parallel fictional universe...that ...fits my above definition of a shadow story.Wilson was, in my view, a kind of literary critical Forrest Gump... unable to make the leap to
there being shadow stories."
JM: Should no other Nab-L participants join in the AP/JM discussion, it would result in the kind of ping-pong argumentation that we are advised against by Nab-L editorial policies...(but I'll try to redeem myself by adding a second ping-pong table to the basement).
I don't think that Wilson was unable to discern "shadow stories" in Nabokov (and elsewhere)! Nabokov's fiction abounds with almost limitless "separate parallel fictional universes" with extended sub-plots and even incidental characters.* I dare say he seldom resorted to a single "revealed story" (of the kind he described for "Signs and Symbols") because he was not simply a "yarn-spinner" but an "enchanter."**
VN to EW: "In connection with Mansfield Park I had them read the works mentioned by the characters in the novel - the two first cantos of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," Cowper's "The Task," passages from King Henry the Eighth, Crabbe's tale "The Parting Hour," bits of Johnson's The Idler, Browne's address to "A Pipe of Tobacco" (Imitation of Pope), Sterne's Sentimental Journey (the whole gate-and-no-key" passage comes from there - and the starling) and of course Lovers Vows. in Mrs Inchbald's inimitable translation (a scream)... I think I had more fun than my class." How like dear Professor Pnin enjoying his Pushkin class! Most of the Austen authors will be transmongrelized all over Nabokov's fiction, I think.
QUERY: Trying to find where there's a list of books Nabokov instructed his students to read following Austen's lead, I came across something by Updike on Nabokov: "he had been acquainted with German entomological works...his first literary success was a translation, in the Crimea, of some Heine songs for a Russian concert singer."
Would Sklyarenko, Don, Steve... know which were the Heine songs, and who was the Russian concert singer?
............................................................................................................................................................................................
* -Nabokov's eye for detail and the unexpected "life" bubbling up, is shown at the end of his CD lecture when he describes a humble guy, who holds horses and calls coaches, catching a coin: "this gesture, this one gesture, with its epithet "over-handed" - a trifle - but the man is alive foreve in a good reader's mind." ..."A great writer's world is indeed a magic democracy where even some very minor character, even the most incidental character like the person who tosses the twopence, has the right to live and breed."
**- There's a different return to the theme of "yarns and enchanters" (Bower's ed, p.123): "A writer might be a good storyteller or a good moralist, but unless he be an enchanter, an artist, he is not a great writer. Dickens is a good moralist, a good storyteller, and a superb enchanter, but as a storyteller he lags somewhat behind his virtues. In other words, he is supremely good at picturing his characters and their habitats in any given situation, but there are flaws in his work when he tries to establish various links between these characters in a pattern of action" [...]
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there being shadow stories."
JM: Should no other Nab-L participants join in the AP/JM discussion, it would result in the kind of ping-pong argumentation that we are advised against by Nab-L editorial policies...(but I'll try to redeem myself by adding a second ping-pong table to the basement).
I don't think that Wilson was unable to discern "shadow stories" in Nabokov (and elsewhere)! Nabokov's fiction abounds with almost limitless "separate parallel fictional universes" with extended sub-plots and even incidental characters.* I dare say he seldom resorted to a single "revealed story" (of the kind he described for "Signs and Symbols") because he was not simply a "yarn-spinner" but an "enchanter."**
VN to EW: "In connection with Mansfield Park I had them read the works mentioned by the characters in the novel - the two first cantos of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," Cowper's "The Task," passages from King Henry the Eighth, Crabbe's tale "The Parting Hour," bits of Johnson's The Idler, Browne's address to "A Pipe of Tobacco" (Imitation of Pope), Sterne's Sentimental Journey (the whole gate-and-no-key" passage comes from there - and the starling) and of course Lovers Vows. in Mrs Inchbald's inimitable translation (a scream)... I think I had more fun than my class." How like dear Professor Pnin enjoying his Pushkin class! Most of the Austen authors will be transmongrelized all over Nabokov's fiction, I think.
QUERY: Trying to find where there's a list of books Nabokov instructed his students to read following Austen's lead, I came across something by Updike on Nabokov: "he had been acquainted with German entomological works...his first literary success was a translation, in the Crimea, of some Heine songs for a Russian concert singer."
Would Sklyarenko, Don, Steve... know which were the Heine songs, and who was the Russian concert singer?
............................................................................................................................................................................................
* -Nabokov's eye for detail and the unexpected "life" bubbling up, is shown at the end of his CD lecture when he describes a humble guy, who holds horses and calls coaches, catching a coin: "this gesture, this one gesture, with its epithet "over-handed" - a trifle - but the man is alive foreve in a good reader's mind." ..."A great writer's world is indeed a magic democracy where even some very minor character, even the most incidental character like the person who tosses the twopence, has the right to live and breed."
**- There's a different return to the theme of "yarns and enchanters" (Bower's ed, p.123): "A writer might be a good storyteller or a good moralist, but unless he be an enchanter, an artist, he is not a great writer. Dickens is a good moralist, a good storyteller, and a superb enchanter, but as a storyteller he lags somewhat behind his virtues. In other words, he is supremely good at picturing his characters and their habitats in any given situation, but there are flaws in his work when he tries to establish various links between these characters in a pattern of action" [...]
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/