Maurice Couturier: "In his "American Scholar" article about The Original of Laura Brian
covers a lot of interesting ground about his own involvement with Nabokov as a
scholar and a friend of Vera; he also offers inspiring critical comments about
the novel itself, and announces the publication of new Nabokov material we all
look forward to. There are still a few questions concerning TOOL which I would
like to address. Despite his extended comment about the opening, I still think
there is nothing really new here. Someone mentioned the opening of To the
Lighthouse; I think the opening of My Dalloway makes even more sense... Nabokov
never outdid Virginia Woolf in this kind of discursive game (see the samples of
it I analyzed in "La Figure de l’auteur"). Brian’s explanations concerning the
fact that no one spotted Nabokov in the quiz are interesting but not sufficient
in my opinion. I have been a translator of Nabokov for over thirty years now and
I never had to deal with a text of his so underdetermined poetically, though
there are a few good passages of course. Had he had time to finish the novel,
there is no doubt that he would have rewritten even the almost finished first
chapter. In most of his other novels, Nabokov is indeed the perfect dictator,
making sure that the reader won’t misuse his words and run away with his text.
William Gass: “when readers read as if the words on the page were only fleeting
visual events, and not signs to be sung inside themselves – so that the author’s
voice is stilled – the author’s hand must reach out into the space of the page
and put a print upon it that will be unmistakable, uneradicable. With lipstick,
perhaps.” (Representation and Performance in Postmodern Literature, ed. by M.
Couturier, Delta, 1983, p. 41). Nabokov didn’t have the time and the energy to
achieve that in this case.I wish, also, Brian had addressed the question of who
invents whom. Who is Eric, who is Ivan Vaughan? Is “Aurora” another text,
another book?..."
JM: In
relation to the innovation found in TOoL's opening lines, when it
is compared with a train of other VN openings, as they've been by "The
New Yorker" critic, Anthony Lane (quoted by Fulmerford), we may note qua
first sentences: "their lack of preamble or introduction. The reader
is almost always set down at some mid point of the narrative.'... 'Again and
again, with polite indifference, the stories drop us in media res, and
leave us to work out what on earth the res might be'." - Cf.
VN's The Circle: "In the second place, because he was
possessed by a sudden mad hankering after Russia".
Couturier's
discussion about Mrs. Dalloway is ellucidating in more levels than this
one , and his added quotation from W.Gass, too - plus the
enticing bibliography he added.
I was very thrilled when I read
about Brian Boyd's future projects concerning Nabokov's still unpublished
letters, poems and writings, but I checked myself. There's a difference in
following Nabokov/Wilson's exchanges, or his open letters to his
publishers, and his deliberately-voiced strong opinions, and what we
may find in his more intimate conversation with wife and family, and
in his unrevised poems.
I feel that TOoL caused a lot of
exposure to him, for it was aimed at the readers in general,
and subjected to a volley of important, often cruel, critical
reviews which considered the "novel" for what it's worth and,
coherently, forgot all about the ailing author, totally at
their mercy, deprived of repartees and his
effective authorial "dictator's voice." I keep hoping that the edition of Nabokov's
archival treasures shall be preferably directed to Nabokov scholars,
art historians and such, instead of opened to the public in
general.