NABOKOV (long, fresh)
Philip Nikolayev
> Aside from your using irritatingly many imperative verbal
> constructions and tending to get unnecessarily personal, I find
> three major faults with your post: 1) the failure to answer a
> simple question; 2) a bewildering concealment of your point, if
> there be any, by bringing up 'Despair' in two mutually exclusive
> contexts, which is so obvious as to be intentional; 3) a most
> remarcable reply to my introducing the issue of anti-semitism.
> Put together, it's a little too much for me to digest. Unless you
> come up with acceptable explanations, I have no inclination to
> continue this discussion. So you'd get to drive the final nail into
> the poor comic fellow's coffin.
For better or worse, I am not in the proletarian undertaker's
business, but I let the esteemed dead bury themselves at leisure.
Sorry if you have found my postings unnecessarily personal. I shall
attempt to make a more extended argument about Nabokov, especially as
I have long wanted to say certain things about him in public. I'm
going to bring together the diverse threads of my preceding argument
into a more coherent whole. Lest you be disappointed, I confine myself
to making claims that I regard as new and significant. Since you want
me to be gentle and explicit rather than difficult or enigmatic, so be
it. I note, however, that should you choose to play by the same rule,
it still remains for you to show the validity of your own assertions.
I have deleted, hopefully without significant prejudice to our
subject-matter, certain unimportant segments of our previous
electronic bedsheet for the sake of keeping the exchange down to a
manageable size and retaining only the most relevant points.
I welcome any comments and suggestions.
MA
>>>>> By and large, I subscribe to the point of view of Nabokov's
>>>>> protagonist in the Gift: "When reading Dostoevsky, I feel as if
>>>>> I'm in the room in broad daylight, and the light overhead is on."
> PN
>>>> This is as cheap as Nabokov's stuffy 'strong opinions' about a
>>>> lot of other writers. In fact, there is no point of view here at
>>>> all, but merely a posture.
> MA
>>> I would agree that it is rather cheap, insomuch as it judges a
>>> rather self-evident shortcoming on the part of Dostoevsky to
>>> deliver a psychologically plausible narrative.
> PN
>> Please explain what grounds you have for this interpretation of
>> Nabokov's blathering. I, by contrast, would suggest that Nabokov
>> simply tries to cast an irresponsible aspersion whose rhetorical
>> effectiveness is calculated in proportion to its deliberate
>> vagueness and the condescending irony of its tone; in other words,
>> it does not 'judge', as you are pleased to insist, but merely
>> insinuates. Something generally unfavourable about nothing in particular.
MA
> Nabokov's hero finds Dostoevsky psychologically unconvincing, or
> that's what I interpret it to mean. I feel that way myself, too.
> Unlike you, I can't readily see how irresponsible it is. Hardly more
> so than the contrary; possibly less so than deeming it
> irresponsible. What 'grounds' for this 'interpretation' are going to
> quench your insatiable curiosity? I suggested as an example the
> murder scene and attached Joyce's view, and could also quote Yury
> Olyosha on that same scene (which I beleive to bear no less relation
> than your quoting Shahovskaya). Then I asked a Yes or No question,
> which you didn't answer, below.
The question, that is, whether or not I find the murder scene in
'Crime and Punishment' psychologically convincing. I could just as
well ask you if you'd stopped discussing theology with spectral
spruces on every decadent morning of your life. Not every yes-or-no
question is simple; I suspect that yours is phrased incorrectly.
Exactly what notion of psychological verisimilitude do you (and,
presumably, Nabokov) have in mind? To put this in your favourite po-mo
parlance, do you hold on to the allegedly antiquated representational
function of literary discourse, or embrace the arbitrarily stretchable,
poignantly Protean, reflexively disposed, eternally semiotic,
radiantly writerly _joi de texte_? Are you suggesting that in Godunov,
Nabokov entertains some sort of old-fashioned mimetic theory of art?
These clarifications have to be made, lest your 'psychological
plausibility' should remain the trite and artistically indifferent
subjectivist pseudo-concept that it is generally known to be in my
circles.
More radically put, I hardly find your question relevant to anything
outside your own mind (and perhaps Nabokov's, if the two of you indeed
are so genuinely in sync). Truth to tell, I don't care a whole lot
whether you, Nabokov or Nabokov's hero recognise the murder scene in
'Crime and Punishment', or Einstein's theory of relativity, or Frege's
theory of number, as 'psychologically convincing'. My own interest
lies in intellectual history, that is, in the history of communicable
abstractions, not amid emanations of anyone's private reverie.
I have commented earlier about Nabokov's inability to understand
certain cardinal abstractions. For example, he never had any adequate
understanding of politics, of ethics, of tragedy. At least the latter
two categories are essential to any meaningful reading of Dostoevsky;
it is therefore small wonder that Nabokov ultimately despaired of
coming to terms with him. Tragedy is a difficult aesthetic concept;
even Tolstoy had trouble with it and as a result somewhat comically
knocked Shakespeare as a mediocre playwright.
I believe that the theoretical underpinning of Nabokov's obscurantism
is largely derived from the British empiricists, though his scepticism
is hardly philosophically sophisticated. Evidence to this effect is
available. Take his diatribe against 'generalisations' in Godunov's
rather trashy treatise on Chernyshevsky: 'Only myopia condones the
blurry generalisations of ignorance. In high art and pure science,
detail is everything.' He dismisses Chernyshevsky as a 'myopic
materialist' for whom details were 'merely the aristocratic element in
the nation of general ideas'. I submit that this passage is almost
certainly a vulgarisation of the critique of general ideas found in
Berkeley and Hume. So far as I know, this has never been pointed out;
please correct me whoever knows better. Curiously, Nabokov's cruel
generalising leap from Chernyshevsky's actual near-sightedness to his
'myopic materialism' betrays Nabokov's own lapse into vulgar
materialism along the rusty 'being determines consciousness' lines.
But hey, 'general ideas' are tough stuff to deal with. Especially
preposterous is Nabokov's invocation, in the best empiricist
tradition, of 'pure science' - a domain of which he had no knowledge
whatsoever - as incompatible with abstractions! Generally speaking,
the empiricist influence on Nabokov is not hard to demonstrate. For
example, the passage in 'Pale Fire' that mocks Shade's 'reasonable
certainty' about an afterlife, unmistakably recapitulates Hume's
famous critique of induction: Shade is 'reasonably sure that we
survive', just as he is sure that he will 'wake at six tomorrow, on
July / The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine'. Nabokov, of course,
kills him off in good time, thus falsifying the prediction. Compare
Shade to the Russellian chicken, whose philosophic head makes an
inductive generalisation about the benevolent intentions of his
nourishing master at the very moment that the master's caring hand
twists if free of the body.
MA
> Speaking of deliberate
> vagueness. Now, if I find it transparent rather than vague, and its
> 'rhetorical effectivness is proportional to its vagueness', from
> this it would follow that it's rhetorically ineffective, would it
> not? As regards 'insinuations': if it were below zero outside I'd
> say it's cold and think it a commonsense judgement; if someone born
> and bred beyond 70 North called it insinuation, it'd be OK with me.
Sorry, but I find it hard to accept your self-proclaimed mysterious
privileged access to Nabokov's intended meanings, especially since you
are quite different from him in many obvious respects. You weren't
'born and bred' where he was; and your homeboy reading of the
lightbulb image as a metaphor of the psychological phoneyness is
hardly self-evident. To put it in po-mo parlance, by denying the
vagueness of Nabokov's innuendo and by asserting its common-sense
nature, you necessarily invest it with a retrograde symbolic function.
How about beginning with the old-fashioned basics, then: the lightbulb
is to broad daylight....as what is to what?
Meanwhile, I offer my own reading of the insinuation that Dostoevsky
burns his lightbulbs amid daylight. The lightbulb is to daylight as
general ideas are to the true reality of infinite detail. True vision
is all-encompassing; artificial light picks out incomplete pieces of
that reality. Compare this to the Kirghiz tale that Nabokov cites (or
invents) in 'The Gift': the human eye 'wants to encompass everything
in the world'. This may be an overinterpretation, but one, I daresay,
that would have appealed to Nabokov, the moral being that Dostoevsky
belabours the self-evident, and in a distorted sort of way at that.
But let us not ignore the physical aspect of the metaphor, which
reflects Nabokov's gentlemanly concern with propriety and normalcy (he
would have appreciated that latter word). It is, no doubt, improper
for one to burn an ascribed lightbulb in daylight (even if one has
never seen a real one, like poor Dostoevsky). Alas, propriety is a
'general idea'; but God forbid we should construct some abominable
*theory* of propriety. Is not propriety birthright of our very class?
Not as the gentry, but only as some of the gentry, whom we shall call,
unpretentiously, 'educated, sensitive and free-minded Russians'.
Nabokov's lovingly cultivated posture as a highly 'normal' gentleman
of superior common sense, native refinement and coloured hearing, by
whose virtue the correct answers to any significant questions
concerning art or behaviour are self-evident (perhaps self-audient) to
him _a priori_ of any thinking, is incompatible with a tragic vision.
Dostoevsky is quite mad, you see, while it is improper for a
sensitive, free-thinking Russian to be mad.
PN
>> Or compare 'Crime and Punishment' to Nabokov's 'Despair', and pray
>> let me know which you find more 'psychologically convincing'.
MA
> I don't see how it would shed any light on the murder scene. See
> below on your clinging to 'Despair'.
How pettily pedantic of you to honour only your own ill-defined and
rather uninspiring concerns.
> MA
>>> I would further agree that it doesn't represent a 'point of view'
>>> of Nabokov's hero (let alone Nabokov himself), but rather a
>>> flickering yet precise observation. Right there in the Gift you'll
>>> find another 'point of view' uttered by the same fellow, to the
>>> effect that "Dostoevsky converts the Bedlam back into Bethleem",
>>> which I find almost as valid. Besides, I delight in how Godunov's
>>> observations are phrased.
> PN
>> You may delight in the phrasing all you like, but do you understand
>> the meaning? Feel free to supply an exegesis of the latter
>> blathering, complete with the medical credentials of Dr. Battie.
>> Then we'll decide if it's 'almost as valid'. At any rate, try to
>> move beyond sloganeering towards making an argument.
MA
> I believe I do understand the meaning. To supply an exegesis could
> make a fair paper -- which, in fact, might take shorter than wait
> for you to decide on its validity, seeing as how you regarded the
> more artless observation. As to the slogans, I gave a couple of
> relevant quotations. In my judgement, you are the one with slogans
> rather than reasons.
Sorry, I am not impressed with the paper that you refuse to write. I
doubt that the 'Bedlam into Bethlehem' innuendo means anything
complicated. 'Bedlam' is the lower-class corruption of the name of
London's old mental asylum - the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem.
The implication is that Dostoevsky creates sainthood out of madness.
[By symmetrical contrast with Kit Smart, who ended up at Bedlam
because of excessive piety.] Perhaps the best illustration of this
point is that interview where Nabokov chastises Dostoevsky for making
a *mere whore*, Sonia Marmeladov, the bearer of eternal truths and the
source of Raskolnikov's spiritual enlightenment. Paradoxically, Nabokov
never, so far as I know, made similar criticisms of the New Testament
itself.
> MA
>>> I'd like to know in what exactly you see that indebtedness (i.e.
>>> Nabokov's to Dostoevsky - MA) manifested.
> PN
>> 'Despair'. For other acknowledgements, see Nabokov's early admiring
>> poem addressed to Dostoevsky.
MA
> It must be out of despair that you keep bringing up arguably the
> worst Russian-language novel of Nabokov. A couple of screenfuls up
> you suggested that I compare 'Despair' to C&P, implying the former
> still worse psychology-wise. Now you're saying 'Despair' was
> modelled after Dostoevsky. Do I detect a somewhat fuzzy logic here,
> or are you finally endorsing my point?
Far from it. I claim both that 'Despair' derives from Dostoevsky, and
that it is indeed far worse, psychologically and otherwise. No
contradiction, merely two fully compatible commonplaces. I 'keep
bringing it up' because it highlights the limited nature of Nabokov's
abilities: there were techniques and ideas of which he had no grasp.
Perhaps 'Despair''s relationship to Dostoevsky is not terribly unlike
that of another, (somewhat less) mediocre Nabokovian novel,
'Invitation to a Beheading', to Kafka.
MA
> As a young poet, Nabokov wrote no small amount of nondescript verse.
> His attitude toward Dostoevsky must have changed over the years. Why
> should I prefer his early poem over his mature work?
The later Nabokov also wrote some very trivial verse (let alone some
of his translations of Russian poetry, e.g. the monstrous Eugene
Onegin); but I'm not talking about preference. Actually, Nabokov has
two early poems about Dostoevsky, and I dare say that one of them,
'Sa'dom shel Khristos s uchenikami' is quite striking and masterful.
I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time on this minor point, since I
hope it will be easy for you to agree that from a certain point
onwards Nabokov consistently expurgated his own biography in order to
make it seem more ideal, as if building up, without debt or
contradiction, towards his ultimate mature tremendous literary
accomplishment as very likely this century's greatest writer. Tough
luck that he wasn't, for all his teleologically biased wishful
thinking. I wouldn't give a tinker's cuss about what you have so
charitably described as his literary play, if he had not so often
conducted it at the expense of his betters - Dostoevsky, Wilde, Byron,
Orwell, Kafka, Freud, Goethe - in order to romanticise his own
protuberant creative self.
> MA
>>> Also, kindly give us the examples of his lies about it.
> PN
>> Godunov, the bearer of Nabokov's aesthetic ideals in 'The Gift',
>> says that the only thing - or one of the very few things - that he
>> would like to 'retain' from Dostoevsky is the mention of the wet
>> trace of a beer-mug on the tabletop in the arbour where Ivan
>> Karamazov speaks to Alyosha. Nabokov certainly 'retained' much more.
MA
> Your say-so on him 'certainly retaining much more' doesn't
> constitute an example, sorry.
No, but 'Despair' does.
MA
>>> about literary games. I don't see it to be in profound
>>> disagreement with 'aristocracy of spirit'. Rather, in ironic
>>> agreement.
> PN
>> May I humbly submit that modernism has turned irony into a
>> cheerless, incessant, profoundly autoerotic activity? Nothing
>> inherently wrong with that, but I would like Nabokov a little more
>> if he didn't indulge in it so often at the expense of his betters.
MA
> May I humbly suggest that the XIX century realism plunged Europe
> into the First World War, which resulted in modernism?
You may, but at the risk of not being taken too seriously. I don't
mean to discourage you, but I would like to see how you will deal, for
example, with the factor of nationalism in WWI, given that nationalism
is a Romantic invention par excellence. Modernism precedes WWI,
contributes to it; it continuously grows out of the Romantic reaction
against rationalism.
Modernist irony (which continues into postmodernism) completely
supersedes the romantic emphasis on authorial sincerity: the _homo
seriosus_ devolves into a _homo ironicus_. The immoderate reliance on
irony progressively obliterates conscience from literary pursuits.
Ambiguity and irony begin to function as dubious standards of
literary quality. Anyone who has spent any time around an English
department at a US university is familiar with conversations of this
nature: 'This work is quite trashy!'--'But no, don't you see, it's all
ironic!' To paraphrase a line from 'Bugsy', these days irony is so
cheap it's wholesale. And, _pace Vlastos_, most of it seems so very,
ahem, non-Socratic.
In Nabokov, irony functions as the sublimation of an intense
Nietzschean _ressentiment_ at not being the best. One clear
illustration is Nabokov's well-known disparagement of a Soviet
chess-problem that he comes across in a magazine: he hints at some
sort of necessary connection between it's Soviet provenance and its
ugly clumsiness (or whatever forgettable fault he finds with it).
Tough luck that Nabokov wasn't really as good as the best Soviet
chess-players. He also writes a curious justification of his not being
good enough, where he in fact *praises* himself for being unable to
compete with better players because of certain supposedly very
engaging features of his unusual personality.
MA
> May I humbly inquire about the principles on which your literary
> hierarchy is based and, in particular, what makes you set Dostoevsky
> so higher than Nabokov?
Dostoevsky's lasting contribution to the discussion of what you are
pleased to call the Big Ethical Questions is one reason; another is
his more important contribution to novelistic technique than
Nabokov's. Dostoevsky is a far more original writer. I refer you to
Bakhtin for an informed and intelligent appreciation of Dostoevsky's
stature.
> PN
>>>> I suspect that the worst problem with Nabokov (a writer
>>>> much inferior to Dostoevsky, at any rate) is his somewhat
>>>> pathetic failure to live up to his so very superhuman standards
>>>> of literary taste, to avoid what he himself defined as 'poshlust'
>>>> (it ought to have occurred to him that this very coinage is an
>>>> instance of metaposhlust), and to turn off his own arrogant
>>>> little lightbulb at the appropriate times. He was a comic fellow
>>>> of self-refuting tastes.
> MA
>>> I happen to believe that Nabokov writes incomparably better than
>>> Dostoevsky, in any language. What you probably mean is that
>>> Dostoevsky is somehow more *important* in that he was concerned
>>> with Big Ethical Questions - the Last Questions, in his wording;
>>> while Nabokov never got to breathe the celestial air of the starry
>>> sky of Big Questions, dwelling among the inconsequential problems
>>> of pure aesthetics.
> PN
>> This is, of course, perfectly Nabokovian gibberish, cosy in its
>> self-assured superficiality.
MA
> This is, of course, perfectly Dostoevskian ability to hit the lit-
> by-the-overhead-light-amid-broad-daylight nail right on the head.
My apologies, whatever your meaning may be. How glutinous of me to
disgruntle your rubbery majesty.
> PN
>> Quite apart from my doubts about
>> there being such a thing as 'pure aesthetics', allow me to point
>> out to you that Nabokov's doctrine of 'poshlust' ('kitsch' is a far
>> better word, but insufficiently twee by Nabokovian standards)
>> strongly suggests that Nabokov himself had no conception of ethics
>> as distinct from aesthetics, which circumstance makes your diatribe
>> against 'Big Ethical Issues' rather meaningless.
MA
> My understanding is that, with Nabokov, aesthetics precedes ethics.
> According to Nabokov, 'poshlust' gives rise to cruelty. 'Kitsch'
> would be too feeble a word indeed.
'Kitsch' would be above all far too German a word, given the
nationalist and explicitly anti-German context in which the
pseudo-concept is introduced. Come to think of it, 'vulgarity' could
have served just as well, but Nabokov may have been chary of the class
overtones that it carries. Of course, the Russian word carries
precisely the same overtones: just as 'vulgarity' historically refers
to _vulgus_, or 'common population', so 'posholost' is connected with
'poshlye liudi', or 'common people'; but Nabokov needn't worry that
those reading him in English will be aware of such aristocratic
nuances. Nabokov's sleight-of-hand in the relevant passage of his
book on Gogol becomes perfectly obvious on a close examination:
although, in his relentless pursuit of this chimera, he considers a
number Western words as candidates for the office of 'poshlust', only
to reject them as 'suggest[ing] merely certain false values', the
terms 'vulgarity' and 'kitsch' are conspicuous by their dishonest
absence from his list. The absence is hardly surprising: Nabokov wants
to turn 'poshlust' into a mystic, indefinable category for whose
detection a 'particular shrewdness', especially characteristic of the
sensitive Russian mind, is absolutely essential. It was impossible for
him to use 'kitsch' instead, because he wished to present 'poshlust'
as being the pervasive and incorrigible defect of all aspects of
German culture at all times. His treatment of the word 'poshlust'
reminds me, therefore, of two other words that within Russian
nationalist discourse are supposed especially to characterise Russian
nationality, politics and culture, namely, 'dukhovnost' (spirituality)
and 'narodnost' (volkishness), both being recent translations of their
equivalents taken from the German Romantic philosophy that Nabokov so
despises. The availability of 'vulgarity' and 'kitsch' in English
turns his entire crusade against 'poshlust' into transparent bullshit.
(Parenthetically, I wonder if 'poshlust' indeed gives rise to cruelty,
I wonder if Nabokov's own multiple cruelties were not the result of an
indelible vulgarity, along with the documented instances of his
reliance on the contemptible realist method in his own writing.)
> MA
>>> Nabokov... was among the first to recognize the threat of the Nazis.
PN
>> Superficially, yes.
MA
> But turning a blind eye to them deep down. That could produce a
> decent interpretation of 'Lolita': Hum Hum flees the totalitarian
> Europe physically, that is superficially, but deep down he remains a
> fascist, in which capacity he screws the innocently democratic
> American girl.
Twee.
> PN
>> But the problem is that Nabokov was for the most
>> part surprisingly incapable of understanding abstractions. He had no
>> conception of evil as distinct form his subjective doctrine of kitsch
MA
> Yes he did. The love triangle in the Gift, the greater part of the
> Defense, - both cases involving homicide - have nothing to do with
> 'poshlust'.
Of course they do, your gainsaying notwithstanding. Hermann's very
name in 'Despair' points to Germany, that quintessential fountain of
'poshlust'. It's all quite straightforward. Hermann (who is modelled
on Pushkin's similarly vulgar Hermann in 'The Queen of Spades') is
vulgar beyond belief. Consider also the case of Gradus in _Pale Fire_.
It all boils down to the aphorism of Oscar Wilde's Lord Henry, with
whom Nabokov so often dispalys a genealogical resemblance: 'All crime
is vulgar, just as vulgarity is a crime'. Nabokovian ethics never
advance beyond this uncomplicated limit.
You might choose to comment on the fact that Nabokov includes the
royal couple in Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' in his list of rascals defined
primarily by 'poshlust'.
> PN
>> (cf. Hanna Arendt's stuff on the 'banality of evil', Brodsky's
>> mumbling about political evil being 'always a bad stylist'). Would
>> you not agree that there is something pernicious about this mildly
>> bizarre (perhaps postmodern?) trivialisation of evil? As one result
>> of Nabokovian obscurantist subjectivism, consider his asseveration
>> in 'Speak Memory' that his only grievance against the Bolsheviks is
>> that they have 'robbed him of a childhood'. The well-born old fart
>> just doesn't get it, eh?
MA
> Yes, it happens to be his own private grievance.
It was, emphatically, his only grievance.
MA
> He left Russia at a
> tender age of 19, having grown up in a comfortably rich family. So
> what? If memory serves, right next to your quotation he says
> something to the effect that he had never regretted that lost
> comfortableness. He must have meant something more spiritual than
> that implied in your invective. Or maybe you'd rather have him go
> through the Stalinist hell, so that the dumb comic fellow might 'get
> it'?
That 'something' was his intensely 'spiritual' childhood, no doubt.
Does that fact make his statement any more cynical? Funny that you
should insist that Nabokov's biography impaired his rational and
empathetic abilities so hopelessly. While I would not recommend any
Stalinist therapy, who knows, perhaps for both of you a little ironic
Nicholaevan execution by a sham firing squad is just what the doctor
ordered.
MA
> Didn't he write quite a bit on 'the extermination of tyrants'?
Yes, another pathetic exercise in self-endearing bullshit, an
unfortunate fruit of his inability to work with abstractions. And
again he harps on the preposterous theory that the tyrant in question
is bad just because he is vulgar.
MA
> And now we're on to the pearl of Mr.Nikolayev's restless search of
> profundity, as contradistiguished from my self-assured
> superficiality.
> MA
>>> Also, this 'pathetic and comic fellow' was organically intolerant
>>> of anti- semitism, as distinct from the
>>> fundamental anti-Semitism of Dostoevsky.
> PN
>> Nabokov's Germanophobia was probably more extreme than Dostoevsky's
>>'fundamental anti-Semitism'. (As an aside, Shakhovskaia may be
>>correct about the somewhat warped nature of Nabokov's
>>larger-than-life 'organic intolerance' of anti-semitism.)
MA
> Irrelevant to the subject though this surely is, I want to confess
> that, personally, I am flabbergasted by Mr.Nikolayev reply to my
> bringing Nabokov's stance toward anti-semitism into comparison with
> that of Dostoevsky. It used to be my impression that Mr.Nikolayev
> should not have been capable of a comeback like that. Apparently my
> impression was based on his earlier poems rather than on his mature
> work.
>
> More to the point. You begged me not to assume; ought I not to
> assume you to have read 'The Diaries of 1877'? I believe I'd be able
> to locate a copy here in Cambridge and start quoting away. Which, in
> fact, might be edifying for those following this discussion, as some
> of them might not be acutely aware of that side of the Great
> Inquisitor of Russian Literature. Do you think you could furnish the
> Germanophobian quotations from Nabokov, so that the netters might
> decide for themselves, which is 'more extreme'? Would you welcome
> such an exchange?
Some extended quotation with running commentary is in order here.
'Ever since Russia began to think, and up to the time that her
mind went blank under the influence of the extraordinary regime she has
been enduring for these last twenty-five years, educated, sensitive
and free-minded Russians were acutely aware of the furtive and clammy
touch of _poshlust_.'
Note the characterisation of the Bolshevik regime as an emanation of
poshlust that is opposed to the true Russian spirit. Despite Nabokov's
claims to the contrary, there is no systematic preoccupation with the
problem of vulgarity in Russian writings. His observations about the
'timelessness' of 'poshlust' and 'the immortal spirit of _poshlust_'
are plagiarisms (the latter almost verbatim) from a poem by Fedor
Tiutchev - the only pre-Nabokovian literary text where the word
'poshlust' is used in a memorable and significant way.
'Among the nations with which we came into contact, Germany
has always seemed to us a country were _poshlust_, instead of being
mocked, was one of the essential parts of the national spirit, habits,
traditions and general atmosphere, although at the same time
well-meaning Russian intellectuals of a more romantic type readily,
too readily, adopted the legend of the greatness of German philosophy
and literature; for it takes a super-Russian to admit that there is a
dreadful streak of _poshlust_ running through Goethe's _Faust_.'
'Nikolay Gogol' appeared in 1944, and the above passage shows beyond
doubt that Nabokov reduces the political evil of Nazism to vulgarity.
Poshlust' is an 'essential part' of the German 'national spirit' and
of 'German philosophy'; never mind that the vulgar conception of
'national spirit', so dear to that well-meaning romantic type,
Nabokov, was itself derived from the selfsame German philosophy and
played a significant part in the rise of Nazism. As a 'super-Russian'
(presumably, an athletic blond beast with pince-nez and
butterfly-net), Nabokov no doubt embodies all that is essential to the
Russian national spirit, which in its *pure* manifestations is
transcendently incompatible with 'poshlust'. This is a most curious
case of nationalism parading as aestheticism, though not as impressive
as the alleged musical spirit of the Germans. (Let me remark
tangentially that as late as 1932 Nabokov was still fascinated with
Goethe's _Faust_ enough to undertake a loving if mediocre Russian
translation of the 'Dedication'. The translation makes suspect his
claim that he'd never learnt any German or read anything in that
language; this strongly suggests his familiarity with Kafka at the
time of writing 'The Invitation to a Beheading', which Nabokov
repeatedly denied.)
'To exaggerate the worthlessness of a country [i.e. Germany]
at the awkward moment when one is at war with it - and would like to
see it destroyed to the last beer-mug and last forget-me-not, - means
walking dangerously close to that abyss of _poshlust_ which yawns so
universally at times of revolution and war. But if what one demurely
mumbles is but a mild pre-war truth, even with something old-fashioned
about it, the abyss is perhaps avoidable'.
A curious piece of rhetoric. For Nabokov, 'to exaggerate [!] the
worthlessness' of Germany in a time of war is not vulgar in itself,
but merely imprudent, merely 'dangerously close' to a vulgarity;
whereas to assert that worthlessness as a 'pre-war truth' is safe and
unproblematic. Therefore, his hatred of Germany is not a spontaneous
response to the war, but a deep-seated prejudice. Observe his use of
the pronoun 'one' in describing the desire to see Germany 'destroyed
to the last beer-mug and last forget-me-not': it at the same time
absolves him from the personal charge of vulgarity for entertaining
such a desire, and generalises his discursive self to the entire
(Russian? American?) nation, turning the extermination of all Germans
into a welcome objective. There is no comparable expression of
Dostoevsky's hatred of the Jews in 'The Diary of a Writer' or
elsewhere in Dostoevsky. 'The Diary' in fact represents an attempt, if
clumsy and largely hypocritical and preposterous, to find a solution
to the 'Jewish question' based on some fundamental human unity.
Of course, politics is a fairly abstract realm, and therefore hardly
Nabokov's _forte_. It is mildly entertaining to observe his
inconsistencies. In _Speak Memory_, I believe, he snobbishly dismisses
the political nations of England and France during WWI as
'non-existent' figments of the vulgar imagination; but in matters
closer to home, he chooses to spin out his aesthetical justification
for patriotism and nationalism. I submit that Nabokov's
characterisation of Nazism as a function of German vulgarity is
trivialising to the point of being pernicious. For a curious sidelight
on this problem, you might wish to check out Walter Benjamin's
writings on the connection between the aestheticisation of politics
and fascism.
MA
> As regards Nabokov being too much of an anti-anti-semite,
> considering the circumstances of life in Europe in the 30s -- I am
> at a loss for words.
I said noting about his being 'too much of an anti-anti-semite'.
> MA
>>> I observe in passing that the post to which I reply has no
>>> relation to Crime & Punishment, other than the misapplied word
>>>'superhuman'.
> PN
>> Is this yet another 'self-evidentness'? Or may I expect you to
>> ponder the point?
MA
> I don't get your point.
Ah well. Here, I shall summarise it for you and shall explain why I
used the term 'superhuman'. Perhaps you are insufficiently mindful of
the fact that there are striking continuities between Nabokov's
aesthetic creed and certain unsavory aspects of the po-mo
intellectual condition. Nabokov is but one of a host of glib
post-Heideggerian logophobic literati working to undermine the
'authoritarian status' of rational discourse in a frontal attack on
'representation'. His programmatic attempts to discredit 'general
ideas' and generally to banish 'ideas' from literature should be
interpreted through that prism. Instead of 'ideas' we have in Nabokov
a hypertrophy of the self-romanticising speaking subject amid a
profuse flowering of language. (Compare this to Brodsky's notion of
immortality through continual generation of metaphoric discourse).
According to Nabokov, there is nothing worthwhile in literature except
language (cf. his claim that Pushkin's _Onegin_ is purely a phenomenon
of style). On the other hand, Nabokov wants to present himself as a
man of firm and respectable, even chivalrous values, with a high
standard of decency, rather than as a scrofulous relativist. His
ethical values arise _a priori_ of any (presumably unnecessary)
demonstration, by dint of his implied transcendent perceptiveness. On
one level, you can see those values as flowing from something the
Aristotelian cardinal virtues, instilled in the well-born, well-bred
child by habituation. But that is not the full picture: what we have
here is not merely a set of supposedly correct ethical notions and
habits that Nabokov, as a self-fashioned ideal being, has inherited
from his no less ideal father, but above all a unique beatitude - a
transcendent 'gift' of aesthetic perception, which allows him
unerringly to tell good from evil on sight. The athletic
self-aggrandisement of private perception makes Nabokov's snobbery
ultimately obscurantist. I am not sure that you realise how central
Nabokov's narcissistic concerns are to his writing - and I use the
term 'narcissism' here, not as a facile metaphor for Nabokov's
well-known arrogance, but as a precise designation for the source of
practically all of his important value-judgements. The most serious
challenge to Nabokov's moral stance as well as to his intellectual
credentials lies in the realm of 'ideas'. He can't combat 'general
ideas' by refutation without being found guilty of a
self-contradiction. Therefore, he combats them by insinuation.
Such insinuations sometimes seem almost like obsessive acts of
symbolic self-purification. Here is a speculative hypothesis that I
hope will illustrate what I mean. In 'The Gift', Nabokov discredits
Nikolai Chernyshevsky by constructing his image in stark opposition to
that of Godunov and Godunov's father. The two images are diametrically
opposite - to the last hygienic nuance! Why bother with Chernyshevsky,
the leader of Russia's radical left in the 1860s? Many, including
Nabokov himself, have tried to rationalise the obscure purpose of
Godunov's preposterous treatise. One character in the novel, Koncheev,
informs us that many Russian emigres in Europe clung to an idealised
image of Chernyshevsky, while Godunov simply 'took away the portrait'
by showing them Chernyshevsky's true face. That is somewhat too vague.
I think that Nabokov goes to such lengths in discrediting
Chernyshevsky because of a larger, more personal vested interest,
namely, in order to dissociate Chernyshevsky's image, lionised by the
liberal emigre intelligentsia, from the political cause of his father.
An examination of such liberal emigre periodicals as _Sovremennye
zapiski_, for example, shows that in the eyes of that section of the
intelligentsia, the short-lived triumph of the 1917 Provisional
Government appeared as the culmination of the political tradition that
had originated in Russia with the radicals of the 1860s. Therefore,
Nabokov must have found the predominance of that belief to be as a
blemish on his own aesthetic reputation (owed to his father's
immaculate taste and threatened by a remote association with the
hateful aesthetic theories of the 19th century radicals. According to
Chernyshevsky, 'The first demand of art consists in this, - to so
represent objects that the reader may conceive them as they really
are.' Instead of addressing Chernyshevsky as he 'really was', Nabokov
purifies his and his father's reputation by making Godunov perform an
aesthetic (if rather tasteless) 'character assassination' of the
unfortunate utopian. The projected ideality of Nabokov's self-image
depends on the pure Platonic form of his father. (Note that Nabokov
seldom emphasises the actual politics of his father.)
MA
> It all started off with someone deeming the ending of C&P
> 'psychologically bogus'. Andrew Dinn's comment was that the whole of
> C&P might be regarded as such. I went along with that and said in
> addition that many had felt that way, quoting Joyce and Nabokov. It
> seemed to me a fairly innocent thing to say. Like hell it was! Next
> thing I knew, we were down to Nabokov being a comic fellow and
> myself self-assuredly superficial. You didn't pick up on Joyce; the
> fault was with Nabokov. You must have a thing about him, no? Have
> you expressed an admiration of him in an early poem and being filled
> with remorse now, or what? Why then take the hardships of your
> transition period out on me? You are not Russia, I am not the U.S.
> I don't have to deal with your fixations, espesially as I don't
> consider Nabokov to be a great writer, just good enough to have
> appreciation for psychological plausibility.
Duh. It's quite all right, I don't mean to force you into any unwanted
discussion. Please forgive my infringement upon your enlightened,
informative, consensus-building exchange with Dinn. On the other hand,
I create my own subjects and attack my own targets. I merely wanted to
point out that the statement you cited expresses a pernicious side of
the Nabokovian Weltanschauung, and deserves to be exposed as such. As
you can see, I have ended up trying to explain how some of its
elements both motivate and refute each other, yielding a particularly
ornate and curious case of the King's New Clothes. All that is not to
deny that Nabokov is in many ways an most excellent writer. Let me say
that you are perfectly welcome to infringe on my discussions whenever
you please to do so, and to excel me by far with your own witty and
insightful observations.
> Michael Abalovich
Philip Nikolayev
nik...@fas.harvard.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
'A speech of Antigone, a single sentence of Socrates, a few lines that
were inscribed on an Indian rock before the Second Punic War, the
footsteps of a silent yet prophetic people who dwelt by the Dead Sea,
and perished in the fall of Jerusalem, come nearer to our lives than
the ancestral wisdom of barbarians who fed their swine on the
Hercynian acorns.'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph M Green
Phillips discussion, refutation etc. etc. is the best and most thorough
discussion of a writer that I have ever read here and is vastly
better than almost all of the articles one reads in journals.
I am now even willing to suspect that Phillip was right and that I was
wrong about Yeats. He simply convinces through the depth of his
response. I thought that I would see naught of wonder out here --
not, of course, that there are not many informed persons chatting but
this is the best of its kind that I have seen and should not go
unremarked.
Alexei Bondal
>Sorry if you have found my postings unnecessarily personal. I shall
>attempt to make a more extended argument about Nabokov, especially as
>I have long wanted to say certain things about him in public. I'm
>going to bring together the diverse threads of my preceding argument
>into a more coherent whole. Lest you be disappointed, I confine myself
>to making claims that I regard as new and significant. Since you want
>me to be gentle and explicit rather than difficult or enigmatic, so be
>it. I note, however, that should you choose to play by the same rule,
>it still remains for you to show the validity of your own assertions.
Sounds good.
>The question, that is, whether or not I find the murder scene in
>'Crime and Punishment' psychologically convincing. I could just as
>well ask you if you'd stopped discussing theology with spectral
>spruces on every decadent morning of your life. Not every yes-or-no
>question is simple; I suspect that yours is phrased incorrectly.
>Exactly what notion of psychological verisimilitude do you (and,
>presumably, Nabokov) have in mind? To put this in your favourite po-mo
>parlance, do you hold on to the allegedly antiquated representational
>function of literary discourse, or embrace the arbitrarily stretchable,
>poignantly Protean, reflexively disposed, eternally semiotic,
>radiantly writerly _joi de texte_? Are you suggesting that in Godunov,
>Nabokov entertains some sort of old-fashioned mimetic theory of art?
>These clarifications have to be made, lest your 'psychological
>plausibility' should remain the trite and artistically indifferent
>subjectivist pseudo-concept that it is generally known to be in my
>circles.
>More radically put, I hardly find your question relevant to anything
>outside your own mind (and perhaps Nabokov's, if the two of you indeed
>are so genuinely in sync). Truth to tell, I don't care a whole lot
>whether you, Nabokov or Nabokov's hero recognise the murder scene in
>'Crime and Punishment', or Einstein's theory of relativity, or Frege's
>theory of number, as 'psychologically convincing'. My own interest
>lies in intellectual history, that is, in the history of communicable
>abstractions, not amid emanations of anyone's private reverie.
I have no idea why you consider me in favour of 'po-mo parlance'.
It must be quite clear that I am an adherent of an 'allegedly antiquated'
view that regards 'plausibility' as inextricably linked to other components
of the artistic whole. In other words, you can have the murder scene in a
Kharms novel; you can't have it in a Goncharov novel. In my original post
under the C&P subject line, I mentioned that, toward the Karamazovs by
way of the Demons, Dostoevsky's mode of writing had changed.
Characteristically, it doesn't take those endowed with some appreciation
for Russian prose as written in Russian, such as Tolstoy, Chekhov,
Bunin, Nabokov, -- it doesn't take them very long to agree on the
exceedingly low quality of the 'representational function' of Dostoevsky's
fiction. However, those interested in 'communicable abstractions',
typically, will look for 'grounds'. For them I have an explanation in store.
Unlike you, I don't claim it to be new or significant, although I haven't
heard it told or seen it written. By necessity, I shall only present the
key points in a very general setting. Clarifications may be made upon
request.
It has prose writers divided into two teams: those who have access to,
and focus on, *the outer reality*, and those who do *the inner reality*.
Falling into the former team would be Balzac, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Joyce;
Servantes, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Kafka would end up in the latter. Again,
this all is only approximate: I wouldn't know where to place Dickens or
Proust. It is with the latter group that I am concerned here. These are
only able to look inside themselves, which in no way makes them by
default inferior to those on the former: after all, as Kafka said, 'one does
not have to go out to meet life: in fact, one does not have to get away
from his desk: one only has to wait for life to make its entrance.'
I would further divide this bunch into two subgroups according to the
method which, I believe, they employ. Those in the first subgroup
sort of fold the entire world into their _souls_; they internalize the
world. (I realize that it sounds a lot like one of the possible definitions
of Romanticism, yet here it is diffirent.) In terms of their trade it spells
this: in depicting the things that belong outside (but are now embedded
in the _soul_) they use the names that belong inside and are therefore
intimate friends; the correspondence between the signifier and the
signified is subjective (Saussurian arbitrariness of sign) but authentic.
Thus Hoelderlin sets his great 'Hyperion' in Greece, having never been
there; thus Gogol, while in Italy, writes his great 'Dead Souls' from 'his
wonderful distance'; thus Kafka writes his not-so-great 'America'
without taking the trouble to cross the Atlantic. For all its flaws, things
feel rather genuine in Kafka's America. Nobody now rushes now doesn't
toward a poorly placed fireplace with counterfeit money cannily consumed
by fake fire.
Those in the second subgroup do just the opposite. To paraphrase a
Russian saying, they 'turn their soul inside out', as it were, onto the
world. They want to be 'realistic', to show things 'as they are', but they
are hopelessly inadequate, since all they know resides inside (or is
brought home to them, as in the case of the Stalin-prize winners, who
largely fall into this category). You trip over things, you stumble upon
things all over the place. You can't grab a chair and sit down, because it's
not a chair; yet it is not a symbol of a chair either; it's a 'communicable
abstraction', I should say. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that, in the
way of plausibility, chairs are all I'm looking for in the room lit by natural
illumination and/or by the gratuitous bulb, whichever the case may be.
I know from personal experience as well as from reading Beckett how
'plausible' it can be to do without chairs. However, if I happen to be
bumping into a chair which is not meant to be seated upon, or a loop
on which an axe is expected to be hanging without being conspicuous,
I have trouble moving further along. There's only one thing that may save
such a writer: I call it imagination. Great imagination can force the reader
into believing anything. With regard to imagination Dostoevsky, IMO, was
second to none, including Shakespeare and Dante. He didn't have much
else to offer. I trust the foregoing answers the question, what I mean by
'psychological plausibility', which may not be a happy term. Dostoevsky's
reality is unreal. (Or, the way Bakhtin puts it: 'Dostoevsky's reality is
one of the possible realities.')
This rather plain _theory_ has a number of applications, which it would be
too much of a digression to explain. With some technical modifications,
one can work out the difference between symbol and allegory, if one still
cares. Those fluent in Russian poetry could adjust the above scketch to
tackle Blok's concept of 'Homeland as Wife' versus Mandelstam's 'Wife
as Homeland'. Or, more internationally, compare Hoelderlin's elaboration
of the Macbeth forest against Vvedensky's.
>I have commented earlier about Nabokov's inability to understand
>certain cardinal abstractions. For example, he never had any adequate
>understanding of politics, of ethics, of tragedy. At least the latter
>two categories are essential to any meaningful reading of Dostoevsky;
<it is therefore small wonder that Nabokov ultimately despaired of
<coming to terms with him. Tragedy is a difficult aesthetic concept;
<even Tolstoy had trouble with it and as a result somewhat comically
<knocked Shakespeare as a mediocre playwright.
This is, indeed, quite amusing. My understanding is that, even though
at some point Tolstoy translated (chunks of) 'Tristram Shandy', he
apparently had difficulties with English. How else can you explain
his saying that 'all Shakespear's characters speak in the same voice'?
>I believe that the theoretical underpinning of Nabokov's obscurantism
>is largely derived from the British empiricists, though his scepticism
>is hardly philosophically sophisticated.
I take 'obscurantism' here to mean the opposite of 'enlightment'. If that
is correct, I say I haven't read a Russian writer who would be more of an
obscurantist than Dostoevsky. I will now indulge in calling this 'evident'.
Please don't tell me that 'it remains for me to show the validity of it'.
There's vast literature on it, just like there're huge volumes on all
aspects of Dostoevsky.
I have deleted the rest of the longish paragraph on how Nabokov's views
are related to Berkeley and Hume's. To find out if anyone has proposed
it before, one good place to check is the 'Nabokoviana' periodical.
They must have generated lots of output over 25 years in print.
The latter supposition that Nabokov's views are 'self-audient' renders
the entire ardor of your posting quite meaningless. As to the thinking
necessary to answer 'significant questions concerning art', if you thought
harder, you would surely see that that 'propriety' has to do with art
rather than with class; it has to do with order and disorder, with
hierarchy and arbitrariness.
Also, your charging me with having 'self-proclaimed mysterious
privileged access to Nabokov' gets to be direcred against yourself.
On the whole, the only asset of this paragraph's criticism would
have been, indeed, Nabokov's alleged appreciation of it.
MA
>>>> I'd like to know in what exactly you see that indebtedness (i.e.
>>>> Nabokov's to Dostoevsky - MA) manifested.
PN
>>> 'Despair'. For other acknowledgements, see Nabokov's early admiring
>>> poem addressed to Dostoevsky.
MA
>> It must be out of despair that you keep bringing up arguably the
>> worst Russian-language novel of Nabokov. A couple of screenfuls up
>> you suggested that I compare 'Despair' to C&P, implying the former
>> still worse psychology-wise. Now you're saying 'Despair' was
>> modelled after Dostoevsky. Do I detect a somewhat fuzzy logic here,
>> or are you finally endorsing my point?
PN
>Far from it. I claim both that 'Despair' derives from Dostoevsky, and
>that it is indeed far worse, psychologically and otherwise. No
>contradiction, merely two fully compatible commonplaces. I 'keep
>bringing it up' because it highlights the limited nature of Nabokov's
>abilities: there were techniques and ideas of which he had no grasp.
>Perhaps 'Despair''s relationship to Dostoevsky is not terribly unlike
>that of another, (somewhat less) mediocre Nabokovian novel,
>'Invitation to a Beheading', to Kafka.
Compatible as long as construed so as to dismiss your point.
'Despair' is so uncharacteristically bad exactly because it 'derives
from Dostoevsky'. Actually, 'Despair' can be read as a parody of C&P.
As far as 'Invitation to a Beheading', it's a common misunderstanding
that it has to do with 'Der Prozess'. If you presented an argument that
went beyond the inconsequential similarities (like, in both novels you've
got this guy who is persecuted by the absurd authorities, being more
or less innocent), I would then try to refute that argument.
MA
>> As a young poet, Nabokov wrote no small amount of nondescript verse.
>> His attitude toward Dostoevsky must have changed over the years. Why
>> should I prefer his early poem over his mature work?
PN
>The later Nabokov also wrote some very trivial verse (let alone some
>of his translations of Russian poetry, e.g. the monstrous Eugene
>Onegin); but I'm not talking about preference. Actually, Nabokov has
>two early poems about Dostoevsky, and I dare say that one of them,
>'Sa'dom shel Khristos s uchenikami' is quite striking and masterful.
>
>I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time on this minor point, since I
>hope it will be easy for you to agree that from a certain point
>onwards Nabokov consistently expurgated his own biography in order to
>make it seem more ideal, as if building up, without debt or
>contradiction, towards his ultimate mature tremendous literary
>accomplishment as very likely this century's greatest writer. Tough
>luck that he wasn't, for all his teleologically biased wishful
>thinking. I wouldn't give a tinker's cuss about what you have so
>charitably described as his literary play, if he had not so often
>conducted it at the expense of his betters - Dostoevsky, Wilde, Byron,
>Orwell, Kafka, Freud, Goethe - in order to romanticise his own
>protuberant creative self.
As much of your posting, this libel doesn't have much to do with
anything. I appreciate your caring about his betters - you could have
thrown in Darwin, Kapablanka, Einstein, - but I don't see them as hurt.
Nabokov never publically ranked himself 'as very likely this century's
greatest writer', or hinted at his possibly conceiving as much. On the
contrary, he repeatedly stressed the great esteem in which he held
Joyce, Proust, Kafka, and some others.
> PN
>>> May I humbly submit that modernism has turned irony into a
>>> cheerless, incessant, profoundly autoerotic activity? Nothing
>>> inherently wrong with that, but I would like Nabokov a little more
>>> if he didn't indulge in it so often at the expense of his betters.
MA
>> May I humbly suggest that the XIX century realism plunged Europe
>> into the First World War, which resulted in modernism?
PN
>You may, but at the risk of not being taken too seriously. I don't
>mean to discourage you, but I would like to see how you will deal, for
>example, with the factor of nationalism in WWI, given that nationalism
>is a Romantic invention par excellence. Modernism precedes WWI,
>contributes to it; it continuously grows out of the Romantic reaction
>against rationalism.
A small retraction is in order: I meant 'XIX century literature'.
Although, I could employ the notion of the Romantic realism, as in
Fanger's 'Dostoevsky and Romantic Realism'. How would I deal with
the factor of nationalism as brought about by the romantic realists?
Here is how:
Dostoevsky, 'Winter Notes on Summer Impressions':
...Besides, all the Berliners, to a man, looked so German, that I [...]
slipped hastily away to Dresden, being of a most profound persuasion
that getting used to Germans requires a special effort, and that if you
are not used to them, it is quite difficult to bear them in large masses.
In Dresden, I screwd up with regard to German women: as soon as I was
out on the street, it appeared to me that there was nothing more repulsive
than the Dresden type of women...
Although I have nothing to say about the following two paragraphs,
I don't want you to think that I have ignored your effort, so I leave
it intact. I, basically, agree with the first and disagree with the
second one, but neither seems to require specific feedback.
PN
>Dostoevsky's lasting contribution to the discussion of what you are
>pleased to call the Big Ethical Questions is one reason;
I have guessed as much, haven't I?
> MA
>>>> I happen to believe that Nabokov writes incomparably better than
>>>> Dostoevsky, in any language. What you probably mean is that
>>>> Dostoevsky is somehow more *important* in that he was concerned
>>>> with Big Ethical Questions - the Last Questions, in his wording;
>>>> while Nabokov never got to breathe the celestial air of the starry
>>>> sky of Big Questions, dwelling among the inconsequential problems
>>>> of pure aesthetics.
To which, rather than agree, you simply said:
> PN
>>> This is, of course, perfectly Nabokovian gibberish, cosy in its
>>> self-assured superficiality.
MA
>> This is, of course, perfectly Dostoevskian ability to hit the lit-
>> by-the-overhead-light-amid-broad-daylight nail right on the head.
PN
>My apologies, whatever your meaning may be. How glutinous of me to
>disgruntle your rubbery majesty.
Not at all.
MA
>> May I humbly inquire about the principles on which your literary
>> hierarchy is based and, in particular, what makes you set Dostoevsky
>> so higher than Nabokov?
PN
> another [reason] is
>his more important contribution to novelistic technique than
>Nabokov's. Dostoevsky is a far more original writer. I refer you to
>Bakhtin for an informed and intelligent appreciation of Dostoevsky's
>stature.
If your idea of 'novelistic technique' is extended so far as to include
the skills of putting words down on the paper and uniting them into
sentences, paragraphs and chapters, then Dostoevsky's 'technique'
does to me just what it used to do to Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bunin,
Tsvetaeva, Nabokov, and many, many others: -- it makes me sick.
The following affords a fair sample of Dostoevsky's prosaic style.
The quotation is from _Crime & Punishment_, Part 1, Chapter 6.
Raskolnikov is making ready for the murder. Read this twice, thrice.
The more one reads it, the more fun it gets.
...As for the loop, that was a very ingenious device of his own; it was
meant to hold the axe. He could hardly carry an axe in his hands
through the streets. And even if had hidden it under his coat, he would
still have had to support it with his hand, which would be noticeable.
But now he need only lay the axe-head in the loop and it would hang
peacefully under his arm all the way. With his hand in his pocket he
could also support the end of the shaft so that it would not swing; and
as the coat was very wide and hung like a sack, nobody could possibly
notice that was holding something through the pocket. He had thought
of this loop two weeks before, too.
Even Theodor Dreiser knew better than that. The translation obviously
smoothes the effect. Dostoevsly's prose is filled beyond capacity with
such tales, told by an idiot, signifying nothing.
The Bakhtin in question is 'Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics.'
With all due respect to Bakhtin, I think that the little precious to be
found in that book either has preciously little to do with Dostoevsky
(e.g. the concept of 'carnival laughter') or had been suggested before
(the emphasis on 'dialogue'). The central idea of 'polyphony' (something
like 'split personality' in medical terms) is highly dubious, seeing as
how Bakhtin says that 'In Tolstoy's novels [by contradistinction with
Dostoevsky's], there's always the truth of the author present.' I would
have liked Bakhtin to put his finger on the voice of truth in 'Anna Karenina'.
I further believe that one of Bakhtin's favorite notions, that of
'ambivalence', applies perfectly to this very book of his. Whatever
particular trait he chooses to praise, it can be regarded as
praiseworthy and blameworthy at once.
PN
>>> But the problem is that Nabokov was for the most
>>> part surprisingly incapable of understanding abstractions. He had no
>>> conception of evil as distinct form his subjective doctrine of kitsch
MA
>> Yes he did. The love triangle in the Gift, the greater part of the
>> Defense, - both cases involving homicide - have nothing to do with
>> 'poshlust'.
>Of course they do, your gainsaying notwithstanding. Hermann's very
>name in 'Despair' points to Germany, that quintessential fountain of
>'poshlust'. It's all quite straightforward. Hermann (who is modelled
>on Pushkin's similarly vulgar Hermann in 'The Queen of Spades') is
>vulgar beyond belief.
I know, I know. Please note that I mentioned 'The Gift' and 'The Defense',
not 'Despair'. I realize that you 'create your own subjects' and that
my concerns are 'rather uninspiring', and yet you might do well to
pay more attention to the subject-matter at hand.
MA
>>>> Also, this 'pathetic and comic fellow' was organically intolerant
>>>> of anti- semitism, as distinct from the
>>>> fundamental anti-Semitism of Dostoevsky.
PN
>>> Nabokov's Germanophobia was probably more extreme than Dostoevsky's
>>>'fundamental anti-Semitism'. (As an aside, Shakhovskaia may be
>>>correct about the somewhat warped nature of Nabokov's
>>>larger-than-life 'organic intolerance' of anti-semitism.)
It is apposite here to refer to Dostoevsky's 'Winter Notes' once again:
...Besides, all the Berliners, to a man, looked so German, that I [...]
slipped hastily away to Dresden, being of a most profound persuasion,
that getting used to Germans requires a special effort, and that if you
are not used to them, it is quite difficult to bear them in large masses.
In Dresden, I screwd up with regard to German women: as soon as I
was out on the street, it appeared to me that there was nothing more
repulsive than the Dresden type of women...
MA
>> Irrelevant to the subject though this surely is, I want to confess
>> that, personally, I am flabbergasted by Mr.Nikolayev reply to my
>> bringing Nabokov's stance toward anti-semitism into comparison with
>> that of Dostoevsky. It used to be my impression that Mr.Nikolayev
>> should not have been capable of a comeback like that. Apparently my
>> impression was based on his earlier poems rather than on his mature
>> work.
>>
>> More to the point. You begged me not to assume; ought I not to
>> assume you to have read 'The Diaries of 1877'? I believe I'd be able
>> to locate a copy here in Cambridge and start quoting away. Which, in
>> fact, might be edifying for those following this discussion, as some
>> of them might not be acutely aware of that side of the Great
>> Inquisitor of Russian Literature. Do you think you could furnish the
>> Germanophobian quotations from Nabokov, so that the netters might
>> decide for themselves, which is 'more extreme'? Would you welcome
>> such an exchange?
PN
>Some extended quotation with running commentary is in order here.
>
> 'Ever since Russia began to think, and up to the time that her
>mind went blank under the influence of the extraordinary regime she has
>been enduring for these last twenty-five years, educated, sensitive
>and free-minded Russians were acutely aware of the furtive and clammy
>touch of _poshlust_.'
>
>Note the characterisation of the Bolshevik regime as an emanation of
>poshlust that is opposed to the true Russian spirit.
Wrong. Nabokov merely says that the intellectual atmosphere of
Russia has drastically changed after the Bolsheviks had come to
power. He doesn't claim the 'educated, sensitive and free-minded
Russians' to represent 'the true Russian spirit.'
>Despite Nabokov's
>claims to the contrary, there is no systematic preoccupation with the
>problem of vulgarity in Russian writings. His observations about the
>'timelessness' of 'poshlust' and 'the immortal spirit of _poshlust_'
>are plagiarisms (the latter almost verbatim) from a poem by Fedor
>Tiutchev - the only pre-Nabokovian literary text where the word
>'poshlust' is used in a memorable and significant way.
He says nothing about writings. How about this one of the numerous
pre-Nabokovian jokes about Lieutenant Rzhevsky:
A bunch of hussars are having a good time with a wanton
girl who lies stark naked on the floor in the middle of the room.
They are playing cards using the girl's belly as a card-table, now
and then having a sip from the bottle that sticks out of the girl's
vagina. In walks Lieutenant Rzhevsky.
'Gentlemen, are we going to fuck the bitch, or what?'
'Ah, Lieutenant, why do you always _poshl_ize [vulgarize]
things that way!'
You may find it vulgar to see a joke nationally colored, yet this one
seems to me fairly Russian. It also indicates a quaint bias with
regard to vulgarity.
> 'Among the nations with which we came into contact, Germany
>has always seemed to us a country were _poshlust_, instead of being
>mocked, was one of the essential parts of the national spirit, habits,
>traditions and general atmosphere, although at the same time
>well-meaning Russian intellectuals of a more romantic type readily,
>too readily, adopted the legend of the greatness of German philosophy
>and literature; for it takes a super-Russian to admit that there is a
>dreadful streak of _poshlust_ running through Goethe's _Faust_.'
>
>'Nikolay Gogol' appeared in 1944, and the above passage shows beyond
>doubt that Nabokov reduces the political evil of Nazism to vulgarity.
It does not, of course.
>Poshlust' is an 'essential part' of the German 'national spirit' and
>of 'German philosophy'; never mind that the vulgar conception of
>'national spirit', so dear to that well-meaning romantic type,
>Nabokov, was itself derived from the selfsame German philosophy and
>played a significant part in the rise of Nazism.
He doesn't say half of this.
> As a 'super-Russian'
>(presumably, an athletic blond beast with pince-nez and
>butterfly-net), Nabokov no doubt embodies all that is essential to the
>Russian national spirit, which in its *pure* manifestations is
>transcendently incompatible with 'poshlust'. This is a most curious
>case of nationalism parading as aestheticism, though not as impressive
>as the alleged musical spirit of the Germans.
Twee.
> (Let me remark
>tangentially that as late as 1932 Nabokov was still fascinated with
>Goethe's _Faust_ enough to undertake a loving if mediocre Russian
>translation of the 'Dedication'. The translation makes suspect his
>claim that he'd never learnt any German or read anything in that
>language; this strongly suggests his familiarity with Kafka at the
>time of writing 'The Invitation to a Beheading', which Nabokov
>repeatedly denied.)
Typically, it is your 'asides' and 'tangentialities' that call for a comeback.
Nabokov's putative fascination with _Faust_ doesn't contradict his
being able to discern the 'streak of _poshlust_' therein -- just as
your deeming Nabokov 'a comic fellow, unable to understand certain
cardinal abstractions, building his biography at the expence of his
betters in order to romanticise his own protuberant creative self,
proclaiming the extermination of all Germans a welcome objective;
a poet, who rote some very trivial verce, let alone his monstrous
translations of Russian poetry' curiosly doesn't rule out your thinking
him 'in many ways a most excellent writer.'
On the contrary, it goes to demonstrate that this whole assault of
yours on Nabokov's alleged identification of _poshlust_ with all the
ethic and aesthetic evil is altogether groundless.
> 'To exaggerate the worthlessness of a country [i.e. Germany]
>at the awkward moment when one is at war with it - and would like to
>see it destroyed to the last beer-mug and last forget-me-not, - means
>walking dangerously close to that abyss of _poshlust_ which yawns so
>universally at times of revolution and war. But if what one demurely
>mumbles is but a mild pre-war truth, even with something old-fashioned
>about it, the abyss is perhaps avoidable'.
>
>A curious piece of rhetoric. For Nabokov, 'to exaggerate [!] the
>worthlessness' of Germany in a time of war is not vulgar in itself,
>but merely imprudent, merely 'dangerously close' to a vulgarity;
>whereas to assert that worthlessness as a 'pre-war truth' is safe and
>unproblematic. Therefore, his hatred of Germany is not a spontaneous
>response to the war, but a deep-seated prejudice. Observe his use of
>the pronoun 'one' in describing the desire to see Germany 'destroyed
>to the last beer-mug and last forget-me-not': it at the same time
>absolves him from the personal charge of vulgarity for entertaining
>such a desire, and generalises his discursive self to the entire
>(Russian? American?) nation, turning the extermination of all Germans
>into a welcome objective.
Baloney. Sure, 'his hatred of Germany is not a spontaneous
response to the war, but a pre-war prejudice' based on the fact
that he and his wife, a Jewess, had to flee from those looking for
a solution to the 'Jewish question' -- first to France and then across
the ocean. His use of 'one' is questionable in the sense that,
technically, Nabokov wasn't a citizen of any of the countries at war,
but otherwise quite legitimate, as is his desire to see Germany
destroyed. How do you presume to win a world war otherwise?
> There is no comparable expression of
>Dostoevsky's hatred of the Jews in 'The Diary of a Writer' or
>elsewhere in Dostoevsky. 'The Diary' in fact represents an attempt, if
>clumsy and largely hypocritical and preposterous, to find a solution
>to the 'Jewish question' based on some fundamental human unity.
Dostoevsky spoke for the 80 million people among which there lived
a 3 million people, deprived of many of the rights enjoyed by other
citizens of Russia (including other minorities). What kind of 'comparable
expression' are you looking for? Are you commending him for not
inciting pogroms?
How about this passage, unmistakingly indicative of his 'lasting
contribution to the discussion of the Big Ethical Questions':
Dostoevsky says that, whenever in need 'of information about the Jew
and his doings', one doesn't have to go too far but 'merely stretch
out your hand to any newspaper at random which happens to be
near you, and look at the second or third page: unfailingly, you will
find something about Jews', that is to say, about Jewish misdeeds.
And he goes on to say, in that typical paranoid language of his:
Now, concede that this does mean something; it does
indicate and reveal to you something, even though you be an
absolute ignoramus in the forty-century-long history of this tribe.
Surely, I will be told that everybody is hatred-stricken, and therefore
everybody is lying. Of course, it may happen that everyone to the
last man is lying; but is this be so, there arises at once a new
question: if everybody without exception is lying and hatred-stricken,
there must have been something that generated this hatred,
since this universal hatred does mean something; as Belinsky
exclaimed once: "indeed, the word EVERYBODY does mean
something!"
I have re-read _The Diary of a Writer_ for March, 1877. It's been
over 15 years since I read it as a teenager, and I see that some
of the perceptions of that first reading need mitigating.
I abandoned the intention to provide excerpts. It impossible to give
an idea of what it's like wihtout going through the whole thing.
There have been several reprints of the 1949 translation; those
interested can find out for themselves. The translation is quite
inadequate in that the fervor of the original is largely lost and
many words and combinations of words need intensifying, like,
what is translated as 'the Yiddisher' (the single most used word)
is, of course, 'the Kike'; but, as it is, it gives one a notion of
the nature and magnitude of the phenomena that I identified, maybe
inaccurately, as 'the fundamental anti-semitism' of Dostoevsky.
There must be a new Princeton edition either out or forthcoming.
Judging from the first volume, it must be truer to the original.
Of course, there is plenty of other available data, scattered among his
works, notably 'The Demons'('The Obsessed') and 'The Karamazovs'.
MA
>> As regards Nabokov being too much of an anti-anti-semite,
>> considering the circumstances of life in Europe in the 30s --
>> I am at a loss for words.
PN
>I said noting about his being 'too much of an anti-anti-semite'.
Sorry if I misinterpreted your remark about 'the somewhat warped
nature of Nabokov's larger-than-life 'organic intolerance' of anti-
semitism.'
MA
>>>> I observe in passing that the post to which I reply has no
>>> relation to Crime & Punishment, other than the misapplied word
>>>'superhuman'.
PN
>>> Is this yet another 'self-evidentness'? Or may I expect you to
>>> ponder the point?
MA
>> I don't get your point.
PN
>Ah well. Here, I shall summarise it for you and shall explain why I
>used the term 'superhuman'. Perhaps you are insufficiently mindful of
>the fact that there are striking continuities between Nabokov's
>aesthetic creed and certain unsavory aspects of the po-mo
>intellectual condition. Nabokov is but one of a host of glib
>post-Heideggerian logophobic literati working to undermine the
>'authoritarian status' of rational discourse in a frontal attack on
>'representation'. His programmatic attempts to discredit 'general
>ideas' and generally to banish 'ideas' from literature should be
>interpreted through that prism. Instead of 'ideas' we have in Nabokov
>a hypertrophy of the self-romanticising speaking subject amid a
>profuse flowering of language.
This is either a sad misunderstanding on your part, or a deliberate
misreading; there are indications in your posting to the latter effect,
quite in Bloom's sense of the word 'misreading'. Unlike Dostoevsky,
he largely kept to 'the 'authoritarian status' of rational discourse' as
exemplified in the classical Russian prose. His American followers -
Barth, Barthelm, Pynchon - produced an altogether different art,
no matter how much they owe to 'Lolita', 'Pale Fire' and 'Ada'.
The other line of his disciples - Updike, Baker - are quite rational.
The 'general ideas' that he attempted to banish from literature must
be understood as not among the 'ideas' of the art proper. (Basically,
his version of art for art's sake.) Here's an example of an 'idea' that
he, rather than banish, shaped into a powerful artistic achievement.
I am speaking of the theme that goes through the best of his works,
such as 'The Defense', 'Glory', 'Invitation to a Beheading', 'Lolita',
'Pnin', 'Pale Fire', - the theme of Paradise Lost. I haven't read the
'principal' European version of Paradise Lost, that of Milton, but
of all that I've read Nabokov's is one of the most powerful and
poingnant. Wordsworth and Proust come to mind as his immediate
rivals. However, Wordsworth's and Proust 's Paradise is never
actually lost: it is not for nothing that Proust entitled his epopee
'In Search of Time Lost', not Paradise: the whole idea is to revisit
Paradise by means of art; in other words, Paradise is, in principle,
restorable intrinsically, within the universe of those kind of writers.
In Nabokov's universe, it is lost permanently, irrevocably, and his art
can't make up for the loss. [It is primarily for this reason that, as I
mentioned earlier, I think him not a great writer.] I can see that what
I have been talking about must be exactly what you deem 'the self-
romaticising speaking subject'; recall, however, Pushkin's dictum
that 'an artist must be judged by the laws he himself chooses to abide by'.
An example of a 'general idea' that, according to Nabokov, should be
banished from literature, would be a discussion of Einstein's relativity
or a theory of testing the notion of free will by killing an old worthless
woman (that is, that which fall into your 'communicable abstractions')
-- unless they undergo a transformation of the 'word made flesh' type.
>(Compare this to Brodsky's notion of
>immortality through continual generation of metaphoric discourse).
>According to Nabokov, there is nothing worthwhile in literature except
>language
I am not aware of his actually saying this; reference, please.
>(cf. his claim that Pushkin's _Onegin_ is purely a phenomenon
>of style).
He was wrong. There are, of course, those two or three great stanzas
in chapter VIII. Incidentally, how many of non-Russian readers are able
to appreciate _Onegin_? Is it solely due to the notion that genuine
poetry is but little susceptible of translation?
>On the other hand, Nabokov wants to present himself as a
>man of firm and respectable, even chivalrous values, with a high
>standard of decency, rather than as a scrofulous relativist. His
>ethical values arise _a priori_ of any (presumably unnecessary)
>demonstration, by dint of his implied transcendent perceptiveness. On
>one level, you can see those values as flowing from something the
>Aristotelian cardinal virtues, instilled in the well-born, well-bred
>child by habituation. But that is not the full picture: what we have
>here is not merely a set of supposedly correct ethical notions and
>habits that Nabokov, as a self-fashioned ideal being, has inherited
>from his no less ideal father, but above all a unique beatitude - a
>transcendent 'gift' of aesthetic perception, which allows him
>unerringly to tell good from evil on sight. The athletic
>self-aggrandisement of private perception makes Nabokov's snobbery
>ultimately obscurantist. I am not sure that you realise how central
>Nabokov's narcissistic concerns are to his writing - and I use the
>term 'narcissism' here, not as a facile metaphor for Nabokov's
>well-known arrogance, but as a precise designation for the source of
>practically all of his important value-judgements. The most serious
>challenge to Nabokov's moral stance as well as to his intellectual
>credentials lies in the realm of 'ideas'. He can't combat 'general
>ideas' by refutation without being found guilty of a
>self-contradiction. Therefore, he combats them by insinuation.
I haven't deleted this paragraph because it's a fine example
of how you 'attack your own targets', but other than that, I can't
put it to any use. It is not difficult to say 'not so' to any and each
of your assertions; but their very nature discourages such a move.
Give me a Russian writer (except Chernyshevsky) whose ethical
values arise _a posteriori_ of (presumably necessary) demonstrations.
Him an obscurantist? Less so than not. Probably less so than most
of the first-class writers since 1800. I have to confess that I
haven't been aware of the centrality of narcissism in Nabokov's
work; thanks for making me mindful of that. Too bad he wasn't
able to combat 'ideas' by refutation. How does all this bear on
his fiction's quality? But we know that you find him 'in many ways
a most exellent writer'; we'll gladly leave things at that.
Your obsession with the Chernyshevsky bit is truly amazing.
Exactly what doesn't sit well with you? That he ostensibly distorted
the darling image of Chernyshevsky? So what's the big deal? Do
you also fret over Tolstoy's distorting the image of Napoleon? Or
John's distorting images of Jesus and Judas? Isn't he in his own
right as a fiction prose writer to do so? Where did you get that idea
of Godunov's father being diametrically opposite to Cherny -- 'to the
last hygienic nuance'? The most memorable 'hygienic nuance' about
Cherny is what Nabokov uncharitably calls 'the book-keeping of
endearment', like, when Cherny makes an entry into his diary that
today he undid three buttons on his soon-to-be wife's blouse -- what
would constitute the diametrical opposite of this and how and where
we learn about it? Your 'speculative hypothesis' as to why Nabokov
bothers with Cherny goes down the drain by virtue of the mere
occurence in the text of the name Lenin -- Nabokov wrote that piece
against the Bolshies, whom he believed, unlike the 'Sovremennye
Zapiski' section of emigres yet just like Lenin, to be the legitimate
heirs of Cherny. (I am not sure that he was right about it, but it's
beside the point.) So much for Nabokov's 'dissociation of sensibility'.
Incidentally, Godunov's performing 'character assassination' belongs,
IMO, among the funniest sequences ever written. Let us also record
some of Nabokov's formal achievements in the Chernyshevsky chapter,
such as 'novel within a novel' (noone heard of Bulgakov as yet);
the cyclical structure, the opening lines of that chapter being the
closing lines of a sonnet and vice versa (the work on 'Work In
Progress' still in progress).
On the whole, I find the principal charges upon which you're trying to
bring Nabokov up, such as
1) his 'working to undermine the 'authoritarian status' of
rational discourse';
2) his being an obscurantist;
3) his being a reactionary (which is how I interpret what you
have had to say on Nabokov's attitude toward Cherny's legacy);
4) his being a hypocrite;
-- I find your effort misguided and misguiding; moreover, I consider
Dostoevsky guilty of the exact same sins, which is, in all likelyhood,
the real affiliation of your posting to the original subject line.
>Philip Nikolayev
Michael Abalovich
RZ...@ibm3090.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
You see, it was not very STRONG OPINION !
Discussion was good but the best ?!
I was surprised, it was long, but not fresh !!! (?)
My, very STRONG OPINION - it was sometimes too much 'poshlust'...
I'll say too....
By !
Yours,
Borjka
RZ...@ibm3090.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
nik...@scws5.harvard.edu (Philip Nikolayev) writes:
>Michael Abalovich concluded his latest response to me as follows:
>
>> PN
>>>>> This is as cheap as Nabokov's stuffy 'strong opinions' about a
>>>>> lot of other writers. In fact, there is no point of view here at
>>>>> all, but merely a posture.
>
Hi, friends,
ich werde schon deutsch schreiben, wenn wir schon so clever sind,
gel ?
1) Merkwuerdigerweise sehe ich darin keine 'posture' !
Es gibt ja eine interessante persoenliche Meinung, und zwar
sehr gescheite !
Ist es nicht so ?
>
>The question, that is, whether or not I find the murder scene in
>'Crime and Punishment' psychologically convincing. I could just as
>
2) WOW !!!
Was heisst 'convincing' ?
Es war doch vor 150 Jahren !!!
Raskolnikov kannte, z.B, solche Worte wie
POGROM, KOLHOS, SPUTNIK, AUSCHWITZ, SOZIALISM
ueberhaupt nicht !!!
Und damals - das wusste Raskolnikov !!! - bekam jeder Haeftling
in Sibirien einen Pelzmantel fuer Winter !!!
'convincing' - ?!?!?!
>I have commented earlier about Nabokov's inability to understand
>certain cardinal abstractions. For example, he never had any adequate
3) Sie denken zu frech, mon ami !!!
>even Tolstoy had trouble with it and as a result somewhat comically
4) Ich vermute, Sie sind nicht gut vertraut mit Werken von
Leo Tolstoy, z.B. 'Hadszi Murat' oder 'Anna Karenina'....
>
>I believe that the theoretical underpinning of Nabokov's obscurantism
>is largely derived from the British empiricists, though his scepticism
>is hardly philosophically sophisticated. Evidence to this effect is
5) Das ist schon zu kompliziert ! Und wenn schon dann umgekehrt !
Sie muessen wissen, Englaender selbst sind sehr idealistisch,
aber die englische Philosophie ist eindeutig materialistisch.
Bei Deutschen ist es genau umgekehrt.
Bei Russen ganz anders....
Und Franzosen essen Froeschchen....
>Nabokov's lovingly cultivated posture as a highly 'normal' gentleman
6) Also, es war keine 'posture' !
>Dostoevsky is quite mad, you see, while it is improper for a
>sensitive, free-thinking Russian to be mad.
7) Was heisst 'quite mad' ?!
Was heisst 'free-thinking Russian' ?!
Ihre Unkorrektheit klingt amusant und ein bisschen daemlich...
>Far from it. I claim both that 'Despair' derives from Dostoevsky, and
>that it is indeed far worse, psychologically and otherwise. No
8) Noch eine grosse Entdeckung !!!
Dostoevsky ist besser als Nabokov !!! HURRAAAAAAA !!!!!!!!!!
> Nabokov consistently expurgated his own biography in order to
>make it seem more ideal, as if building up, without debt or
9) Sehr interessant ! Hatte V.Nabokov eine Biographie ?!?!
>accomplishment as very likely this century's greatest writer. Tough
10) Wen meinen Sie ?
>conducted it at the expense of his betters - Dostoevsky, Wilde, Byron,
>Orwell, Kafka, Freud, Goethe - in order to romanticise his own
11) Diese Reihe ist eine gute Uberraschung !!!
'Kinderuberraschung' ?!
>MA
>> May I humbly suggest that the XIX century realism plunged Europe
>> into the First World War, which resulted in modernism?
12) O mein Gott !!! So primitiv darf man nicht sein !!!
>In Nabokov, irony functions as the sublimation of an intense
>Nietzschean _ressentiment_ at not being the best. One clear
13) AHA !!! Ich hab's !!!
Das ist sehr gut !!! Danke Philip !!!
Das ist schon etwas originelles und richtig kluges !!!
>MA
>> May I humbly inquire about the principles on which your literary
>> hierarchy is based and, in particular, what makes you set Dostoevsky
>> so higher than Nabokov?
14) What does it mean ?!
> Dostoevsky is a far more original writer. I refer you to
15) Wie sang einst V.VYSOTSKY : 'Ja, Van', ej-Bogu, sakrichu !!!'
with Nabokov (a writer
>>>>> much inferior to Dostoevsky, at any rate) is his somewhat
16) O mein Gott !
>>>>> superhuman standards
>>>>> of literary taste, 'poshlust'
>>>>>
>>>>> instance of metaposhlust)
17) Etwas SUPER !!!
>>>>> little lightbulb at the appropriate times. He was a comic fellow
18) Who is here 'a comic fellow' ? PN !!!
>>>> Dostoevsky is somehow more *important* in that he was concerned
>>>> with Big Ethical Questions - the Last Questions, in his wording;
19) Was hat denn das mit Literatur zu tun, Leute ?!
Muss man weiter lesen ?!
Gute Frage !!!
Ich probier's !!!
( FORTSETZUNG FOLGT ...)
Yours,
Borjka
RZ...@ibm3090.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
>Michael Abalovich concluded his latest response to me as follows:
>
Hi, friends !
DIE FORTSETZUNG !!!
-------------------
>> PN
>>> Quite apart from my doubts about
>>> there being such a thing as 'pure aesthetics', allow me to point
>>> out to you that Nabokov's doctrine of 'poshlust' ('kitsch' is a far
>>> better word, but insufficiently twee by Nabokovian standards)
20) Was heisst 'doctrine' ?!
Wenn Sie schon Begriffe benutzen, dann muss man die zuerst
definieren !
'Poshlust' kommt aus dem Russisch und wird dort ganz eindeutig
verstanden !
In English und Deutsch gibt's so etwas nicht.
Das ist schon Kulturverschiedenheiten !
V.Nabokov nutzte diesen Begriff als ein Russe .
Na und ?! Muss man das besprechen ?!
>as being the pervasive and incorrigible defect of all aspects of
>German culture at all times. His treatment of the word 'poshlust'
21) Was ist denn das wieder ?! Wo haben Sie gelesen, dass
eine Kultur defect sein kann ?!
Und warum genau 'German culture' ?
Das ist schon nicht ernst !
Und generel, kann ein Russe, Ami oder Jude so etwas entscheiden ?
Vielleicht nur im Puff !!!
> the German Romantic philosophy that Nabokov so
>
22) Was ist denn das ?
Noch eine grosse Entdeckung ?!?!
>reliance on the contemptible realist method in his own writing.)
23) Sie sprechen wie ein gut ausgebildeter Parteibonze !!!
>>>> Nabokov... was among the first to recognize the threat of the Nazis.
24) Das ist eine nette Dummheit !!!
>PN
>>> Superficially, yes.
25) WOW !!!!!!!!
Ach Philip, dumme Fragen ist verboten zu beantworten !!!
Das Risiko, sich selbst zu komprometieren, ist zu hoch !!!
>> MA
>>>> Also, this 'pathetic and comic fellow' was organically intolerant
>>>> of anti- semitism, as distinct from the
>>>> fundamental anti-Semitism of Dostoevsky.
26) Worum geht es ?
>>>larger-than-life 'organic intolerance' of anti-semitism.)
27) Wenn Sie schon mit einer Judin schlafen......
>> Germanophobian quotations from Nabokov, so that the netters might
>> decide for themselves, which is 'more extreme'? Would you welcome
>> such an exchange?
28) S. P.27...
>problem of vulgarity in Russian writings. His observations about the
29) Haben Sie dieses Problem selbst erfunden ?
War jemand Ihnen behilflich ?
> 'Among the nations with which we came into contact, Germany
>has always seemed to us a country were _poshlust_, instead of being
>mocked, was one of the essential parts of the national spirit, habits,
>traditions and general atmosphere, although at the same time
30) AHA !!! Sie sind ein Ultra-Sionist !!! Klar !!!
Wer ist besser: Sionist, Kommunist or Nazist ?!
>dreadful streak of _poshlust_ running through Goethe's _Faust_.'
31) AHA !!! 'Faust' haben Sie nicht gelesen !
Das kommt auch vor ......
>Poshlust' is an 'essential part' of the German 'national spirit' and
>of 'German philosophy'; never mind that the vulgar conception of
32) Idiotisch !!!!!!!
>clumsy and largely hypocritical and preposterous, to find a solution
>to the 'Jewish question' based on some fundamental human unity.
33) You see ......
>Of course, politics is a fairly abstract realm, and therefore hardly
34) Abgesehen von 'Jewish question' ?!?!
Von Auschwitz ?!?!
Von Ukraina-34 ?!?!
Sie sind gefaerlich naiv.....
>for patriotism and nationalism. I submit that Nabokov's
>characterisation of Nazism as a function of German vulgarity is
35) German vulgarity, Russische Dummheit, Judischer Extremismus,
Englische Unmoral, Franzoesische Perversitat.....
etc.
>intellectual condition. Nabokov is but one of a host of glib
>post-Heideggerian logophobic literati working to undermine the
36) Das ist schon interessant ...
>profuse flowering of language. (Compare this to Brodsky's notion of
37) Es sieht aus wie ein grosser Haufen von Worten ....
>According to Nabokov, there is nothing worthwhile in literature except
>language (cf. his claim that Pushkin's _Onegin_ is purely a phenomenon
38) Provokation ?
>ideas' by refutation without being found guilty of a
>self-contradiction. Therefore, he combats them by insinuation.
39) Aber hier haben Sie recht !!!
Danke, Philip !
>unfortunate utopian. The projected ideality of Nabokov's self-image
>depends on the pure Platonic form of his father. (Note that Nabokov
>seldom emphasises the actual politics of his father.)
40) Das klingt nicht ueberzeugend.
Wo haben Sie es gelesen ?
>ornate and curious case of the King's New Clothes. All that is not to
>deny that Nabokov is in many ways an most excellent writer. Let me say
41) Danke ! Sie sind manchmal ganz nett !!!
>
>> Michael Abalovich
>
>Philip Nikolayev
>nik...@fas.harvard.edu
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>the ancestral wisdom of barbarians who fed their swine on the
42) P. 41 wird zurueckgenommen !!!!
RESUMEE: I must say, it wasn't a great pleasure to read this
discussion !!!
The level was too simple and 'not clever'.
Sometimes stupid.
V.Nabokov would say: 'long 'poshlust'' ......
Brian was much better.
Thank you.
Yours,
Borjka
michael paine
This is a very sad and unfortunate reading of Nabokov.
Sorry, I got lost in this thread, and I am not certain to whom this should be
addressed.
Misha Verbitsky
In article <1994Nov28.0...@galois.mit.edu> bon...@math.mit.edu
(Michael Abalovich) responds to Philip Nikolayev:
>Philip Nikolayev responds to Michael Abalovich:
[ some minor comments on issue; overall, Philip's
performance is commendable to the degree when I have nothing to add ]
>The Bakhtin in question is 'Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics.'
>With all due respect to Bakhtin, I think that the little precious to be
>found in that book either has preciously little to do with Dostoevsky
>(e.g. the concept of 'carnival laughter') or had been suggested before
>(the emphasis on 'dialogue'). The central idea of 'polyphony' (something
>like 'split personality' in medical terms) is highly dubious, seeing as
>how Bakhtin says that 'In Tolstoy's novels [by contradistinction with
>Dostoevsky's], there's always the truth of the author present.' I would
>have liked Bakhtin to put his finger on the voice of truth in 'Anna Karenina'.
>I further believe that one of Bakhtin's favorite notions, that of
>'ambivalence', applies perfectly to this very book of his. Whatever
>particular trait he chooses to praise, it can be regarded as
>praiseworthy and blameworthy at once.
Of course, this is completely wrong. Tolstoy's views are
reflected by Levin (autobiographical personage) and
his fiancee; more generally, in Anna Karenina's conflict with
her husband, Tolstoy takes the side of Anna with no
ambivalence whatsoever. On the other hand, the attitude
of Dostoevsky towards Raskolnikov or Ivan Karamazov
is much more ambivalent than Tolstoy's towards Mr.
Karamazov.
>>Despite Nabokov's
>>claims to the contrary, there is no systematic preoccupation with the
>>problem of vulgarity in Russian writings. His observations about the
>>'timelessness' of 'poshlust' and 'the immortal spirit of _poshlust_'
>>are plagiarisms (the latter almost verbatim) from a poem by Fedor
>>Tiutchev - the only pre-Nabokovian literary text where the word
>>'poshlust' is used in a memorable and significant way.
>He says nothing about writings. How about this one of the numerous
>pre-Nabokovian jokes about Lieutenant Rzhevsky:
> A bunch of hussars are having a good time with a wanton
>girl who lies stark naked on the floor in the middle of the room.
>They are playing cards using the girl's belly as a card-table, now
>and then having a sip from the bottle that sticks out of the girl's
>vagina. In walks Lieutenant Rzhevsky.
> 'Gentlemen, are we going to fuck the bitch, or what?'
> 'Ah, Lieutenant, why do you always _poshl_ize [vulgarize]
>things that way!'
>You may find it vulgar to see a joke nationally colored, yet this one
>seems to me fairly Russian. It also indicates a quaint bias with
>regard to vulgarity.
This is funny to hear from (I presume) a native
Russian-speaker, because Rzhevsky's jokes are very
much "post-Nabokovian". In fact, Rzhevsky is a personage
of a popular schlock (both intentionally and un-intentionally
funny, and so bad than badness transcends itself) TV
film of Soviet epoch, filmed I guess in 70-ies (or 60-ies).
I think this movie is called Adyutant Ego Prevoskhoditel'stva
(apologize in advice for shaking memory - I never had a TV).
The popular personage of jokes Rzhevsky (mostly fornicating
with nymphette Natasha Rostova) is derived from this movie.
Misha.
P. S. The original version of this joke is the following.
The officiers place the girl on the table, put the
picled dill in her vagina and dip the cold champaigne on
her belly. On some distance from the girl's vagina they place the
portrait of His Majesty Emperor. The muscles of vagina contract
involuntary and the pickled dill flies in the face of
His Majesty. Rzhevsky walks by etc.
-----
I never understood alienation. Alienation from _what_?
You have to _want_ to be part of something in order to
feel alienated from it. -- Boyd Rice.
John Wojdylo
Philip Nikolayev responds to Michael Abalovich:
#The Bakhtin in question is 'Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics.'
#With all due respect to Bakhtin, I think that the little precious to be
#found in that book either has preciously little to do with Dostoevsky
#(e.g. the concept of 'carnival laughter') or had been suggested before
#(the emphasis on 'dialogue'). The central idea of 'polyphony' (something
#like 'split personality' in medical terms) is highly dubious, ...
If it was an idea then it would be dubious. But 'polyphony' is a
_technique_ used to hint at how the world is through representing the way
it appears. Camus's 'Myth of Sisyphus' is a simple kind of polyphony, in
one moment Sisyphus is focussed on the task ahead, in the next he relaxes
and sees the landscape. The truth of a story is not the details, it is in
between the details. Somehow through apprehending the world's appearance
-- in a way that is narrowed down by the author -- one perceives
something deeper. I'm talking about considerations that come even before
literary criticism.
Camus's representation has an individual as centre and so is useful
for modernist existentialist writers. Dostoevsky (in "The Idiot") was
interested in representing an individual together with his society, so the
polyphony includes social perspectives as well. The "notes" -- or "pure
points" -- of the polyphony are well known literary themes. I really
don't see Dostoevsky's technique of polyphony as being controversial.
Misha Verbitsky:
# P. S. The original version of this joke is the following.
# The officiers place the girl on the table, put the
# picled dill in her vagina and dip the cold champaigne on
# her belly. On some distance from the girl's vagina they place the
# portrait of His Majesty Emperor. The muscles of vagina contract
# involuntary and the pickled dill flies in the face of
# His Majesty. In walks Lieutenant Rzhevsky 'Gentlemen, are we going to fuck
# the bitch, or what?' 'Ah, Lieutenant, why do you always _poshl_ize
# [vulgarize] things that way!'
Bravo.
jw
Timothy Watson
Wojdylo) writes:
> Camus's representation has an individual as centre and so is useful
> for modernist existentialist writers. Dostoevsky (in "The Idiot") was
> interested in representing an individual together with his society, so the
> polyphony includes social perspectives as well. The "notes" -- or "pure
> points" -- of the polyphony are well known literary themes. I really
> don't see Dostoevsky's technique of polyphony as being controversial.
Uh, oh, the fanatics have escaped from rec.arts.poems.
Just a question from a dude who has not read this stuff in a long
time. Is Camus "polyphonous" in "The Plague?" It seems Camus has a
perspective on how people interact also.
--
Timothy M. Watson Something there is that doesn't
tmwa...@engin.umich.edu love a wall, that wants it down.
BioEngineering Program Grad Student __/| -Robert Frost, 'Mending Fences'
OPINIONS WILL NOT COINCIDE WITH OFFICIAL POSITIONS TAKEN BY U of Michigan
RZ...@ibm3090.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de
RZ...@ibm3090.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de writes:
>In article <NIKOLAY.94...@scws5.harvard.edu>,
>nik...@scws5.harvard.edu (Philip Nikolayev) writes:
>
>>Michael Abalovich concluded his latest response to me as follows:
>>
>
>
>
>
>RESUMEE: I must say, it wasn't a great pleasure to read this
> discussion !!!
>
> The level was too simple and 'not clever'.
> Sometimes stupid.
>
> V.Nabokov would say: 'long 'poshlust'' ......
>
> Brian was much better.
>
> Thank you.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Yours,
>Borjka
>
Right !!!!
Yours,
Borjka
John Wojdylo
#John Wojdylo writes:
## Camus's representation has an individual as centre and so is useful
## for modernist existentialist writers. Dostoevsky (in "The Idiot") was
## interested in representing an individual together with his society, so the
## polyphony includes social perspectives as well. The "notes" -- or "pure
## points" -- of the polyphony are well known literary themes. I really
## don't see Dostoevsky's technique of polyphony as being controversial.
#Uh, oh, the fanatics have escaped from rec.arts.poems.
Yes, and they'll hack you up with a toothbrush if you say nasty things about
their poetry.
#Just a question from a dude who has not read this stuff in a long
#time. Is Camus "polyphonous" in "The Plague?" It seems Camus has a
#perspective on how people interact also.
To answer this properly I'd have to take excerpts from both and try to
come up with something recognizeable as polyphony in one but perhaps
not the other. I don't mean to say that Camus writes like Dostoevsky in
this sense, I'm saying that polyphony as a technique crops up in all
sorts of places, when the writer is trying to show different _aspects_
of the same truth, or path to truth. Dostoevsky's prose in "The Idiot"
-- even in English translation -- is infused with a certain life which Camus
dessicates in his work by being more closely focussed on an individual's
nose. Even if Camus does show different aspects at different times (I'd have
to study the prose, it's been a while), the energy with which the
aspects interchange is not as intense -- or maybe I mean jitteringly
neurotic -- as Dostoevsky. I'm sure this has to do with the types of
people one meets in Eastern Europe as opposed to the West. What I mean here
is that it's difficult, say, in Australia to put on a play based on D.,
containing his essential features, and make it make sense to a local
audience.
#--
# Timothy M. Watson Something there is that doesn't
# tmwa...@engin.umich.edu love a wall, that wants it down.
# BioEngineering Program Grad Student __/| -Robert Frost, 'Mending Fences'
#OPINIONS WILL NOT COINCIDE WITH OFFICIAL POSITIONS TAKEN BY U of Michigan
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
You must be full bottle on U of M's official positions. What a waste of time.
john wojdylo
Philip Nikolayev
> > MA
> >>>> I happen to believe that Nabokov writes incomparably better than
> >>>> Dostoevsky, in any language. What you probably mean is that
> >>>> Dostoevsky is somehow more *important* in that he was concerned
> >>>> with Big Ethical Questions - the Last Questions, in his wording;
> >>>> while Nabokov never got to breathe the celestial air of the starry
> >>>> sky of Big Questions, dwelling among the inconsequential problems
> >>>> of pure aesthetics.
>
> To which, rather than agree, you simply said:
>
> > PN
> >>> This is, of course, perfectly Nabokovian gibberish, cosy in its
> >>> self-assured superficiality.
>
> MA
> >> This is, of course, perfectly Dostoevskian ability to hit the lit-
> >> by-the-overhead-light-amid-broad-daylight nail right on the head.
>
> PN
> >My apologies, whatever your meaning may be. How glutinous of me to
> >disgruntle your rubbery majesty.
>
> MA
> Not at all.
The above excerpt is illustrative of the somewhat shrill 'cognitive
dissonance' that has unfortunately evolved between Michael Abalovich
and me in the course of our discussion. Although a lack of free time
prevents me from answering his latest posting at the moment, I should
like to settle the issue of high pitch and pointed fingers before I
respond to the substance of Michael's latest posting. I hope that
these things can be dealt with separately, and that the
misunderstandings involved can be straightened out. In the past years,
I have lost several friends because of things that I had said, and now
again I see that what I intended as a purely intellectual discussion
is beginning to interfere with an old camaraderie, in a way that seems
increasingly tasteless. Of course, this is nothing new in the troubled
history of Russian letters.
Michael, over the ten odd years that you have known me, I hope you
have not failed to recognise me, progressively, as a tactless and
habitually rude intellectual miscreant always insisting irrationally
on a culture of strong attitudes. Especially now that I have given up
smoking, I hope you have noticed that my general verbal brutality has
become altogether unmitigated. Truth to tell, I have absolutely no
intention of changing, not even for the purposes of our discussion.
Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas, you will recall. Yet I hope
that I can continue the discussion without stupidly and involuntarily
alienating you. Although almost all your claims strike me as mistaken
and at times naive, I believe it is time for me to acknowledge my
fault in unwittingly fomenting what you have described as the
'unnecessarily personal' element of the exchange. My general
rhetorical habits have, of course, had something to do with it
all. Besides, I admit I may have tonally overreacted to the fact that
in trying to enforce adherence to the initial subject line ('Crime and
Punishment'), you dismissively described my initial, perhaps somewhat
excessively explosive, posting about Nabokov as irrelevant, and flamed
me on a point of language (disagreeing with my use of the word
'superhuman' with respect to Nabokov's self-professed standards of
literary taste). By so overreacting, I must have taken your
well-meaning remarks too personally. That's what having an
intellectual agenda does to a man. I also apologise for my inveterate
fondness of cheap puns based on discoloured moth-eaten idioms, which
has resulted in my potentially offensive remark about 'rubbery
majesty'. I should certainly have shown more class. Furthermore, I am
very sorry that my response to you regarding 'Big Ethical Questions'
in Dostoevsky came so close to a personal offence when I referred to
it as 'perfectly Nabokovian gibberish, cosy in its self-assured
superficiality'. I must point out that I did not intend to attack you
personally, but merely Nabokov's views on Dostoevsky and on literature
in general. But because what you had written about Dostoevsky seemed
like an almost verbatim allusion to Nabokov's preface to the English
edition of his 'Despair' and of several other writings, I felt that
you were simply referring me to Nabokov. I should have been a lot
clearer about the intended target of my charge of 'self-assured
superficiality'.
Anyway, I hope we can weed out this 'personal element' before it
sprouts too profusely, and talk like rational men. Again, I apologise
for my contribution to a crude acrimony. Let's not permit the
discontents to escalate along some bleak uncontrollable spiral. Let me
say, also, that I am grateful to you for this opportunity to
crystallize my thoughts about Nabokov in coherent form, even though
apparently you have so far not enjoyed what I have had to say. I
propose that this be purely an affair of the intellect (with elements
of rhetorical sparring, no doubt). If we must correspond, almost
literally, 'across a room', old Zarathustra can't allow us to descend
below the standards of Gershenzon and Ivanov.
Best regards,
Philip Nikolayev
nik...@fas.harvard.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
'But the weight of opinion is against me when I exhort you never to
debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but
to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to
suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history
has the power to inflict on wrong.'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------