Vladimir Nabokov: Glory

[pontalba]

But the picture is representative of......All. And its mystery is what propels Martin into his future wanderings to find....himself and his love.

Yes, the third person foray was disconcerting. But typically Nabokov.

But I must in all honesty add that I didn't understand the foreword until I'd read the book...

 

[pontalba]

I almost feel as though that picture in his nursery focused Martin's longings, or at least gave them form.

 

[Peder]

But the picture is representative of......All. And its mystery is what propels Martin into his future wanderings to find....himself and his love.

Yes, the third person foray was disconcerting. But typically Nabokov.

But I must in all honesty add that I didn't understand the foreword until I'd read the book...

Pontalba,
Score another triumph for VN! Being able to write a wonderful story for the first read and also hide within it totally those invisible features that we will see only on rereading. And he makes it look effortless.
Peder

 

[Peder]

I almost feel as though that picture in his nursery focused Martin's longings, or at least gave them form.

Ya know Pontalba?
I think there is a reason we both think that. And I think the initials are called VN.
Just look at the last sentence before he starts describing the crib and picture scene, and the first sentence after that, in conjunction,

...But then what does it matter whence comes the gentle nudge that jars the soul into motion and sets it rolling, doomed never to stop again?

On the bright wall over his narrow crib ....

Though those two sentences are separated by a paragraph and section break, it seems pretty clear that they are like question and answer.
"Whence came that gentle nudge?"
"It came from the picture on the bright wall above his narrow crib."

Actually, the question falls just after another sentence also

However, he had no lack of enchantments, and no cause to regret that it was not the Russian knight-errant Ruslan but Ruslan's occidental brother that had awakened his imagination in childhood.

So, all together now,
1. No lack of enchantments to awaken his imagination
2. Not Ruslan but his occidental brother
3. But what matter?
4. On the bright wall above his bed, a picture..

I bet somebody with a good imagination could make quite a story out of just those bare bones. Somebody with an outstanding imagination. Somebody like, say, maybe,....Vladimir Nabokov!

And how hard does one have to imagine that, if one looked up the story of Ruslan and an occidental brother, one might find more than just a relevant tidbit for Glory? Not hard, squeeked Little Mouse, who surely believes there must be such a story.

And it is not just any brother but an occidental brother. Westward always westward. St Petersburg, Berlin, France, USA. In 1932! Admittedly Berlin is west of St. Petersburg for the first step, but how prophetic!

And just for further comment, those gentle unseen unfelt seemingly accidental "nudges" of inconsequential events, like perhaps getting a picture set on a wall right "there," are the exceedingly gentle ways that may be meant in Transparent Things as the means through which the souls in the after life can, at most, have their influence in this life. And that was written back in 1932!

He gets to be like an old friend after a while,
Peder

 

[Peder]

BTW Pontalba,
Very neat, and pretty, new avatar!
Peder

 

[Breaca]

Pontalba, all,The reason for going bonkers is simply that in the Introduction, where VN himself is undeniably writing in the first person, he refers to "Nabokov" in the third person, and a little later, in the story itself, where he has a third-person narrotor to do the telling, one cannot help but wonder if one is reading straightforward first-person narrative of his own childhood. He glides through pages like a Cheshire Cat, sometimes sitting there before us, and sometimes leaving behind what definitely feels like his own personal smile.

Exactly!! If I let my fanciful thoughts run away with me, as is my want sometimes, I can almost imagine VN sitting in a comfy chair opposite me, watching as I take in the pages of Glory, and all the time reading the flitting emotions that are mirrored in my face and SMILING. And every now and again I can look up and smile with nod and a wink at the great man himself

 

[pontalba]

So, all together now,
1. No lack of enchantments to awaken his imagination
2. Not Ruslan but his occidental brother
3. But what matter?
4. On the bright wall above his bed, a picture..

I bet somebody with a good imagination could make quite a story out of just those bare bones. Somebody with an outstanding imagination. Somebody like, say, maybe,....Vladimir Nabokov!

How well you splice it together! I'll know how I feel about it, but many times won't be able to put my finger on why. But you've done by Jove!

And how many among us has owned a painting along those lines and not
had exactly the same thoughts as Martin? Ah, but how many have followed up on said feelings? /sigh/
Martin is an adventurer in a mild mannered scholar's frame.

 

[pontalba]

Exactly!! If I let my fanciful thoughts run away with me, as is my want sometimes, I can almost imagine VN sitting in a comfy chair opposite me, watching as I take in the pages of Glory, and all the time reading the flitting emotions that are mirrored in my face and SMILING. And every now and again I can look up and smile with nod and a wink at the great man himself

Exactamundo! And what a kick he'd get out of all the hoopla.

 

[pontalba]

BTW Pontalba,
Very neat, and pretty, new avatar!
Peder

Shucks. Thanks.

 

[Peder]

How well you splice it together! I'll know how I feel about it, but many times won't be able to put my finger on why. But you've done by Jove!

Pontalba,
I do have to confess, that a hint from The European Years sent me back and, looking very carefully, and being somewhat wiser to his tricks, er methods, by now, I was able to pick that much out. Sleeping on it, and letting thoughts wander, also helped quite a bit. And I especially enjoy the sleeping part. But BTW it seems I learned these approaches of close text reading from you. Right?
But yes, the surface is as smooth as silk and in the normal course of reading one slides right on by. Me too!
Gonna have to go back and read that Appel Intro again.
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Vladimir Nabokov, The Russian Years by Brian Boyd

There really isn't too terribly much on Glory here, well, at least comparatively speaking (to Lolita). But just to show VN's state of mind during delivery of the babe....on p.356:

An entomologist Nabokov had met in Prague had tempted him easily susceptible to at this time of year. Instead he remained in Berlin, composing Glory every day, and every night reading what he had written to Vera.

What discipline. But seriously, it was, and it seems that he felt if he could not combine the two, as he did with Lolita, the creation came first.

 

[pontalba]

Sleeping on it, and letting thoughts wander, also helped quite a bit. And I especially enjoy the sleeping part.

No, I'm not sleeping............I'm jes cogitatin'.............

From Boyd's The Russian Years: p.357-58

Glory is the first Nabokov novel shaped to match the lack of structure in an individual life. The novel does not even end, it simply fades away--into Corot colors, into one of Chekhov's great grisailles.

I have to say, when I read the end (which I won't remark upon yet), I was taken back. I had to flip back several pages just to make sure I'd not skipped something!
aaaarrrrggggghhhhhhh! but most effective.

 

[pontalba]

Martin, when 16 is remembering childhood impressions from what I believe was the first time he'd watched with fascination the lights of distant towns from the train window. This became part of his obsession. His mother has left him with the maid in the sleeping car and gone to the dining car to join her husband. Martin cannor resist getting from under the covers and on his knees staring out of the window. In a way it seems to me that this reverie is basically the same as his dreaminess regarding the painting in his nursery.
The language used is of course startlingly beautiful. p.21

It was then that he suddenly saw what he now remembered on the Crimean plateau--a handful of lights in the distance, in a fold of darkness between two black hills: the lights would hide and reappear, and then they came twinkling from a completely different direction and abruptly vanished, as if somebody had covered them with a black kerchief.

Next page

The train rocked gently as it switched tracks, everything grew dark beyond the window, and once again there was only the rushing night.....................The undulating black night resumed its smooth course and the elusive lights gradually thinned into nothingness.

Anyone that says this book has no romance, better think again. Just imagine............

 

[Peder]

...The language used is of course startlingly beautiful. p.21

Anyone that says this book has no romance, better think again. Just imagine............

Pontalba,
Nabokov so excels at descriptions like that, of the real world, that it is hard for me imagine that they don't come out of actual reality someplace and then get heightened into their artistic beauty by his seeing them through his artistic literary eye and then putting the result down on paper. That each description can be created completely by imagination from "nothing" is beyond my ability to comprehend -- but then again I just don't have any imagination worth mentioning in the same sentence as his. So maybe he can just create such scenes imaginatively, in which case I am in even greater awe of him.

And of course when he is decribing someone quite like himself, Martin probably, and Timofey Pnin for sure, then it becomes absolutely impossible to tell where the art leaves off and his actual person begins. And I wonder how much we will ever know where that dividing line is.

Best just to read the beauty of his prose and get carried along with it, without wondering such questions...
But he sure makes a reader feel as if they are there,
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Peder
It seems to me that Nabokov takes a tiny bit of reality, and runs with it. Goes off on tangents and round the mulberry bush with that bit of reality. Do you suppose that the fact both he and Vera had the....oh...whaddaya call it. Seeing color auras....the alphabet..../groan/ the word won't come, but you know what I mean....! VN's reality was heightened to such an extent, the label dreamer is only the beginning of him.

But I did find it amusing that he used a diamond merchant in Glory. Yes he did. P. 25--

They were fleeing before a mortal danger but for some reason Martin was little disturbed by the fact that this was so, that the ashen-faced profiteer over there with a load of precious stones in a belt next to his skin, had he stayed ashore, would have been killed on the spot by the first Red Army fellow to be tempted by his diamond innards.

Well, maybe merchant is stretching it a bit. Of course I mean Arthur in The Enchanter. /raised eyebrows/ Yes?

 

[Peder]

Peder
It seems to me that Nabokov takes a tiny bit of reality, and runs with it. Goes off on tangents and round the mulberry bush with that bit of reality. Do you suppose that the fact both he and Vera had the....oh...whaddaya call it. Seeing color auras....the alphabet..../groan/ the word won't come, but you know what I mean....! VN's reality was heightened to such an extent, the label dreamer is only the beginning of him.

But I did find it amusing that he used a diamond merchant in Glory. Yes he did. P. 25-- Well, maybe merchant is stretching it a bit. Of course I mean Arthur in The Enchanter. /raised eyebrows/ Yes?

Pontalba,
Starting with a bit of reality and running with it sounds like a good description. As for synesthesia (you catch me in a good memory moment!) I always wondered how that worked, it is so far from my experience, obviousy and duh! Whether there was a continual changing of color as the sound/scene(?) changed, or whether it was a slower process and the colors came only after thought. But even though, I think, he claimed no talent as an artist (with paints or music) he was surely fascinated with color and seemed to see the world as an artist does.

And once again you amaze me! I hadn't thought of Arthur at all, and it took me considerable brain-scratching to even remember that, indeed, he was a diamond merchant, dealing in "sparkles and colors on black velvet," or some similar phrase. It does seem to be that when VN's characters travel, the whole crowd comes along. I have more noticed the cane with the plum-colored knob on top, because some character always seems to be walking along with it (three times now, I think) and using it "in the European manner." And I wish I knew what that was! Now I am waiting for the wrist watch with no hands to show up again someplace. And then, who knows, maybe even roller skates.

Peder

 

[pontalba]

Diamonds do sorta stick in a gals mind..... But now you have me going to look for that plum colored knob. I don't remember that at all.
But who knows. Maybe the roller skates will show up, at least in another Nabokov.

I have no idea what "in the European manner" means either. Hmmm maybe our British contingent would know?
Breaca?
Steffee?

Maybe if I watch another Poirot I'll figure it out.

Synesthesia!! Yes! /I doff my hat to you Sir/
I suspect all persons with this talent are a bit different in their processes.

 

[Peder]

Ruslan

Ruslan is mentioned on p4,

He [Martin] had no lack of enchantments, and no cause to regret that it was not the Russian knight-errant Ruslan but his occidental brother that had awakened his imagination in childhood.

Using google, one easily turns up the story of Ruslan and Ludmila, by Pushkin, no less. Ruslan is a knight and, on his wedding day to Ludmila, she is captured by an evil sorcerer. Ruslan pursues and, after imaginable sorts of fights and difficulties, he rescues her from the sorcerer, only to have a rival of his carry her off again. Ruslan tracks him down, rescues her again, and revives her with a ring,[!] not a kiss. And they get married and live happily ever after. So Ruslan was what we (at least in the US) would call a knight in shining armor rescuing the damsel in distress.

However, the reference to "his occidental brother" is more obscure. Ruslan has no brother that I could find. So the reference may be to the fact that Martin's first books were English and he first became acquainted with Ruslan in English translation. Why English? It turns out that Sofia, his mother, p.4

found Russian fairy tales clumsy cruel and squalid, Russian folksongs inane, and Russian riddles idiotic. She had little faith in Pushkin's famous nanny, and said that the poet himself had invented her...

But there is the name Pushkin! So Martin certainly did not hear of Ruslan in Russian.

There is also the possibility that the reference is to the stories of King Arthur and his knights, p6

Nothing was wasted on Martin, neither the crunchy biscuits nor the adventures of King Arthur's knights. What a rapturous moment that was when a youth -- perchance a nephew of Sir Tristram's -- donned for the first time piece by piece his shiny, conves plate armor, and rode off to his first single combat.

However, achieving and living the romantic ideal was not so easy, p13

Martin noticed that on occasion he was so afraid of seeming unmanly, to become known as a coward, that he involuntarily reacted in just the way a coward would -- the blood left his face, his legs trembled, and his heart pounded tightly in his chest. Admitting to himself that he was not posessed of genuine innate sang froid, he nevertheless firmly resolved to behave always as a fearless man would in his place.

And so, Martin, our knight with the timid self-image, and Ruslan as his ideal, goes forth and struggles his way through single combats with life's episodes.

Peder

 

[pontalba]

That much is based on Nabokov himself, the speaking of English first at least. I wonder if his mother held the same distain for Russian fairy tales?

Well a ring is more practical, if not as nice.

But doesn't the story of Ruslan and Ludmila remind you of Humbert and Lolita, in a bizarre twisty way?

Martin's self view certainly was different to what he longed to be, and different to what he appeared to be as well.

now off to read link.......

 

[Peder]

That much is based on Nabokov himself, the speaking of English first at least. I wonder if his mother held the same distain for Russian fairy tales?

Well a ring is more practical, if not as nice.

But doesn't the story of Ruslan and Ludmila remind you of Humbert and Lolita, in a bizarre twisty way?

Martin's self view certainly was different to what he longed to be, and different to what he appeared to be as well.

now off to read link.......

Pontalba,
His mother? As I was typing that I was indeed wondering how well she would have gotten along with the Brothers Karamazov. And could it be VN's way of saying a bit of what he thought about things. Naw. Couldn't be! He, the non-admirer of Dostoevsky as I understand it.

But that Martin! He is definitely conflicted and definitely needs Dr. Freud, no matter what his creator thinks!

Humbert and Lolita? Not exactly a twisted version. I've always thought that Lolita read like an ordinary non-harmonious relationship between grown ups, except that she was made to be artificially young. Ruslan and Ludmila sounds like the standard romanticized fairy-tale view (duh) of an adult relationship. So R&L are far to one side of ordinary while H&L are as far to the other side. But in the middle they have common ground of being boy-girl relationships with the boys and girls doing sort of what they always do.

Humbert and Lolita didn't cross my mind. Queen Guinevere did, and I wish I had read the tales of King Arthur and his knights.

Peder