Vladimir Nabokov

[pontalba]

Peder OK, OK, whassup with the new avatar? Location? But it is pretty.

Herding cats indeed! As If!

 

[Peder]

Peder OK, OK, whassup with the new avatar? Location? But it is pretty.

Herding cats indeed! As If!

Pontalba,
Wow! That didn't take long!
Just a post-card picture of a Tiffany window that I came across while culling book stacks. Scene of a lake with mountains and sky in the background framed by birch trees and blue irises in the foreground. Wanted to see how much of that would show up. Needless to say it is glorious in the original size. Was going to change my profile picture to a peacock with a beautifully fanned open colorful tail, but I figured that would be going a bit far.

Peder

 

[pontalba]

In my previous post regarding VN's unfinished work The Original of Laura: Dying is Fun, I didn't finish posting what I wanted to get across. Here is a bit more that Boyd wrote, a quote from VN:

In an unpublished, unfinished continuation of The Gift, he had once written: "The bitterness of an interrupted life is nothing compared to the bitterness of an interrupted work: the probability of a continuation of the first beyond the grave seem infinite by comparison with the hopeless incompleteness of the second. There perhaps it will seem nonsense, but here all the same it remains unwritten." The best answer to that comes from a work Nabokov did finish and publish:

"But we still have to decide about the damned last wish. Well, what have you selected?" ....
"To finish somthing," whispered Cincinnatus half-questioningly but then he frowned, straining his thoughts, and suddenly understood that everything had in fact been written already.

Previously we've discussed and questioned what Nabokov's views on life and dying were. Whether or not we believe it, this seems to be what he believed.

This is of course taken from Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years by Brian Boyd.

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba,
Wow! That didn't take long!
Just a post-card picture of a Tiffany window that I came across while culling book stacks. Scene of a lake with mountains and sky in the background framed by birch trees and blue irises in the foreground. Wanted to see how much of that would show up. Needless to say it is glorious in the original size. Was going to change my profile picture to a peacock with a beautifully fanned open colorful tail, but I figured that would be going a bit far.

Peder

ROTFALOL!!

 

[Peder]

In my previous post regarding VN's unfinished work The Original of Laura: Dying is Fun, I didn't finish posting what I wanted to get across. Here is a bit more that Boyd wrote, a quote from VN:

Previously we've discussed and questioned what Nabokov's views on life and dying were. Whether or not we believe it, this seems to be what he believed.

This is of course taken from Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years by Brian Boyd.

Pontalba,
What a fascinating collection of layered viewpoints to ponder!
One day perhaps we'll do Transparent Things, which is more explicitly on the relation of the afterlife and this one, again seeming to collect VN's attitudes on the matter. (Plus it's a slim book. )

It's no wonder the American Years is running such competition with Glory. It sure seems that each one is better than the other from what you have been posting.

One can really wish that VN was satisfied finally that everything had been written. Or at least that it is now his view there, whether or not it was his view here, as he so carefully distinguished. A philosopher in novelist's clothing, finally. What a man!
Peder

 

[Peder]

News flash!

The deed is done!
The pinnacle reached.
Glory has been accomplished.
But I left bread crumbs along the trail for stragglers.
And maybe it's time to change the tag line.
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Wow, thats some tagline.....

Here I come straggling along the road...finding the stray crumb cast to the lonely side of the road...../sigh/

Wait! I see someone behind me.....is it? Could it be.....StillILearn? And, yes, yes, its Breaca.....Steffee.........is that you? Come on you lag abouts, lets catch up with The Other.....

 

[Breaca]

Mmm breadcrumbs... Whatever happened to chocolate coated carrots - much tastier even if it's been on the floor - does the 5 second rule apply?

Not much progress to report she says as she hangs her head in shame Did manage to get in some two-steps and jigs at a celtic festival. And managed to survive a family BBQ - amid early-bird mosquitos and gnats. As for bed-time reading.... eyes finding life hard at the moment - they just won't stay open long enough. I have thought about using a couple of matchsticks to prop them open but the only ones handy were the really long ones we use for the fire - I've heard of the expressions 'eyes wide open' but that would be taking it too far. So I'm sitting here with coffee to hand and visiting with y'all for a spell before I quietly tiptoe back to the sofa where the GLOR(Y)ius sun is shining and maybe, just maybe, I'll get those pages turning.

So without further ado, I shall bid you all a wonderful GOOD MORNING and a fond farewell.

 

[StillILearn]

Wow, thats some tagline.....

Here I come straggling along the road...finding the stray crumb cast to the lonely side of the road...../sigh/

Wait! I see someone behind me.....is it? Could it be.....StillILearn? And, yes, yes, its Breaca.....Steffee.........is that you? Come on you lag abouts, lets catch up with The Other.....

I'm Still in the Straits of Gibralter and swimming as fast as I can.

 

[pontalba]

Hey there guys, its morning! Imagine that! And so early too! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping.......

Its all too bloody cheerful for me.

Hafta have tea...............

 

[Peder]

Well! I'm glad to see that everyone is at least now sitting on the edge of their bed, with their feet hanging over the side, and rubbing their eyes, even if slumping a bit and seeming a little drowsy.
Hint: There's a chocolate covered carrot every tenth bread crumb.
Further hint: And, yes, she does get into bed.
Peder

 

[Peder]

Straits of Gibraltar?!
Can I buy a vowel?
?????

 

[Peder]

Well, I'm sittin here at the end of the trail with the bag of c.c. carrots, munching along as I read another book.

Actually, a reference to the southern emigration route in Glory rang a bell and caused me to look into The Orientalist by David Reiss. The 'orientalist' of the title was one Lev Nussimbaum (aka Essad Bey, also aka Kurban Said) who was born in Baku in 1905, in the southern oil fields of Russia, about 6 years after VN was born up north in St. Petersburg. It was as if I had stepped out of the covers of one book and into the covers of the other book, only to find myself back in exactly the same place! In fact I was back at exactly the place where I had put the book aside when Lolita came into view some months back.

Lev emigrated by boat, sailing from Sebastopol, past Constantinople, and landing at Brindisi, Italy, before taking the train straight up to Paris. It turns out that the Nabokov family also was squeezed southward by events of the Revolution, and they likewise left Russia by boat on the southern route, landing in Greece before making it up to LeHavre and then across the Channel to London.

The years were about 1921-22 and VN was on his way to Trinity College, which provides the locale for some scenes in Glory. About the same time, Lev's family were settled in Paris and thinking about his secondary school education.

By 1921, weighty decisions were being made about Lev's future... For reasons that were never made quite clear they were all against...Lev entering a French lyceum.... The boy would go abroad to be educated in a "serious" country. The first option considered was England. In all parts of the East, an English education was considered the pinnacle of what a father could do for his son. ..."English education had to be good, for after all, the English ruled the world." Vladimir Nabokov, Sr. had sent his son to school in England....

Boing! It's not as if the families knew one another at that point, but the senior Nabokov was apparently known well enough -- no doubt through his participation in government!

A little later, The Orientalist continues on describing Lev's school days:

Among the girls in Lev's class were Zozefina and Lydia Pasternak, the sisters of the novelist and poet, Boris, whose parents would come to act as foster parents for the whole class. Lev spent many happy hours at the Pasternak's....Another one of those was Valentina Brodskaya, ...who would become Mrs. Marc Chagall. Vava's best friend, the great blond beauty of the class, was Elena Nabokov, the beloved younger sister of the novelist.... Elena's family was the most illustrious of Lev's circle -- not because of her brother yet, but because of her father Vladimir Nabokov, Sr. He was a real hero of the emigre world, a man who represented everything that was best about liberal pre-revolutionary Russia

Small world? And how! And definitely among the Berlin emigres.
Fascinating to see the different perspective,
Peder

 

[Peder]

Furthermore,

Continuing the thought, Germany at the time was a tumultuous place. After WW I, and a shift in government, the militarist Freikorps (composed largely of returning and armed soldiers) was used liberally to stave off and suppress an attempted far-left communist revolution. For example, still from The Orientalist:

The Freikorps attacked Munich as though it were a city in France or in Belgium, blasting it with heavy artillery and bombing it from airplanes. Munich's Red defenders held out for three days. When the Freikorps took over the city, they shot more than a thousand people, including not only communists but also socialists and even seminary students. Anyone in a group of three or more was suspected of comprising a soviet....
Finally the major disturbances ended...
In the Spring of 1921, as Lev crossed the border into Germany with his father the country had fallen into an uneasy quiet...the school Lev had enrolled in was on one of the exclusive islands off the North Sea coast that even today remain vacation paradises for Germany's rich, something like Eurpoean versions of Nantucket, or perhaps the islands off the Carolina coast.

Lev soon noticed the difference between Eastern and Western courtship, the question of veils and invisible barriers that separated the sexes.

In Baku many women in Lev's social set had not worn veils, yet they were "as good as veiled," Lev felt. One spoke with them as little as possible and only with expressions of the greatest shyness and the greatest respect, as if one were dealing with very fragile and dangerous things. Actually, aside from immediate relatives, there were no women in the European sense. There were distant living statues, which one must never touch....On the green island [i.e. at shool] everything was different: women were suddenly not distant creatures. They were no longer cousins or sisters, either his own or other people's, to be defended and circumvented. German women were the most liberated in the world....

Even if Lev was still shy around them -- and he was -- we do know one young gentleman whom that situation probably suited very well.

However, the serious point to note is how different these descriptions of the real world are from the world that we have, so far, found in the novels of VN. In the middle of such wild circumstances, for want of a better word, he created a literary landscape that largely ignored politics, and a social fabric that was not especially profligate. The individual characters who do stand out, such as Humbert, or even Lolita, stand out against a very normal and staid moderate background. And much less do we even see any of his own wandering interests among women reflected in any of his characters -- yet.

The contrasts are stark when one reads them. IMO.

Peder

 

[pontalba]

Talk about a small world! I have a copy of The Orientalist in my TBR stack with a bookmark placed fairly early in the novel. I didn't get to the references to Nabokov!! How Wonderful! Thanks so much for posting those exerpts Peder

I read a review in the Washington Post of TO, and couldn't resist the story. Now to know the connection provides impetus to get cracking on both of them!

OOHHH......a bit of chocolate that is not corrupted by the evil carrot....I've Got it!

 

[Peder]

"The evil carrot!" I like that!

 

[pontalba]

Peder
You come up with the best stuff! The correlations are dynamite.

 

[Peder]

Peder
You come up with the best stuff! The correlations are dynamite.

Pontalba,
You generously give me too much credit!
It's easy to notice them when they leap out to the eye the way those did. There is only one chapter on "The German Revoution" in The Orientalist, but, with events and violence like that Munich suppression, the images sure stand out and it's hard to miss them. However, it is only the very slightest hint of the extreme animosity between German Socialists and Russian Communists that eases its way, and only rather indirectly, into the pages of Glory.
Wait 'til you see the next tidbit!
Peder

 

[Peder]

Nabokov's first love

From Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov, The Russian Years (p112), the summer of 1915,

He had not yet seen her, but she had already spied him out from her tree of knowledge. Earlier in the summer he had been called upon by a youth of eighteen, Vadim Shulgin, who invited him to join a soccer team being formed in Rozhdestveno, and asked if a Nabokov meadow could be used for a friendly match against a team from Siverski. Vladimir rode over with his tutor Sakharov to the Shulgin dacha in Rozhdestveno to grant permission but turn down the invitation to participate himself. Unknown to him, Vadim's fifteen-year-old sister was sitting high up in an apple tree looking down at the handsome sixteen-year-old below.

She was Valentina Evgenievna Shulgin on the dotted line, "Tamara" in his autobiography, "Mary" in his first novel, but on his lips she was always "Lyussya."

Isn't that enough to warm the heart of a true Lolitan? /Awww/

Not to mention the pre-echoes for a scene from Pnin. And also the younger daughter who always turns up in Ada.

All three for the price of one!
Peder

 

[StillILearn]

Straits of Gibraltar?! Can I buy a vowel?

Oops. I'll trade you an 'e' for an 'a' straight across.