Life Everlasting--based on a misprint!
I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,
And stop investigating my abyss?
But all at once it dawned on me that this
Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But topsy-turvical coincidence,
Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found.
from PALE FIRE
-vladimir vladimirovich nabokov (+1977)
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7 comments:
parody of TS Eliot, jh, by Nabakov, an arch-heretic (atheist, darwinist, insect collector, amateur chess player and semi-talented scribe).
Hope you don't mind a bit of dissent.
you can dissent all you want
but a finer poem in the 2nd half of the 20th century
does not exist
he made collecting butterflies pay!
who can do that?
pale fire is the real news
jh
Nabokov's a virtuoso in the sense that a Liberace was a virtuoso: flashy, psuedo-sophisticated, comic, with plenty of porno-kicks. Lolita's not really profound literature. It's like a playboy-fantasy article penned by a talented hack who assumes his rich-boy nihilism applies to the world at large.
VN's sort of a poet of czarism, or czarist nostalgia, hardly different than an Aynnie Rand. I don't think any authentically spiritual person could respect VN's scribblings (including the bizarre poem-parody pale fire).
j yer not the only one to misread him
someone with his facility of language must be likened more to a van cliburn
or a nat king cole
i'd give hime nat king cole
as a matter of fact i'd raise you 2 nat king coles and call your impetuous misapprehension of greatness and raise you tw 2 o horowitsz
nabokov is the vladimir horowitz of 20th century literature
\
nabokov is to 20th century troubadour isms what geodesic domes are to polyhedric living potential he's the f buckminster fuller of irreverence audacity and weltlschmerzl
he was also a pretty good fisherman in his day
and he gave money to people who needed it
and he read a fair bit
j
we can't even begin to talk about thought in the 20th century without looking into nabokov
he's like a sparkler on july 3rd
one that never goes out
sheesh man
capnbeefheartzappahunterthompson all incomprehensible without nabokov
in relegating whole outings to collecting butterfly specimens he literaly changed the way we think about leisure
he defied the new industrial insistance on work work work he scoffed at it all
well so what
i mean after all
eliot parodied the troubadour literature
and the chinese bards
as did pound for pound
it's all delicate slight of hand
when it comes right down to it
nabokov forever dude
jh
no, you're mistaken, jh--Nab.'s a heretic and rightist, not to say overrated as writer. Then you often sound like a "universalist" and thus don't really believe in Evil so a Nabokov is OK (even tho' he routinely mocked any and all religious truths...not to say Youth).
Without some notion of ....atonement, sin, and spiritual punishment (including...mortal, ie...cardinal...Dantean) religious ethics is meaningless--nothingness, really as much as existentialist atheists or Darwinists are.
Lo siento, but that's the way it sounds.
i am a universalist
Katholicos = Universal
he poked some fun at religion
but he had an admiration
for great composers
of religious music
he liked prokofiev
he liked ralph vaughn
williams
what he really is is disturbing
he's disturbingly great
humbert humbert will live forever
in the annals of great personifications of male yearning
i'd go so far as to claim humbert humbert as the greatest character in 20th century lit
nabokov was no stranger to the power of decadence in the human soul
perhaps he wasn't always sure what to do about it
but he knew when he saw it
i never needed a writer to be ethical..just being a good writer is challenge enough
i won't be moved on this issue
i will not
jh
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