"'sois sage, ô ma douleur': Psychical suffering in some of Nabokov's works" (original) (raw)
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Nabokov Studies
An innovative and published lepidopterist in his spare time, Vladimir Nabokov is credited with major advances in that science. He was also interested in the science of psychology, resulting in his scorn for Sigmund Freud. Freud had been a superb anatomical physician and psychological clinician, but his theories of psychology were proto-theories: more myth than science, neither established nor able to be established by reliable methods. In the decades since his death, new technologies such as brain scans and advances in neurobiology have greatly enriched the science of psychology, allowing us to see the depth of his insights in four areas: Empathy, Social Psychology, Memory and Imagination, and Creativity. We will also examine research that reflects on Nabokov's personal psychology. Part I. Nabokov and the Psychology of Empathy-Bend Sinister and Lolita There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.-Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth. Nabokov owes the indelibility of his writing to his masterful capacity to invoke this readers' empathy. The psychological study of empathy stemmed from the discovery in the mid-nineties of the neurological basis to mimicry behavior in newborn macaque monkeys. Electrodes fastened to the heads of these newborn monkeys showed much the same neurological activity when the monkeys made a particular physical movement as when they were merely watching the experimenter or another monkey make it. Neuroscientists began calling these neurons "mirror neurons" although it is uncertain whether these are specialized cells, or one of several functions of cells involved in other processes. 1 Human brains also work in this way.
2007
Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the most influential thinkers in Russian culture during the formative years of Nabokov's life. There is direct evidence that Nabokov read the German philosopher, and their juxtaposition allows us to reconstruct some of the systematic dimensions of Nabokov's conceptual world. Moreover, Schopenhauer provides the language of Nabokov's philosophical thinking. While a philosopher usually operates by the means of abstract notions, a novelist's artistic conceptions are expressed most adequately through constellations of motifs. Schopenhauer was a rare philosopher who developed his reasoning by playing out a range of pivotal motifs. By way of introduction to the theme, the article shows the reverberation of four motifs, the cornerstones of Schopenhauer's philosophy (oak, camera obscura, world as a puppet show, and one alive among puppets), in Nabokov's writings. Reading Nabokov and Schopenhauer vis-à-vis each other allows us to reveal the existential problems at the root of their thinking. Nabokov's thought which resembles, mutatis mutandis, that of more abstract philosophies. If the philosopher reasons by means of abstract notions, the novelist's artistic conceptions are expressed most adequately through constellations of motifs. Such is the premise of our approach, allowing us to speak of Nabokov's philosophy, facilitated by the fact that Schopenhauer's own thinking was often not far removed from the artistic. Our claim is not self-evident, for Nabokov made a number of disclaimers to keep this side of his writing cloaked. He stated: "I detest symbols and allegories (which is due partly to my old feud with Freudian voodooism and partly to my loathing of generalizations devised by literary mythists and sociologists" (Lolita 314). He brandished his disdain for "either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas," exemplified for him by Balzac, Gorky, Thomas Mann, Sartre (Lolita 315), and other celebrated names. Nabokov objected to using fiction as illustration or exposition of ready-made ideas. He was not, however, opposed to the philosophical thought that creates ideas. Nabokov's writing contains many mentions of philosophers and their ideas, and allusions to them are even more numerous. Even the thinker who replaced God with Reason, G.-W. Hegel, is referred to approvingly in The Gift. The names of philosophers from Thales to Sartre recur time and time again in Nabokov's writings. Philosophy-not as abstract scheme imposed on the world but rather as exposing, questioning, and interrogating the predicaments of human existence-is not alien to Nabokov. Let us also remember that Nabokov devoted two books to philosophers and their respective philosophies: the protagonist of The Gift, Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, composes a whimsical biography of the nineteenth-century Russian thinker N. G. Chernyshevsky and inserts it into his novel. The English novel Bend Sinister features the fictional existential philosopher Adam Krug. Nabokov debunks the former and empathizes with the latter. The means he uses are noteworthy: he analyzes his characters' philosophies and shows that their lives illustrate their thinking. This archetypal mode of philosophizing is, perhaps, the true model for a philosophical novel. In Invitation to a Beheading and The Gift lurk the shade of the fictional philosopher Delaland, and he is admiringly quoted.
Nabokov’s Critics: a Review Article
Several insights should by now be clear to all students of Nabokov who have assimilated the critical literature of the past twenty years: that he is a Romantic who views this world as a parody of the otherworld, causing his works to abound in doublings, mirrorings, and inversions; that the glimmerings of another existence beyond our own may occasionally be discerned in nature, in fate's workings, in art; and that the puzzles and rich referentiality of Nabokov's texts to other literature are designed to send the reader on a quest for the transcendent.
When the Eye Refuses to Blind Itself: Nabokov’s Writing on Literature
2001
It would seem to us that perhaps it was really not literature but painting for which he was destined from childhood… Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift After all we should keep in mind that literature is not a pattern of i d e a s but a pattern of i m a g e s. Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature Sight is both image and word; the gaze possible both because of the enunciations of articulate eyes a n d because the subject finds a position to see within the optics and grammar of language.
“My name or any such‐like phantom”: A Reading of Nabokov's
The Russian Review, 1999
Какое сделал я дурное дело, и я ли развратитель и злодей, я, заставляющий мечтать мир целый о бедной девочке моей? О, знаю я, меня боятся люди, и жгут таких, как я за волшебство, и, как от яда в полом изумруде, мрут от искусства моего. Но как забавно, что в конце абзаца корректору и веку вопреки, тень русской ветки будет колебаться на мраморе моей руки. Nabokov' s poem usually is considered in the context suggested by its first stanza, which imitates the third stanza from Pasternak's poem, The Nobel Prize. 1 Putting aside the much-discussed problem of Nabokov-Pasternak relations, here I shall consider Nabokov's poem in another context, one outlined briefly by D. Barton Johnson, who This article could not have been written without fruitful preliminary discussions with Professor Alexander Dolinin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who generously shared with me the fascinating observations contained in his extremely promising, forthcoming book, A Great Known: Vladimir Nabokov as a Russian Writer, and Professor Omry Ronen of the University of Michigan, who selflessly placed his extraordinary erudition and perspicacity at my disposal. 1 For details see D.
Consciousness as creative force and prison cell in Nabokov's "Mademoiselle O
Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 2004
in volumes of approximately 250 pages. The journal aims to provide a forum for debate and an outlet for research involving all aspects of English Studies. NATURE AND FORMAT OF THE ARTICLES: The Revista would welcome ar ticles of the following kinds: (1) Articles on linguistics and ELT, literature, literary theory and criticism, history and other aspects of the culture of the English-speaking nations. Articles should not exceed nine thous and words in length. (2) Bibliogra phies of studies on very specifi c topics, providing a brief in troduction and a list of basic publications. A concise index of contents may optionally be included. (3) Reviews and review ar ticles on recently published books in the fi eld of English Stu dies. (4) Poetry translations (English-Spanish and Spanish-Eng lish). All articles submitted should follow the guidelines which can be obtained from the
The DIVIDED SELF metaphor: A cognitive-linguistic study of two poems by Nabokov
International Journal of English Studies , 2015
This paper will approach two of Nabokov’s poems from the perspective of embodied realism in Cognitive Linguistics. We will shed light on the reasons why we believe that Nabokov makes use of the DIVIDED SELF metaphor in his poetry. In the analysis of the poems we will explain how the Subject is understood in the author’s life in exile whereas the Self is understood in the author’s feelings of anguish and longing for his Russian past. Finally, we will also explain how Nabokov’s use of the DIVIDED SELF metaphor thematically structures both poems.
The Self as Myth, Mask and Construct in Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory!
University of Bucharest Review. A Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 2008
In my paper I study the strategies of constructing the self in Nabokov's revisited autobiography, which constitutes a focal point in the net of his life work. The memoir does not only reconstruct the identity from a temporal and mnemonic perspective and in an intercultural context, but it also offers a self-portrait as a literary construct, worth being remembered by posterity. In my hypothesis, Nabokov's text makes use of the "rhetoric of fiction" at least to the same extent in which he manipulates fiction by considering it a "shelter" for autobiographical elements. Fiction and autobiography become terms reflecting each other in his life work, as a specific sort of "specular structure". Nabokov's fiction as well as his autobiography requires the same type of reading: that of solving puzzles.