tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post7308906487637106889..comments2024-03-29T03:04:00.853-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: Flaubert's aesthetics vis The Temptation of Saint Anthony - “He believes, like a brute, in the reality of things” - not quite!Amateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-87769023834989322172021-03-04T13:03:38.418-06:002021-03-04T13:03:38.418-06:00Pre-Maoist Godard, yes. You can often detect Nabo...Pre-Maoist Godard, yes. You can often detect Nabokov's childhood reading - Verne, Doyle, Kipling.<br /><br />Sometimes I find it useful to think of Flaubert writing out a composition while Dickens improvises. Motifs versus riffs, maybe.<br /><br />Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-73893916108364185992021-03-04T12:36:44.815-06:002021-03-04T12:36:44.815-06:00Nabokov was more committed to the pleasures of the...<i>Nabokov was more committed to the pleasures of the form. Thus his crime novel parodies. He liked story and action</i><br /><br />So the literary Godard then.Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-85614329457822139682021-03-04T11:44:36.483-06:002021-03-04T11:44:36.483-06:00And contrast with the patterns in Dickens, which w...And contrast with the patterns in Dickens, which while clever and artistic in terms of Dickens' shall we say visual imagination, all seem to reinforce the moral themes and would make a lot less sense as objects on their own.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-61449936758399246302021-03-04T11:18:34.878-06:002021-03-04T11:18:34.878-06:00That is one part of how my suspicions of Flaubert&...That is one part of how my suspicions of Flaubert's supposed "realism" began. Flaubert literally wrote fantasy novels, several of them, including <i>Temptation</i>. So those "realistic" novels, maybe there is something going on there, too.<br /><br />My impression is that Flaubert was in pursuit of a more abstract beauty, while Nabokov was more committed to the pleasures of the form. Thus his crime novel parodies. He liked story and action, more than Flaubert (although Flaubert wrote one action-packed adventure novel). So in the multi-level <i>Pale Fire</i>, to pick the most obvious example, each hidden story, and there are at least two, is really a <i>story</i>. Kinbote as deposed king is a story, but so is Kinbote as mad adjunct.<br /><br />I don't think that exactly true with Flaubert, or too pick a more surprising example, George Meredith's <i>The Egoist</i>. The pattern may be there for its own sake.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-35276272813155610132021-03-04T10:52:45.737-06:002021-03-04T10:52:45.737-06:00I was already thinking of Nabokov before you menti...I was already thinking of Nabokov before you mentioned <i>Pnin</i>. I remember asking myself what was up with all the squirrels, and happily I asked on my blog, and someone was kind enough to tell me. My first inkling that Nabokov wrote fantasy novels. Novels as machines to display aesthetic and linguistic design. Or conceit, if you will. scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-88494020534550045702021-03-04T09:22:50.131-06:002021-03-04T09:22:50.131-06:00The "hiding" is almost a cognitive issue...The "hiding" is almost a cognitive issue. The first reading, for most of us, at least, can only do so much. Of course plenty of books give up everything they have the first time. Nothing but surface.<br /><br />Himadri and I are both reading post-Jarrell translations. I have Stuart Atkins, who is careful to shift the verse around with Goethe and avoid rhyme, and Himadri has David Luke.<br /><br />It was a struggle for me to take Nabokov's ghosts seriously, within the texts, I mean. "Oh wait, they're not just a device, you mean it!" The jolly Schopenhauerian.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-82416240184621459102021-03-04T07:47:49.232-06:002021-03-04T07:47:49.232-06:00Flaubert was making some formal conceptual innovat...<i>Flaubert was making some formal conceptual innovations that were independent of content, so it did not matter at all what Flaubert was actually writing about. These innovations involved the deliberate construction of an elaborate pattern of motifs, images, words, and ideas, that form a deeper but somewhat hidden novel. The pattern itself is a work of beauty, or perhaps the work needed to see it makes it so. ... The artist is looking behind the veil of reality, or even creating the marvelous thing behind the veil.</i><br /><br />This is of course Nabokov's approach as well, and why he valued Flaubert so highly. While I can appreciate the esthetic effects, the older I get the less enamored I am of that kind of writing. It seems to me quintessentially aristocratic/elitist: "I may have to toss a few bits of plot in for the rabble, but the elect, the only readers I care about, will read it a thousand times until they have grasped the true beauty I purvey." Pah!<br /><br />It doesn't help, of course, that I don't believe in any "veil of reality" or anything behind such a veil. What you see is what you get.Languagehathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285708503881129380noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-15530178187063403812021-03-04T05:24:41.908-06:002021-03-04T05:24:41.908-06:00I'm not convinced by this hiding things in the...I'm not convinced by this hiding things in the text. Maybe it explains why I've never thought as much about Flaubert and Joyce as others do. Bely's another matter, of course - after all, he has a time-bomb; and is anyway just more generally interesting and entertaining.<br /><br />I'd join you in the Goethe read-through, but unfortunately I only have Faust II translated into rhyming doggerel, and I can't bring myself to read it. I need to get the Randall Jarrell translation, which I really liked for Faust I. I just looked it up and RJ refers to other translations as "rhymed doggerel", so quite close to my own view.obookihttps://obooki.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com