>loved trashy middlebrow New Yorker fiction >had no philosophical

The man knew his butterflies tho.

>>9691378
He was a hack. Most of his opinions contradict with others.

> hates literature of ideas
Loves Ulysses.
> hates Freud
Loves The Metamorphosis (even Kafka in his diaries reads the story in a Freudian way)
> so buttblasted about Soviets that he encourages Nixon to gas the Vietnamese with agent orange
> prefers Madame Bovary to Sentimental Education

I mean, I could go...His opinions are garbage. His novels reveal an author who couldn't write poetry so he tried to smuggle it into his boring prose.

As a teen he read
All of Shakespeare in English
All of Tolstoy in Russian
All of Flaubert in French.

Worked for ten years on the definitive Onegin translation.
Discovered a genus of butterflies.

>ignorant

>>9691419
The funniest contradiction is that he professes to hate all didactic and allegorical literature, and yet he praises Hawthorne and Milton.

>>9691419
Have you read Lectures on Literature?

But he writes good books!

He's a genius, but like most famous literary critics in a smug, inhuman way (Bloom is like this also)
See: his disdain for Dostoyevsky

>>9691445
I'm sick and tired of this... this manichaean view of Literature of ideas vs. Literature not of ideas... it's not that simple! What you're basically assuming is that Nabokov couldn't have liked, because of his standpoint on style, any author who was didactic or allegorical. Don't you realize how fickle that is? The idea must grow according to the style. That doesn't mean that a book cannot be didactic or allegorical.

>>9691434
>Worked for ten years on the definitive Onegin translation.

definitive worst translation

no one respects nabokov's pushkin translation, way too idiosyncratic

>>9691378
Also, if you've read Pale Fire you'll know that your third statement is false

>>9691487
>What you're basically assuming is that Nabokov couldn't have liked, because of his standpoint on style, any author who was didactic or allegorical. Don't you realize how fickle that is?

It's what Nabokov himself says LITERALLY in nearly every interview and lecture. He dismisses writers wholesale because muh literature of ideas. You seem to be blaming others for what Nabokov himself believed.

Nabokov was a fraud. He'd make an excellent /lit/ poster.

>"was completely ignorant of classical, medeival, and most early modern literature,"
>his memoir was almost called "speak mnemosyne" referncing the greek god and the classical trope of invoking the muses
>was a huge devotee of shakespeare, liked montaigne, cervantes,
>his books are full of formal allusions to all three, which you might notice if you yourself had any knowledge of what you're talking about
>guaranteed much smarter than you, anyone else on this board, and most authors

>>>/trash/

> lol I'm not a pedo, I swear!
> I got the inspiration for Lolita in a newspaper article about a monkey in a cage, honest!
> Pale Fire is about homo pederasty
> Ardor or Ada is about incest

He couldn't write a novel that wasn't either

1. Autistic navel-gazing (muh childhood n shieet, muh tingles)
2. Weird sex

>>9691504
No. He dismissed authors who put idea before style, simple as that. How do you explain, then, that he liked Hawthorne and Milton, as the other post says? How?
Are you saying that books like Lolita and Pale Fire contain no "ideas" at all? Pure sensual shallow prose, giving the reader nothing to think about?

>>9691512
> Shakespeare, Montaigne and Cervantes are classical and/or medieval

wow he looked up the etymology of a word or two, good job naboshit

only thing worse than nabokov are his fans

>>9691516
Clearly you haven't read enough of Nabokov.

> How do you explain, then, that he liked Hawthorne and Milton, as the other post says?

He's contradictory and full of shit. Just look at his appraisal of Kafka vs his dismissal of Freud.

> Are you saying that books like Lolita and Pale Fire contain no "ideas" at all? Pure sensual shallow prose, giving the reader nothing to think about?

In the appendix of Lolita he says essentially that.

Time to find a new favorite author.

>>9691516
>Are you saying that books like Lolita and Pale Fire contain no "ideas" at all? Pure sensual shallow prose, giving the reader nothing to think about?

he always said he wrote just to give people pleasurable goosebumps and nothing more

>>9691531
Nabokov isn't that serious of a guy. You just can't handle the bantz.

>>9691512
didnt he say that he disliked don quixote ad considered it to be cruel

>>9691518
Uh, no, they're early modern. Do you not know what early modern means? And are you really implying that I need to look anything up to know who Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Cervantes are?

>>9691513
>Autistic navel-gazing
what is "autobiographical fiction"
>Weird sex
Besides Lolita and Ada, what do you think you're talking about

>>9691571
He called it "cruel," he didn't say he disliked it. He also wrote a book called "Lectures on Don Quixote". I haven't read it, but I take that as a sign he liked the novel.

>>9691576
>Besides Lolita and Ada, what do you think you're talking about

pale fire, of course, or are you too dumb to catch on?

>>9691559
I know he isn't serious, judging by his mediocre novels.

>>9691576
He's not trained classically or medievally, hardly even contemporaneously. Find me one (1) good interpretation/analysis of literature that Nabokov has offered.

There aren't any because he spergs over dumb shit like "Dude, why isn't anyone talking about the raincoat in Ulysses, like hell-o!??!"

He's got nothing to say about literature. He writes fake-edgy novels and has fake-edgy opinions on literature.

>>9691581
He didn't like it though, you retard. You'd know that if you'd read what he said about Nabokov.

He thinks Cervantes was a shit writer and gives him some lukewarm praise every now and then. Even though it was Flaubert's favorite novel. But, hey, Nabokov has good opinions, right?

>>9691434
>All of Shakespeare in English
Is this impressive? I read all of Shakespeare and Milton at 15.

>>9691618
Yes, Kinbote is gay, no fucking shit. If you want to call run-of-the-mill male on male sex "weird sex," then fine, but unless I'm misremembering there isn't any actual gay sex that happens in the novel at all, and it's absolutely not a defining aspect of the book as a whole

>>9691623
> He's not trained classically or medievally
Who is? Contemporary authors don't have classical educations, for the same reason that you and I probably don't have classical educations. Anyways, Nabokov was an old-world Russian aristocrat educated by tutors, he's about as close to a classical education as any postwar author gets.

>>9691631
I don't know what point you think you're making, but I looked some other stuff up and on second thought you're probably right

>>9691378
Show us on the doll where the cornfather touched you, anon.

>>9691512
>knowing about Greek gods make you well read in classical literature

>>9691516
Nabokov is like Poe in that he doesn't seem to give two shits about morality, philosophy, society, etc. and so his books are usually shallow. If they have any thematic depth, it's unintentional and just a side effect of Nabokov being a genius. But his Aestheticism and hedonism held him from becoming completely great.

>>9691516
Hawthorne wrote in the tradition of Puritan allegory. Milton wanted to "justify the ways of God to man".

Nabokov didn't really dislike literature with ideas (because literature must necessarily engage with the wider intellectual and historical world). He simply didn't like certain ideas and styles but wasn't intelligent or erudite enough to explain exactly what he didn't like about them. His Aestheticism is a side-effect of the shallowness of his own hedonist and liberal ideals.

Holy shit, has there ever been such a dick-sucking OP?

>forces Nabokov to be a one-dimensional caricature without any complex views
>just because he dislikes a trend towards didacticism over aestheticism in literature, he's not allowed to like Milton and Hawthorne (who are indeed didactic, but also incredibly aesthetic)
>just because he dislikes a lot of popularly acclaimed novels that try to be "literature of ideas", he has to dislike one of the most beautiful works of the 20th century because it also in SOME ways deals with SOME philosophical ideas (protip: Ulysses is not by any measure "literature of ideas", in fact there is almost no philosophical substance in it, sorry)
>just because he likes an author, he has to like everything that author likes (he loves Kafka --- but Kafka appreciated Freud, thus Nabokov must like Freud; he liked Flaubert --- Flaubert's favorite novel was Don Quixote, thus Nabokov must also like Don Quixote)
>claims he was "completely ignorant of classical, medieval, and most early modern literature", hasn't seen the allusions to these he has in Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada
>26 replies in this thread and 9 posters as of my writing this

Fucking pathetic how jealous you are of Nabokov's indisputable genius

>>9691714
Nabokov caricatures himself. Read his lectures and his interviews. He brings it upon himself.

I don't give a shit about Milton and Hawthorne. He dismisses a lot of literature he hasn't read as "Well, it sounds like literature of ideas, so it's probably shit."

> protip: Ulysses is not by any measure "literature of ideas", in fact there is almost no philosophical substance in it, sorry)

You're a MASSIVE fucking retard. It is full of ideas and dialogue with philosophy (Aquinas, a medieval, being one of them). Of crouse Nabokov doesn't pick up on this and insists Joyce wasn't writing to communicate any ideas about philosophy, culture and history.

> just because he likes an author, he has to like everything that author likes

The point is that The Metamorphosis is HIGHLY Freudian. Again, Nabokov denies this and tries to do some mental gymnastics as to why it's not. But then he'll dismiss XYZ as just literature of Freudian ideas.

You're getting mad that other people are holding Nabokov to his own standard. I'm all for saying literature of ideas and purely aesthetic literature have merit, and even that it's a stupid dichotomy to set up in the first place. Nabokov cannot admit this.

>>9691419
What a fucking pseud you are. That post is the ultimate expression of the pseud. Literally pseud detected. Kys, pseud.

>>9691434
>All of Shakespeare in English
>All of Tolstoy in Russian
>All of Flaubert in French.
That's nothing haha

>>9691992
not an argument, ass-blated nabofag

>>9691513
>> Pale Fire is about homo pederasty
Kindly fuck off, that's a minor aspect of the novel. Read his autobiography and see how he excised his gay younger brother from it. He was a pedo though, you got that right. It becomes clear when you read past Lolita.

>>9691992
Someone learned a new word.
How's your first day on /lit/ going friend?

>>9691692
not well read in classical literature ≠ totally ignorant of classical literature

that said, what other proof could you want
nabokov isn't like you and your /lit/ bros, he doesn't name drop just to name drop

>>9691995
>said the autist on /lit/ judging a polyglot and a literary genius

Lost hard @ur life

>>9691581
cum

>>9692253
>he doesn't name drop just to name drop

No; he name-drops to drag others down to his level

>>9692081
>Read his autobiography and see how he excised his gay younger brother from it
I just googled this after having read Speak, Memory, Ada, Pnin, Lolita, Pale Fire, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Transparent Things, and it broke my fucking head, thanks man.

give me a single good reason is should care about his opinion

>>9691445
>The funniest contradiction is that he professes to hate all didactic and allegorical literature, and yet he praises Hawthorne and Milton.
No, he dislikes works that contain only those devices.

>>9691986
>You're a MASSIVE fucking retard. It is full of ideas and dialogue with philosophy (Aquinas, a medieval, being one of them).
Joyce himself said that Ulysses was basically one big joke

>>9691531
>He's contradictory and full of shit. Just look at his appraisal of Kafka vs his dismissal of Freud.
Kafka disliked freud

Have studied Nabokov at the graduate level, let's clear some stuff up:

1. What Nabokov says about his work in interviews is usually wrong or at least misleading. He created a caricature of himself as a trilingual aesthetic genius for American audiences. For example, Nabokov's English was never as good as he claimed before moving to America. For Lolita and Pnin, Nabokov made Vera go to libraries and find lists of synonyms for commonplace words for him to use. Many of the books he dismisses in interviews later in life are actually pretty reverently referenced in his actual writing: For example– Dostoyevsky in Despair, Freud and Don Quixote in Glory, etc.

2. He claimed to be indifferent to political messages in works in interviews, but his own work is full of ideas and political expression, as well as (I argue) actual compassion for people and ideas. Examples: Invitation to a Beheading, explicity political. Pnin, which has a whole narrative about the holocaust before anyone even dared writing about the holocaust.

Even better example: Nabokov in a letter to his sister: "My dear, however one wants to hide in one’s ivory tower, there are things which wound one too deeply, for example German atrocities, the burning of children in ovens, – children who are just as ravishingly entertaining and loved as our children. I retreat into myself, but I find there such hatred for the German, and for the concentr. camp, for every tyrant, that as a refuge, ce n’est pas grand chose."

This hatred came through in his writing, see Pnin and Signs and Symbols.

Nabokov cared deeply about political and personal themes, which show through in his writing, even if he claimed in interviews to ignore that sort of thing.


>>9691378
>was completely ignorant of classical, medieval, and most early modern literature

Nabokov came from the Russian modernist tradition. Most of his references in his Russian stuff comes from there– and there's a lot of it, as well as French modernist works. He came from a different canon from the one English writers worked with at the time, his writing is still brilliant. And his knowledge of literature from the 17th century onward was superb.

>>9693824
>. What Nabokov says about his work in interviews is usually wrong or at least misleading. He created a caricature of himself as a trilingual aesthetic genius for American audiences. For example, Nabokov's English was never as good as he claimed before moving to America.
Good enough for him to matriculate at oxford and develop a British idiom before he switched to his American one.
>What Nabokov says about his work in interviews is usually wrong or at least misleading
Wrong, most of it can be found in his private correspondence as well.

>>9693828

You can read his accounts of his time at Oxford. he studied Russian literature and spent most of his time reading the Russian encyclopedia.

As for The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Lucine Léon basically rewrote all of the english, and it's still full of weird syntax (which Nabokov admits himself).

As for his interviews, it's probably better to say that they exaggerate his actual views. Nabokov wasn't against ideas or political expression in writing, (as he sometimes claimed in interviews), but writing which solely served to express political ideas (as opposed to the political expression in his own writing.)

>>9691516
Lolita and some of his short stories are shallow and, for the most part, devoid of ideas.

File: nabokovy_sergey-vladimir-1900s.jpg (16KB, 230x369px) Image search: [Google]

16KB, 230x369px

>If they had any last words to offer each other, Sergei and Vladimir never got to say them. In the spring of 1940 Hitler invaded France, and by May the Germans were bombing Paris. Vladimir and his family left for America on the last boat out of St. Nazaire, but Sergei was away in the countryside at the time. He returned to Paris to find their apartment suddenly empty.

>He chose to stay in Europe with Hermann. The Nazis were already rounding up homosexuals as actively as they were Jews, and to avoid attracting suspicion Sergei and Hermann saw each other only rarely. Sergei took a job as a translator in Berlin, but he had no stomach for war, and the Allied bombings frightened him horribly. “He was just so terrified, poor thing,” Ledkovsky remembers. “Even my mother was consoling him.” The fighting grew more intense, and flight became impossible; Sergei had almost no money, and as a refugee from czarist Russia his only travel document was a flimsy Nansen passport.

>In 1941 the Gestapo arrested Sergei on charges of homosexuality. It released him four months later, but he was placed under constant surveillance. It’s ironic that at that moment, after a lifetime of shyness and stuttering, Sergei could not keep silent. He began to speak out vehemently against the injustices of the Third Reich to his friends and colleagues. On Nov. 24, 1943, he served as best man at Ledkovsky’s wedding. Three weeks later he was arrested for the second time.

>The file that the police kept on Sergei accuses him of “staatsfeindlichen Au_erungen” — subversive statements. There may have been more to the story: Princess Zinaida Shachovskaya, a fellow Russian imigri (whose relations with the Nabokov family have sometimes been strained), has written an as yet untranslated memoir in which she asserts that Sergei was in fact involved in a plot to hide an escaped prisoner of war, a former Cambridge friend who had become a pilot and been shot down over Germany.

>After his arrest Sergei was taken to Neuengamme, a large labor camp near Hamburg, where he became prisoner No. 28631. Conditions were brutal: The camp was a center for medical experimentation, and the Nazis used the prisoners to conduct research on tuberculosis. Of the approximately 106,000 inmates who passed through Neuengamme, fewer than half survived, and as a rule, the guards singled out homosexuals for particularly harsh treatment.

>Sergei’s conduct in the camp was nothing less than heroic. Nicolas Nabokov’s son Ivan says that after the war, survivors from Neuengamme would telephone his family out of the blue — they were the only Nabokovs in the book — just to talk about Sergei. “They said he was extraordinary. He gave away lots of packages he was getting, of clothes and food, to people who were really suffering.” Meanwhile, Hermann had also been arrested, but he was sent to fight on the front lines in Africa. He would survive. He spent his later life at Schloss Weissenstein, without a career, caring for his invalid sister. He died in 1972.

>In America, Vladimir was beginning a triumphant new life. While Sergei was at Neuengamme, he spent the summer of 1944 sunning himself in Wellfleet, Mass., with Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy. That fall he collected butterflies for Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, enjoyed the benefits of American dentistry and taught Russian to Wellesley College undergraduates, with whom he flirted shamelessly. The New Yorker was beginning to print his poems. He became the first person under 40 to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. He knew nothing of what was happening to his brother in Europe.

>In the early fall of 1945, in his apartment in Cambridge, Mass., Nabokov dreamed of his brother Sergei. He saw him lying on a bunk in a German concentration camp, in terrible pain. The next day he received a letter from a family member in Prague. According to camp records, “Sergej Nabokoff” had died on Jan. 9, 1945, of a combination of dysentery, starvation and exhaustion. Neuengamme was liberated four months later.

>>9691419
Please don't put Kafka below Freud

>>9691378
>>9693898

>>9691419
That agent orange bit is great though

>>9694191
Source?

>>9691378
I've only read his essay on notes from the undergrond (and I hated it)

>>9691419
>read Ulysses for plot
>thinks Kafka sided with Freud not Gross
>read Flaubert in English
>thinks wars aren't hell
jesus christ anon, how are you this defective?

>>9696229
what

>>9696257
read more

>>9696258
nabokov is a hack but he did read flaubert in french

>>9696208
http://www.salon.com/2000/05/17/nabokov_5/