Keep away, keep away
From Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol (1944):
My purpose in jotting these notes on Gogol has, I hope, become perfectly clear. Bluntly speaking it amounts to the following: if you expect to find out something about Russia, if you are eager to know why the blistered Germans bungled their blitz, if you are interested in “ideas” and “facts” and “messages,” keep away from Gogol. The awful trouble of learning Russian in order to read him will not be repaid in your kind of hard cash. Keep away, keep away. He has nothing to tell you. Keep off the tracks. High tension. Closed for the duration. Avoid, refrain, don’t. I would like to have here a full list of all possible interdictions, vetoes and threats. Hardly necessary of course — as the wrong sort of reader will certainly never get as far as this. But I do welcome the right sort — my brothers, my doubles. My brother is playing the organ. My sister is reading. She is my aunt. You will first learn the alphabet, the labials, the linguals, the dentals, the letters that buzz, the drone and the bumblebee, and the Tse-tse Fly. One of the vowels will make you say “Ugh!” You will feel mentally stiff and bruised after your first declension of personal pronouns. I see however no other way of getting to Gogol (or to any other great Russian writer for that matter). His work, as all great literary achievements, is a phenomenon of language and not of ideas. “Gaw-gol,” not “Go-gall.” The final “l” is a soft dissolving “l” which does not exist in English. One cannot hope to understand an author if one cannot even pronounce his name.
February 15th, 2007 15:49
“His work, as all great literary achievements, is a phenomenon of language and not of ideas.” How true is this, I wonder. What if the language were fully imaginary and not referring to anything beyond itself. We would happily have removed literature from the stain of ideas, though what would it amount to? I’ll essay an attempt at such a literature.
“Angite mordotorium in axcelsciumbittybump.
Be bumpittybump
Bitty boo.”
February 15th, 2007 22:08
Wait – is that Joyce?
No, it’s false choice really isn’t it? I completely agree that “all great literary achievements [are] a phenomenon of language.” I wish more writers agreed, because maybe they’d writer better books. But why oppose language to ideas? Why not to plot, or character, or invention, or emotion, or … All of which would also be wrong, but just to illustrate how narrow Nabokov’s view is.
Why not just say “FIRST AND FOREMOST a phenomenon of language”?
February 16th, 2007 05:05
I agree utterly, Sam. I am always suspicious of this narrowing of the field of art, presumably to accomodate one’s own perceived strengths. Ending in an enfeebled and neutered art.Reminds me of an art exhibition at whose entrance the artist saw fit to begin with a short essay on how his art was a pure visual experience, and how even his portraits were not attempting to have any penetrative depth, as they were colour and nothing but colour. Well yes, it is a pure visual experience but it is also…..
Like Joyce, I am Irish by the way. My brief foray into that kind of language possibly suggests to me that kind of freewheeling is a bit overrated. You can write whatever the hell you want and it’ll be taken as genius!
Maximillian Schnell by the see shore.
February 16th, 2007 06:02
I feel compelled to add I am also rather sceptical of Nabokov’s claiming of Gogol, and the description of his work as being as a phenomenon of language, and not of ideas. Gogol is something of a spiritual puzzle, and an integral part of his greatness is the sense that there are(if I knoew how to italicise I would) ideas at the heart of his stories, though these ideas an elusive puzzle, in almost a Zen koan manner. In the masterpiece of The Portrait, there is certainly a depth which penetrates oneself, though beyond the limits of the solid but dull intellect to put its finger on. At other times like The Nose, I believe Gogol’s mischievous sense of humour suggests some hidden meaning which again the poor intellect struggles futilely to decipher, and hence satisfy its self, though without succes as the story is intentionally absurd. Though absurd in a koan manner. That it is humorous doesn’t exclude it from having a kind of subterranean depth also.
For the above reasons I believe Gogol would reject Nabokov’s claiming of him, and I think it quite obvious that if Gogol had lived and overcome his spiritual/artistic quandary, his art would broadly have been more of a spiritual kin with Nabokov’s bete noir, Dostoevsky, than with Nabokov himself.
February 23rd, 2007 10:13
Very much agree, Andrew. Actually, what I like best about this passage is the style, in particular, the brief break with lucidity about mid-way through, starting with “my brothers, my doubles.”
The sentiment (vs. the style) reminded me a bit of the Nabokov quote about learning to read, which I cited here: http://goldenrulejones.com/?p=928
February 25th, 2007 15:26
Wan-faced, big-limbed, silent nitwits, proud in the possession of certain tools (â€Ben has an axeâ€), they now drift with a slow-motioned slouch across the remotest backdrop of memory; and, akin to the mad alphabet of the optician’s chart, the grammar-book’s lettering looms again before me.
A wonderful liquidy( Joycean liberties permitted me) rhythm to that. I have Speak Memory lying around somewhere- must give it a look.
February 24th, 2008 11:34
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