Word: nabokovs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Nabokov, who is essentially a prose poet, has always had something quite different in mind. "By poetry I mean the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words," he has explained. "True poetry of that kind provokes not laughter and not tears but a radiant smile of perfect satisfaction, a purr of beatitude?and a writer may well be proud of himself if he can make his readers, or more exactly some of his readers, smile and purr that way." When as a young man in Berlin, Nabokov decided to translate an English masterpiece into Russian, the book he chose...
...plot in poetry, T. S. Eliot has compared it to a lump of meat thrown a house dog by a burglar (the writer) to keep him busy while the real business is attended to?rifling the silver cupboard or dealing in the wizardry of words. Nabokov feels the same...
...Nabokov novel is intended not as a message?but as a delight. It is also a game in which the alert reader is rewarded by feelings of wonder at the illusiveness of reality. "In a first-rate work of fiction," he argues, "the real clash is not between the characters, but between the author and the world." Nabokov's books are conceived like the chess problems that he has composed during the past half-century. He describes in an early novel the miraculous way in which a flat, abstract contrivance (in chess or art) can take on vitality and light...
...through Nabokov's fun and games to his underlying sadness and seriousness requires an understanding of the unfashionable notion that games can be both creative and profound. The essence of the Nabokov creative method is parody. His creatures are not symbols or branches snatched from The Golden Bough. But they are haunted by literary ancestors. Enjoying parody requires knowledge of the literary forms and fashions being spoofed?which is one reason why Nabokov is difficult. "He is not the kind of novelist," says Anthony Burgess, "whom you sit down to with a Scotch or an apple." In a rare moment...
...Nabokov's truths, and Ada, will certainly unhouse many readers from the comfort of their passive reading habits...