Friday, December 11, 2009

And in Conclusion...

I suppose this is the last thing before I begin again ... riverrun (does it son, you know).

I would like to, once more, bring up the quote from Speak, Memory that Dr. Sexson read on our last day.


I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness - in a landscape selected at random - is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern - to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal


I would like to pose a question, one which the answer I do not know. What is the motivation for the atoms to move? All matter is built on these infinitesimal building blocks. All matter matters because that is what we are... it is all we know. But what is it that causes our atoms to move, and not just move but relentlessly continue? Even after our hearts stop beating the molecules continue. Why is it that Absolute Zero is only a theory?

The motivation. What of the reading from Frye? What gives language the power to be aesthetic? The language of love. The Bible is written in it, Nabokov certainly wrote in it, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ovid, etc. etc. It is the things that resonate with us. Music can resonate, a speech, a book, a sunset, the complexities of life, each other. Something in them matches something in us. The ultimate solidarity. Love in kinship with love.

I submit that the molecules have no choice but to keep moving. It is the power of love that motivates. And I'm not talking about the cheesy, sappy love of cheap romance flicks. True love. Not the human version, but the ultimate muse, the thule ultima of the spirit. Love.

And with that we look on, and we look back, and we look around us. And we skate on a tension film of thin ice, to revel in our solidarity.


With this perspective I don't hesitate to delve into my past, to search for lost time in the dark reaches of my mind, well because... (riverrun, you know).

Jazz.

Last night I went to the jazz concert put on by the MSU band. I love jazz. Sitting in the dark auditorium I closed my eyes and let the complexities of the music surround me. The bass snaked down around my feet. The quick chord changes from the guitar danced against my chest, the swung eighths on the ride tapped my fingers. The sax blew on my right, and the trumpet! oh the trumpet hit me right in the spine.

I have always liked imagining music spatially. I find the complexities of music amazing, and jazz lends itself very nicely to this type of active listening. Jazz, the progressive type of music. After the head notes rip from the soloists, flying into the rafters and bouncing down around me like ricocheting bullets. I love jazz.

I read somewhere that Nabokov never enjoyed music. He described in some terrible way as a bunch of annoying noises strung together. Last night, in the dark, I was wondering whether Nabokov at least took some delight in the idea of jazz. The complexities, the layers, the beautifully executed solos of the true artists.

I like think that Nabokov respected this music. Well... I love it.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Individual Presentations Day 3

There were just a few individual presentations today along with Dr. Sexson wrapping things up. We were told a couple of things. First, to study blogs, individual presentations, and group presentations for the final. The second, we are going to sacrifice something (maybe goats, maybe Jennie Lynn, who knows?)


Anyway, I would like to mention a couple presentations that stuck out to me. Kari did a great job with her piece, it was very entertaining and along with Parker's brings up an interesting question about how one would tell a story like Pale Fire through the medium of film. I think it would have to get very creative and push the normal boundaries to allow the complexities to arise. This issue kind of made me think of the chronology of the movie Pulp Fiction and how it allows connections to be made from different times (clips) that would normally seem inherent in linear time. I would love to see a project centered around the problem of portraying a story like Pale Fire.


Also, John's Dr. Sexson was great. He really hit some of those nuances well.

I also liked Aaron's poem. I love how it flowed and captured a lot of those themes that we have been exploring. He is an excellent writer as well. (if any of you didn't know)

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Iconography

First I must note that my blog must be peeved about something because the blogroll doesn't seem to be working at the moment. Everyone else's seems fine.



I mentioned, during my presentation, that I was initially curious about Nabokov and religious influence. One of the things that tipped me off to this subject was an essay call Vladimir Nabokov and Orthodox Iconography that was written by Samuel Schuman. I found it on jstor while doing some searching. It comes from a journal called Religion & Literature.

The essay is interesting in a lot of different ways and gave me many ideas (no matter how peripheral) for my term paper. As for "orthodox iconography"... well I didn't really find much evidence to support a notion that Nabokov includes such icons in his writing, whether purposefully or not.

Nabokov, being a devout aesthete, would probably argue that his images are concoctions of his imagination and surely devoid of icons that carry a hidden meaning. Another reason for this, other than his love for pure aesthetics, is his strong distaste for psychologists like Freud, who would have seen Humbert Humbert as some dark repression in a deranged mind.

Schuman even points out that icons are not simply images, but symbols. Symbols that hold meaning and tradition. Of course when put this way, Nabokov's work was full of icons. The very act of allusion proves that he delighted in the extra (often esoteric) information that was conjured up by any of his thousands of references to other things.

Nabokov surely used icons in his work, but Orthodox Icons for the purpose of referencing the deeper meaning of characterized Gods? probably not.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The Metamorphosis of John Shade: From Unassuaged to Appeased By Way of Fountains and Mountains

A common thread that exists in many novels by Vladimir Nabokov intertwines the material being with a certain suspicion regarding the afterlife or existence of the otherworld. The imminent reign of mortality over the physical body has caused people to question the continuance of what is typically deemed the 'spirit.' This quest for understanding is as much about satisfaction as it is about suspicion, and the character John Shade in Pale Fire exemplifies this search. How is one satisfied with the explanations of religion? How is one satisfied with a state of unknowing? The poem Pale Fire written by the fictional John Shade is deeply personal and probes the concepts of God, mortality, and the afterlife. It is here, in the poem, where the thematic vein begins to weave in and out of the heroic couplets, that Shade's epiphany of art transforms the unsure to the satisfied.


I do not presume to create a time line of Shade's beliefs; however, the discovery of differing ideas about metaphysical themes brings the reader quite climatically to Shade's own revelation. In canto one, he writes about his disbelief of God. “My God died young. Theolatry I found // Degrading, and its premises, unsound” (36). However, he does not fall into an atheistic category of nonbelief. Shade goes on, “No free man needs a God; but was I free? // How fully I felt nature glued to me” (36). These lines suggest that his disbelief of his “old” God was changed from a belief to a feeling. This feeling allowed for the existence of a higher being through the logic that he was not free from a natural setting, or in other words, his mortal body. According to the previous line, if he was a free man then a God would not be necessary, but he quite promptly realizes he lacks this fundamental freedom.


The end of the first canto relays Shade's experience of some type of seizure wherein he was introduced to a mystical place. A place where the, “blackness was sublime. I felt distributed through space and time” (38). This metaphysical allocation only worked to increase his dissatisfaction with the nebulous nature of the afterlife, as the second canto begins with strong doubts. Shade wonders how anyone could live without knowing “what doom // Awaited consciousness beyond the tomb” (39). This lays the groundwork for John Shade's belief position. He seems to adhere to a form of agnosticism that does not deny an existence of a higher being, but he does not claim to know anything about that higher being. Shade yearns not for knowledge of God, but for satisfaction in the unknowable characteristics of a God and the otherworld.


It is interesting to note Vladimir Nabokov's own dislike for the loss of consciousness. In Speak, Memory he makes his position quite clear by writing, “...the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me” (108). It is curious then how John Shade appears to share the same negativity towards the loss of conscious thought. The unease that is represented towards the unknown of the afterlife makes sense if the author is so utterly repulsed by the idea that it might resemble sleep in some form.


Canto three begins Shade's rigorous search for an understanding of the otherworld. He deals with the Institute of Preparation of the Hereafter which he finds to be absolute nonsense, but learns from them what to ignore in his “survey of death's abyss” (57). The relaying of his experience with IPH ends on a wholly depressing note by his concession that “... there would be nothing: no self-styled // Spirit would touch a keyboard of dry wood // to rap out her pet name; no phantom would // Rise gracefully to welcome you and me” (57). Shade goes on in Canto three to mention his heart attack where he is again transported to a different state of being where this time he has a vision. It is the great white fountain that seems to be an icon in his search for understanding. When this icon fails to match up (fountain, mountain) Shade finally has his epiphany.


This is the moment, the center of the poem, the body of the butterfly. Shade's gestalt is beautiful in its simplicity. He realizes not what he has been trying to understand about the existence of the otherworld, but instead that what is unknowable is tolerable. The point is not the content itself (text) but the feeling and tacit connections (texture) that bind all things. Shade imagines some sort of force from beyond, but instead of trying to understand it or picture it he writes “It did not matter who they were. No sound, // No furtive light came from their involute // abode” (63). Since there is no way to know what the higher force is that controls the great game of life, Shade instead focuses on the beauty of the interrelated, seemingly coincidental elements of it.


Canto four marks the beginning of Shade's delving into the material world. It starts out, “Now I shall spy on beauty as none has // Spied on it yet.” (64). He continues, focusing on detail, on the beauty and aesthetics of the physicality of the human condition. Resolution is found when he writes, “I feel I understand // Existence, or at least a minute part // Of my existence, only through my art” (69). This is the point of satisfaction. Shade has found the cure of the fear of unknowing. It is through art that Shade finds solace. It is through art that he is satisfied.


Nabokov, when lecturing on Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, said “Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art” (Kafka Project). There is a distinct moment in Pale Fire where pity comes into play. Kinbote transcribes a conversation that he and Shade had regarding traditional religious views and the extent to which that information can be known. Shade, who is post-epiphany and satisfied with unknowing of metaphysical types of topics, operates off of feeling when asked by Kinbote about the existence of sin. Shade simply tells Kinbote that he can only think of two: “murder, and the deliberate infliction of pain” (225). Then, in a rare moment of forced staging, Kinbote asks, “And so the password is?” to which Shade replies: “pity” (225).


If art is the manner in which Shade finds hope, then pity must play a significant role in this fulfillment. Art is a remembrance of sorts as all beauty eventually dies. This is why pity must also be an element. With all art there is loss and with all life there is loss. It is in these realms that life and art operate: aesthetics and remembrance. Shade finds satisfaction in what he calls “his art” (69). The art of the poet is to observe the details, to notice the coincidences, and to portray elegantly these webs of existence. Pity then, implores the artist to not forget the imminence of mortality, but to understand its relationship to the beauty of life.


To exemplify these ideas, Nabokov juxtaposes Shade's satisfaction of the unknowable with the seemingly shallow faith of Kinbote's “Zemblan brand of Protestantism” (224). It is shallow only in the sense that he does not allow for the absence of a planning higher power, the belief is based off of text, not texture. Under Kinbote's belief, a God who manages souls and where they go in the afterlife is absolutely necessary for satisfaction to occur. Kinbote, in a sense, is a critique of modern religion and anything that bases metaphysical thought on matters of text as opposed to texture.


Going back to canto one, Shade describes how “we are most artistically caged” within nature (37). This is the same reason that he realizes he is not free, but held somehow by the natural world. Then he makes sweeping gestures towards time and timelessness, “Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and // Infinite aftertime: above your head // They close like giant wings, and you are dead” (37). Shade then goes on to describe the carefree attitude of the “regular vulgarian” who only looks up at the Milky Way when they are relieving themselves outside. In ways this acts as a metaphor for Shade-like characters and Kinbote-like characters. It is easier for those who do not contemplate such high things, who look up in the sky only to admire the big picture then it is for those who must think deeply about such things and pick out all the telling details. Satisfaction comes to both, as in the case of Shade and Kinbote, but when doubt arises, a unacceptance of the unknowable makes it difficult to remain ignorant.


The impending abyss of death accentuates two elements of life: remembrance and aesthetics, loss and coincidence, beauty plus pity. This abyss is long and wide, and if one agrees that its characteristics are fundamentally unknowable, then when does satisfaction arrive? It is through art that the web of sense is found, and the inter-connectivity of life, in our caged physicality, is realized in the details. Beauty, pity, remembrance, aesthetics, the unknown, the abyss and sweet satisfaction.



Works Cited

Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.

“Lecture on 'The Metamorphosis' by Vladimir Nabokov.” kafka.org. Mauro Nervi, 10 Nov. 2004. Web. 5 Dec. 2009.

Individual Presentations Day 2

Again, great work to everyone who presented today. These are definitely the most insightful and creative essays that I have seen in this type of class.

Christina took some very thorough notes over all the presentations. I will not even attempt to try to do (from memory) what she has done. If you haven't seen it yet, it is here.

I do have to mention that I was very impressed with the depth of Doug's study about the Zodiac and Nabokov's Transparent Things. I don't know a thing about the Zodiac, but was thoroughly impressed. James' index of Transparent Things also sounded very in depth and also very creative.

Good work to everyone, see you all on Thursday.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Individual Presentations Day 1

Hello all, and congratulation to all of the people that went today. Awesome stuff!!

Things that stuck in my head:

Christina's paper was really impressive. I think that if I had to choose a paper to sum up the major themes of this class, her's would pretty much be at the top of the list. Texture not text. And how appropriate from an art major. (that's right isn't it?) It is a very important theme when the characteristics of immortality are involved. Very insightful, and I'll probably use it to help me sum up my paper. Thanks Christina!

Elissa and her number stuff! There is some crazy stuff going on there. I wasn't following all the dates that carefully but it is great that someone was! Good job picking up where most of us slacked off!

Amanda's teaser of her Gradus story was great, and I'm definitely going to go read it.

Everyone else did a great job too. I'm excited to see everyone else go next Tuesday and Thursday.

Group Presentations.

To all the groups - Good work, the projects were entertaining and insightful, just what the Dr. ordered.

I especially liked group 4's video, props to them for the cool ideas. I really liked the portrayal of the chess game starting as the book was opened. Nabokov's genius at work!

I was also highly impressed with Robert's memorization of his poem. Good work sir.

And now on to the individual presentations. I am very interested to see what our classmates are going to be focusing on. Nabokov lends himself and his works very nicely to rich study and in depth critique on countless captivating topics.

Good luck to everyone who is presenting today.