Why would he have a thick Russian accesnt if he was taught English and French along with Russian in his early childhood? Three languages spoken fluently in his family. In fact he learned English before Russian. He emigrated from Russia at the age of 18 and studied in Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and America.
Wow, this shook my world. Never having seen Nabokov speak, I was expecting someone smooth and urbane, maybe arrogant. Sorta like Martin Amis with a Russian accent. In person, he was the opposite. Fumbling, awkward, unassuming. However his fierce intellect does shine through if you pay attention. A most interesting video...
Nabokov may have ruined my life, but I still love him. I studied literature and humanities instead of engineering because of his work. Needless to say I can't find gainful employment.... I made some Nabokov shirts though that get top hits on google if you type: Nabokov hates your prose. Check them out!
@angelkater0se Have you read the book? The sex is undeniably child abuse, HH admits as much himself. But you are assuming that love can never be destructive, which I think anyone who has ever been in love knows is not true.
@crassgop Oh, I had misssed your point. No, love is never destructive, if 'love' is destructive, then it is fear. Attempting to complete oneself through another is not love, but fear.
It's odd and curious to find Vladimir Nabokov's accent is more ambiguous in nationality than his name would suggest. I expected a thick Ruso accent like Solzhenitsyn has. He sounds more French then Russian. It probably comes from his trilingual background and his citizen of the world status.
It's quite funny how determined he was to read everything that was on his index cards. Also, how he repeatedly tries to get out from underneath Trilling's arm by almost lying down the other way.
@MrsMxyptlk (great name!) I agree that the book is about love. Humbert is in love with Lolita, and this is what gives the book a great deal of its power to shock. If Humbert was just a pervert who abuses Lolita he wouldn't shock the reader so much. The book raises the question of what is love. As you say, Lolita doesn't love Humbert. But what if she did? Would their relationship then be appropriate, once she becomes 18?
this guy annihilates the shit out of everyone with his writing skill but is a below average speaker
weird how a lot of these authors who are masters of english suck at talking. watch cormac mcarthy and oprah, another genius writer that can't verbally communicate well. maybe they're nervous
Nabokov once said himself, "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."
He was quite aware of this. So much that before his interviews he would write out scripted versions of his answers to the questions asked. Watching the video, you may have noticed that while speaking he tends to look down the majority of the time he is talking.
@soffer I think McCarthy was nervous. He is quite a reclusive figure, after all. And, in Nabokov's defense, English isn't his native language. I do wonder whether his public speaking skills are more impressive in his native Russian.
@soffer I'm much the same. I'm an aspiring writer (obviously nothing compared to Nabakov) but I find writing so much easier than speaking. I can write a few pages of prose, come back to them the next day and marvel at their eloquence; but directly ask me a question and I'll stammer and struggle far worse than our genius here. I am assuming it has something to do with the language centres in the brain: the generation of words and their physical utterances controlled by different parts and such.
@IllegalInAmsterdam - I have noticed similar something similar in the past, but there are certainly ways to bring greater eloquence to speech if it is desired. For instance you might practise reading aloud your most eloquent writings, i have found this increases my verbal eloquence...
@LPTVFANQUIETTIME Have you read the book? A pedophile is described as an adult who is sexually attracted to children. He was sexually attracted to children, he was a pedophile.
Fixed-negative bent-media myths reinforced by insults to humanity the two HUs Humbert & Huntley, obscure the millions of past, present & future true Pedo-Adulto relationships. Which may be transient, or more permanent bonds - yet currently UNreported in today's Murdoch-ised junk media for Scare Profit not 'Protection'. While else have they pushed the Stranger Danger myth when since the 50s it was well known that 90% of Child Abuse is Non-sexual & 90% of pedophila is Non-stranger/Non coercive.
Is HH capable of love? I am not convinced. He strikes me as a fairly ruined,isolated personality on something of a death trip, 'free', then, [imprisoned, really] only to follow his basest instincts to ground. HH, tender, stricken sociopathic avalanche that he is, makes no clear effort to deliver himself from evil and so, ultimately, composes his eulogy from jail. [Then and there becoming the ape that paints only the bars of its cage. ]
I must respectfully disagree with the assertion that it was Lolita who seduced Humbert. The only way one could draw that conclusion is if one trusts in Humbert Humbert's narration. That would be a dubious mistake.
One must also not forget that it was HH who tried to drug Lolita. Have you read the book?
In any event, it is easily a rare and delicate work of genius; equal in the respect to Don Quixote.
Arguing that L seduced HH is ridiculous. But I don't think the issue is whether to trust HH's narration. L was undoubtedly promiscuous for a 12 year old, and she had Hollywood inspired fantasies about HH, but claiming that she seduced him (an adult male, who should know better) is like blaming children for believing in Santa--as if their naivete was to blame for the invention.
In my opinion, Humbert was honest throughout the whole novel, knowing it was bad to fall for a 12-year old girl who really didnt know anything about love or sex. Humbert IS a pervert, and the best part is that he accepts it, he knows its bad and everytime you turn a page, you see him fighting with his deamons, knowing that he will be found guilty throughout the trile and everything else. I really like Humbert Humbert because he has like a sad aura in him, he shows his love though a disorted view
'Early defenses of 'Lolita' by Hollander and Trilling center on the insistence that it was an authentic love story.....I marvel that acute readers could take it as a portrayal of human love, since Humbert and Lolita are hardly representations of human beings. They are deliberate caricatures...solipsistic nightmares.'- Harold Bloom. I entirely agree.
vanderbilt. Novelists and Novels. I happen to love the inexhaustible old buffalo even though he over-estimates Pynchon and Delillo and, however slightly, under-estimates Roth.
Recognizing that Humbert's feelings for Lolita grow from lust to love does not constitute a defense for Humbert. As for HH as a character, I can think of none other in literature so finely drawn, while Lolita is sketched by HH, with VN's help (the downy hair of her forearm, for instance). These are not caricatures, these are not טיפוסים; they are, on the contrary, unique in literature.
Don't worry, I get the richness of the book. Listen, calling someone who clearly abuses a twelve year old girl a pedophile has nothing to do with "the common vernacular of blanket labeling" or "hysterical puritanism", it's simply a truism. Yes, Humbert is more than that, he's also a very cultivated and intelligent man (some might call him a genius), but he's still a pedophile nevertheless. I don't even see what's there to discuss. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who dislikes the
book because of this. I simply don't let myself be fooled, unlike some people here, into liking and defending Humbert. Yes, Lolita seduced Humbert. So what? How would a normal, sexual healthy person respond to that I may ask? Like Humbert? By solopsistic I mean a very important quality of Humbert's personality; I don't care whether it's a new tag or not. I've never given a damn about intellectual fashions.
I like the novel precisely because it doesn't seek to explain Humbert's pedophilia like some Bildungsroman with all the asociated cliches, but simply presents it as fact. Humbert, of course, does give some reasons in order to convince the jury of his innocence, but none are convincing. In fact, Humbert, being no fool, recognizes this himself, and even says at certain point in the novel that if the audience was really expecting him to be cured of his pedophilia, they're basicly idiots.
Looks like your correcting everyone here. If you read the book, you will encounter a number of defenses (both "partly hidden" and blatantly obvious) made by Humbert vis-a-vis his paedophilia. In fact, his entire memoir is sort of an rhetorical game where he tries to convince people into liking him (not his innocence per se).
I'd say that's unassailable. HH says he deserves imprisonment for rape and declares his love for "rope-veined" Lolita (i.e., versus Lolita the nymphet), so he can't be claiming innocence, though he is trying to gain our sympathy. Whether we can believe his declaration is another matter. Most critics haven't.
Yes, Nabokov hated Freud (so do I) and was synesthetic, but he also hated Humbert the pedophile. He made this clear in every interview where the interviewer was somehow, in his view, defending Humbert (you know, the cliche that he's not so bad, it's the society that's bad and so on etc.) I don't really care what words one uses to describe Humbert, call him evil, a psychopath, a pedophile, etc. He's cunning and manipulative, and only cares about others insofar as he can (ab)use them.
Humbert is very consciously manipulating the reader into liking him as the story progresses, even up to the point of actually defending him (defending a pedophile). The fact that this succeeds so well with so many people, is a testimony to Nabokovs writing skills, and, perhaps, also to some peoples moral sense. There are no excuses for Humbert, hes an evil pedophile. The impossibility of love is his fault, not the societys. Again, no excuses for someone who's into twelve year olds.
This comment has received too many negative votesshow
How could he fuck so much with her without children...cause one `s sure: he fucked her for a long time , nothing romantic or heroisch...he was always angry if he didn`t shit in the morning ! I loved his autobiography "memory speak!"There he describes an interesting life, without shit or children fucking .
Well, I think the impossibility of love in the novel has more to do with "H.H"s" solopsistic and psychopathic personality than with modern civilization. Why do you think it
Why do you think "Lolita" has become a modern classic in the first place? Exactly because it touched on the nerve of modern civilization. Not by dealing with main protagonist as a psycopath( in fact if you think of other characters in the book, they are just worse than H.H. and Lol), but by depicting a vast American tapestry as an epitome of this civilization.
Lolita has become a classic for many reasons, in part because of it's beautiful style, it's clever composition, Nabokov's relation and reaction to his modern predecessors (Joyce, Proust, Kafka etc.) in this novel, and it's controversial subject theme. H.H is a psychopath, just look at how he's describing the world: he's hugely solopsistic, narcisistic, doesn't care the least bit about other people's feelings, he is a great manipulator, has zero remorse, no empathy, is impulsive etc. etc. The...
other characters appear to be quite strange, but not psychopathic. They appear this way, because your looking through Humbert's eyes. Everything in the story is told through Humbert's perspective. The novel does deal with American culture, as seen through Humbert's eyes (rather European). But I don't understand why the impossibilty of love has anything to do with American culture. It's Humbert's fault... I mean, he's a pedophile for crying out loud!
VN despised Freud and all things psychiatric and so it seems unlikely an alternative title for his 'Lolita' would have been 'Portrait of a Psychopath' or ' The Baroque Musings of a European Pedophile'. VN was an extraordinary stylist [ like those savants who see words and numbers as colors] and primarily concerned with the visible [ vs Freud whose primary concern was the invisible]. VN writes of the 'perilous magic of nymphets' who provide a feast for the eye and a prison for the fetishist.
The VN's novel is much richer than you interpret it. If you try to think a little bit above the common vernacular of blanket labeling (psychopathic, paedophile, etc.) and hysterical puritanism, but actually read the book, or some other works by VN, like "Invitation to beheading", "Despair", you might think differently.
By the way, in the book it was Lolita who seduced HH.
And what is "solopsistic"? Is it some sort of new tag to attach to anything that is not one-dimensional?
Lolita seduced HH? The morning after he'd taken her out of boarding school, got a one-bed motel room, and drugged her? Only if the term "statutory rape" has no meaning.
VN is famously cagey and obfuscating about real ideas behind his plots. In this interview, he kinda matter-of-factly reveals his true intentions behind "Lolita"'s seemingly outrageous plot. It's about cliches, taking over the world, and the similar standardized way of thinking from top to bottom, from a European intellectual to an American nimphete.
Great love affairs are tragic. Nabokov is in love with language, romantic novel as a form, and himself of course. But he is so full of joy and energy, I just can't belive he's deeply and tragically in love. This all is just flirtation. Nice guy though.
This must have been one of the last live TV interviews Nabokov ever did. I didn't know much about Lionel Trilling before I watched this, but this video has not raised him in my estimation, let's just put it that way.
I agree with Trilling. On the comment below: isn't asymmetry one of the most salient elements of a tragic love story? Love needn't be reciprocal to qualify as 'valid' - unilateral, subjective love is still love.
This is riveting. Reminds me of (literally) smoky contemporary book discussions on French television. 'BookTV' in the US is a sad substitute, sanitized for our protection. 'Quel dommage', as Humbert himself might say...
The talk about whether HH did or didn't love Lolita is interesting but I suspect the answer is undecidable. When he visits her at the end, he says he realizes two things: (a) he ruined her by destroying her childhood and (b) he genuinely loved her, i.e. not as a nymphet but as a real person. The question is whether we can believe the sincerity of this realization. After all, the man who says he truly loves Lolita has just redescribed all the nasty things he did to her with great delight.
Wow, and wow again, thanks Jiffyspook for posting this. What absolute astral brilliance!! Trilling and Nabokov were thrillingly and passionately explicating the very soul of ideas.
i've always thought of lolita as a book primarily about american culture through the eyes of a european, but i don't think nabokov would use such harsh words to describe it. he genuinely loved and was fascinated by american culture, of course he had a fine eye for absurdities and loved pointing them out.
These guys are damned prophetic...nymphette clothing? The fashion & advertising industries took that little bundle and has run all the way to the $ bank $ with it!
Romance would have you believe that real love stands the test of time. However, time (and not the law) is the greatest enemy of the pederast. Humbert's love does not endure because Lolita grows up. One doesn't think of Nabokov as being an existentialist writer because he's got such a light touch. But I wonder.
Has anyone read Reading Lolita in Tehran? It's very useful as a discussion of Lolita, great incites, esp. from a woman';s perspective (as a man I find it fascinating how different women see the character of Lolita)what's more, women living under a theocratic regime.
A recommendation that Vivian Darkbloom would scoff at, when the reading of Lolita in Tehran is less essential than readings in Milwaukee or Kansas City, or "fill in any US location".
Actually, scratch that, I'm interested in the content of both of these pointless arguments, but it's presented in a much less irritating fashion this time around. :)
Wow, do you two ever give a good God damn about whether you're right or not. :P
It's okay though, this argument had content that I'm actually interested in, so I'm not quite as perturbed. Go nuts. Also, out of woof3x and Itzak Sonofabitch, woof's my favourite. Kudos. *thumbs up*
One more thing: No, Jesus can't suck it. Because he's dead. And gone. Forever. :|
Anyhow, back to the subject of Nabokov. Of his books, I've only just finished reading "Lolita" recently (laugh if you will, "scholars", men worthy indeed of Nabokov's scorn), but I plan on reading more this summer when the burden of high school is lifted.
Your comments are to the point. What have you read since summer? You might try "The Annotated Lolita" by VN's student Alfred Appel. Also on YT Marlon Brando interview-1965
Also, on the subject of Wikipedia: although it certainly shouldn't be where one attains his primary knowledge, it IS infinitely useful in understanding, however vaguely, virtually any subject that the "casual peruser" chooses. Many studies from non-partisan sources have shown that it's often more reliable than Brittanica (with an inarguably greater amount of content), so let no one say that you'll be misled by it.
Um, 'kay. I know this may have ended four days ago (believe me, I appreciate that), but allow me to quickly interject, and address both of you at once: Shuddup.
I'm sixteen, and I happen to be learned on a fair deal of what these two undertakers are yammering about; but I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of knowing the extent of my knowledge, because I'm not one to condescendingly bludgeon my intelligence over people's heads just to prove highly interpretable points on a YouTube comment box.
I thought that Nabokov was being playful or else did not understand his own novel, which is about HH's overpowering of Lolita and continuing for as long as he could to dominate her all to her detriment. It was intellectualized child abuse and I am surprised that neither Trilling or Nabokov said so. I found the entire conversation uncrisp. These guys sure wrote better than they spoke.
Thanks for the kind words. Sharp and cosmopolitan, you intellectualize pedophilia and assimilate to Ahab's quest HH's subjugation of Lolita, his statutorily raping her, his fucking her--a 12 year old-- right after her mother dies.
I salute you.
My timid view offered in fear and trembling in the bright sun of your brilliance, woofx3, is you float on an imperceptive cloud of vague words and ideas detached from the actuality of the text.
ur nowhere-near sardonic response, with using words like "sharp" "cosmopolitan" "imperceptive" and shit like that show how much a weak-minded, pseudo-intellectual you are. the book is not ABOUT "rape," it is about READING. all the marvellous texts and cultural references and heart-felt HUMOR. the so-called rape shit is only a pretext. try re-reading the book with an open mind, you douche.
it is like saying moby-dick is ABOUT the depravity of whale hunting (like the japanese whale hunts of today). that's not what it's ABOUT, maybe a tiny part. as sharp and cosmopolitan and bright and brave as you are, i'd call your reading "mouldy dick".
Woof3x: Predictably, you've slid from mild insult to frothing. Learn about fiction before losing your load. All texts are about reading. But criticism detached from text is a fool's vapour. Again, try Reading Lolita In Tehran. Then lord it over me and Nafisi, a Nabakov scholar. What garage did you go to? I have an M.A. in English from U.B.C.
nothing more pretentious than a fool going around babbling about his degrees. ha! pseudo-intellectuals, indeed. not all texts are about reading, dumbass. nabokov is fairly post-modern, ahead of his time, with his self-referential and richly allusive references. nothing kills art (esp. the novels, and poetry) than these m.a. candidates and "scholars" with their dry-as-dust analysis). i won't loose my "load" over you, you sexless bore. and i don't give a FUCK about your full name.
woof3x: You don't--duh-- know what you're on about. Do you know what "post modern" means? If you do, tell me without scampering to Wikipedia.
What text is not a meta comment on itself? And no inter textuality needed. Read Eliot's Tradition And The Individual Talent or Bloom on the anxiety of influence.
My degree: that's just the way it is. But you're a scared twit and out of your depth.
Name, school, intellectual doings, an argument beyond bald assertion and names?
i sure know SOME things about post-modern. i don't really care for these labels as great art defies simple names and DEFINES their own rules. and thanks to wiki, i've learned some good stuff, so don't be a snot-nosed intellectual scum-bag and claim it's not valid. nabokov himself would scoff at that type of thinking, for he combines both the high and low in his works. what the FUCK does eliot's great essay have to do with intertextuality? eliot himself REQUIRES a know of many texts.
wat a fucktard (kathy griffin's term, watch it, she's fun; life doesn't have to be so dry as dust as ur view of academe). and i don't give a FUCK about my typos and things like that since it's only a youtube comment board. believe you me, i was an editor of a college magazine that i founded in which writers like jim crenner, the late deborah tall, james mccorkle and the famed anne carson published their original stuff. do you have myspace? so you can see my beauty body and mind?
did u even look up the people i mentioned, assuming with ur vast knowledge of lit, u prob don't know at least one. and i am fine--i never sweat the small stuff (let alone small-mindedness). and again: fuck typo's! ha ha. fuck it. are u a guy or a girl? i'm a beautiFUL gay! boo yeah!
jesus! at the mention of homosexuality, and of COURSE the quick insertion of christ. jesus can suck it! look up kathy griffin. and the writer paul monette wrote, hmm, jesus, straight? i'm not so sure because he's a bit too well-coiffed if you know what i mean. perfect!
You cannot say "human genius" in opposition to morality. That's really dull and inhuman. And as to why art is immoral - it's surely not the reader's fault.
"morality" is a human construct! the socalled edicts of morality, the good and bad morals, are conceived by men--the universal term for human beings, and the specific term for men as a single sex. human genius, the grandeur of creations r beyond normal means of talking. they are mysteries. dinve. something unknowable, some kinda spiritual make-up(?) art is just art--it is we as humans who put value and levels of worth to them. lolita is "immoral" because of provinciality.
How well you mix and match. Albeit unnconvincingly. Is it because "the grandeur of creations r beyond normal means of talking? something unknowable?" You seem to enjoy your circles, mosaics and quotes like a candy.
u clearly have ur mind made up to condemn anything u see that don't gel well with YOUR conceptions of what is "right." i have no idea what "circles &mosaics "ES [was i quoting?]" u are referring to. thoughts, if u want 2 tlk about circling, are splendidly and sometimes annoyingly, layered, like ur mosaics. doesn't mean thoughts NEED 2B complicated, no. but things that are 'straight forward' aren't GREAT ART. tho u actually read, u would however fall into vn's category of phillistines.
I was talking about your muddled thinking, of course. Do you think you yourself are GREAT ART, too? And that, of course, will be in the opposition to the straight forward and condemning phillistines. How predictable.
i don't know what is so muddled about my argument. merely that great art is tough to say with commonplace's, aka. phillistine's, ways of thinking (if they even think!). u sound like a bitter old man who are clinging to some old world's precepts. i am young, smart, and appreciate great art. AM I great art?--that's for others to decide, not i. i DO make--or attempt to make--art. i have no idea what the rest of ur post means. phillistine--btw, a nv i brought into the convo ;)
Yes, you don't know what is so muddled about your argument. And you have no idea what the rest of my posts mean. Because you are young and not clinging to the old world's percepts. And I'm old, thus .... you know.
"make it NEW!" remember? i love the classics, the ancients, the GREAT old. u are merely a sack of bones surviving on old world's precepts and will crumble soon enough. weren't YOU young once? how sad u have amnesia of ur youth. i'm sorry.
obvs. not urs. we aren't on the same plane of "reality." my reality, to borrow vn's words i QUOTED below, is authentic and therefore, unusual or immoral in YOUR book. and ur average reality and mind will rot and stink soon enough. so will i, but i hope i wouldn't look down on the young outta bitterness and scorn.
"You should have had plumbs tonight, In an eighteenth-century dish" --Wallace Stevens
the stuff of TODAY will feed us, like plums to make it thru the night. but the stuff of today being held by 18TH CENTURY plate. not one or the other, but BOTH.
perhaps, humbert humbert is the "old" and lolita the "new", aka, young. thru the stories of BOTH, of their adventures across america, nabokov created HIS america, his version of what life is like. perhaps.
The only mystery for me is how does the mind of your generation work? Where are you all coming from - loud, fast with ready answers, yet unable to stick to the logic of reality?
Your use of the world "reality" perplexes me. To be sure, there is an average reality, perceived by all of us, but that is not true reality: it is only the reality of general ideas, conventional forms of humdrummery, current editorials ...
[T]he only real, authentic worlds are, of course, those that seem unusual ... Average reality begins to rot and stink as soon as the act of individual creation ceases to animate a subjectively perceived texture.
Art is just art - we humans put value to it, but not MAKE it?. It just is, by itself, like stones and birds?
Specific term for men "as a single sex" is man, acording to you. Thus the grandeur of creations beyond "morality" must sure belong to a woman, as another single sex, no? Just trying to unravel the logic of your impossible knits.
surely art--like the term artifice--is fake, is made up. by humans. but it is also humans who prescribe what is good or bad. there're bird and stones, there's no god--or we don't know if there's one.
man--is the single sex AND used sometimes for humankind. i'm saying ur beloved moralities are made up, mostly, by men. mostly. i am opening up the terminology to include "the other", i.e. women.
Nabokov's voice is an artful instrument even when it's stuttering a little or reading from a notecard. It's a special pleasure to hear the rare extemporization. And my eyes enjoy the way he lounges on the couch with those glasses and that waistcoat. Man, why don't they make tv shows like this anymore? In America, I mean.
Isn't Moby Dick about Ahab's obsession with the white whale? You could define his obsession as "passionate love" or at least as a passionate fixation.
These dudes were speaking in big, general terms, but I don't think they were off-base there.
Just my two cents, but... I hear the phrase "passionate love" as uttered by VN to be better heard as, simply, "passion."
Perhaps he was overselling his case by tacking the word "love" onto it? Like trying to (sorry) "dumb-down" the intricate play of his meanings for an American audience?
I'm not stating that absolute, mind... just that posibility?
After thinking about it for a couple of weeks I decided that you are probably right. Still, when NV made that comment notice that he prefixed it with the phrase "of course." In my mind this was his way of inviting further discussion of his sweeping statement. Seems like no one took the challenge until now. Thanks to YouTube
Even though I agree that "Lolita" is a masterpiece, I have to take issue with Nabokov's assertion that "all worthwhile novels are concerned with passionate love." What about "Moby Dick" to name just one "worthwhile novel." Surprised that Lionel Trilling did not jump all over Nabokov's ridiculous assertion.
I haven't read Moby Dick, but it is entirely possible that Nabokov thinks of the book to be worthless (which is possible, but I don't know if it's the case). It is also possible that by love he is not necessarily referring to love between two individuals. Passionate love could refer to passion in general - like the passion in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. A magnificent obsession, if you will.
El nunca aceptaba entrevistas sin saber las preguntas y para hacerlas en vivo usaba siempre esas papeletas o tarjetas. El mismo lo acepta en Strong Opinions, uno de sus libros.
Why would he have a thick Russian accesnt if he was taught English and French along with Russian in his early childhood? Three languages spoken fluently in his family. In fact he learned English before Russian. He emigrated from Russia at the age of 18 and studied in Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and America.
maxtotiev 3 days ago
Wow, this shook my world. Never having seen Nabokov speak, I was expecting someone smooth and urbane, maybe arrogant. Sorta like Martin Amis with a Russian accent. In person, he was the opposite. Fumbling, awkward, unassuming. However his fierce intellect does shine through if you pay attention. A most interesting video...
Heraclitean 1 week ago
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Nabokov may have ruined my life, but I still love him. I studied literature and humanities instead of engineering because of his work. Needless to say I can't find gainful employment.... I made some Nabokov shirts though that get top hits on google if you type: Nabokov hates your prose. Check them out!
Gabagabe1 1 month ago
so great to watch this. thanks
tryharder75 5 months ago
Why are they calling it love when it is clearly child abuse
angelkater0se 5 months ago
@angelkater0se Have you read the book? The sex is undeniably child abuse, HH admits as much himself. But you are assuming that love can never be destructive, which I think anyone who has ever been in love knows is not true.
crassgop 2 weeks ago
@crassgop If you re-read my comment you will see that I absolutely agree with you
angelkater0se 2 weeks ago
@angelkater0se I don't know if you do, because I think they are perfectly correct to use the word love.
crassgop 2 weeks ago
@crassgop Oh, I had misssed your point. No, love is never destructive, if 'love' is destructive, then it is fear. Attempting to complete oneself through another is not love, but fear.
angelkater0se 2 weeks ago
It's odd and curious to find Vladimir Nabokov's accent is more ambiguous in nationality than his name would suggest. I expected a thick Ruso accent like Solzhenitsyn has. He sounds more French then Russian. It probably comes from his trilingual background and his citizen of the world status.
cinephilefromhell 5 months ago 6
@cinephilefromhell My reaction was exactly the same. If I didn't know it was Nabokov, I would have thought he was French.
SandarinOrangeJr 5 months ago
I am pleased with his accent
rozeitgeist 5 months ago
"If sex is the sermon made of art, love is the lady of that tower." Did he say that? That's beautiful
Oscar301 7 months ago
@Oscar301 in heard "servant-maid of art" :)
tryharder75 5 months ago
"Minority of people" ahahahaha
SnowMozart 8 months ago
That look at 2:59...
It's quite funny how determined he was to read everything that was on his index cards. Also, how he repeatedly tries to get out from underneath Trilling's arm by almost lying down the other way.
vickitobox 11 months ago
Vladimir Nabokov is a writing genius, and I love him dearly for that.
Ada1613 11 months ago 3
"They don't know what love is, perhaps, and perhaps they don't know what love is, either."
BURN.
bballcenter7 11 months ago 2
(Drew his .32 automatic, I guess, and put a bullet through his moll's eye.)
jillsararosenberg 1 year ago
There is a good Yale lit lecture on this book.
Dr John
Kingdom of Thailand
carsanookdotcom 1 year ago
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Lepsaeus 1 year ago
@Lepsaeus Please don't try to write like Humbert Humbert.
TheScrewOnHead 1 year ago
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Lepsaeus 1 year ago
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Lepsaeus 1 year ago
@MrsMxyptlk (great name!) I agree that the book is about love. Humbert is in love with Lolita, and this is what gives the book a great deal of its power to shock. If Humbert was just a pervert who abuses Lolita he wouldn't shock the reader so much. The book raises the question of what is love. As you say, Lolita doesn't love Humbert. But what if she did? Would their relationship then be appropriate, once she becomes 18?
AngusTCat 1 year ago
this guy annihilates the shit out of everyone with his writing skill but is a below average speaker
weird how a lot of these authors who are masters of english suck at talking. watch cormac mcarthy and oprah, another genius writer that can't verbally communicate well. maybe they're nervous
soffer 1 year ago
@soffer
Nabokov once said himself, "I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."
He was quite aware of this. So much that before his interviews he would write out scripted versions of his answers to the questions asked. Watching the video, you may have noticed that while speaking he tends to look down the majority of the time he is talking.
anxietyontheinternet 1 year ago 7
@soffer I think McCarthy was nervous. He is quite a reclusive figure, after all. And, in Nabokov's defense, English isn't his native language. I do wonder whether his public speaking skills are more impressive in his native Russian.
thatfolgersguy 10 months ago
@soffer I'm much the same. I'm an aspiring writer (obviously nothing compared to Nabakov) but I find writing so much easier than speaking. I can write a few pages of prose, come back to them the next day and marvel at their eloquence; but directly ask me a question and I'll stammer and struggle far worse than our genius here. I am assuming it has something to do with the language centres in the brain: the generation of words and their physical utterances controlled by different parts and such.
IllegalInAmsterdam 9 months ago
@IllegalInAmsterdam - I have noticed similar something similar in the past, but there are certainly ways to bring greater eloquence to speech if it is desired. For instance you might practise reading aloud your most eloquent writings, i have found this increases my verbal eloquence...
Schizopantheist 7 months ago
Humbert was not a pedophile! Behead all who take the name of Humbert in vain!
LPTVFANQUIETTIME 1 year ago
@LPTVFANQUIETTIME Have you read the book? A pedophile is described as an adult who is sexually attracted to children. He was sexually attracted to children, he was a pedophile.
9529564696 1 year ago
I love the way the host turns the author's name into innuendo.
rajasmasala 1 year ago
Fixed-negative bent-media myths reinforced by insults to humanity the two HUs Humbert & Huntley, obscure the millions of past, present & future true Pedo-Adulto relationships. Which may be transient, or more permanent bonds - yet currently UNreported in today's Murdoch-ised junk media for Scare Profit not 'Protection'. While else have they pushed the Stranger Danger myth when since the 50s it was well known that 90% of Child Abuse is Non-sexual & 90% of pedophila is Non-stranger/Non coercive.
DougPatton1 1 year ago
Interesting English accent !!!
MdeRoqueson1 2 years ago
he's russian born sherlock
MrLincoln2011 1 year ago
Is HH capable of love? I am not convinced. He strikes me as a fairly ruined,isolated personality on something of a death trip, 'free', then, [imprisoned, really] only to follow his basest instincts to ground. HH, tender, stricken sociopathic avalanche that he is, makes no clear effort to deliver himself from evil and so, ultimately, composes his eulogy from jail. [Then and there becoming the ape that paints only the bars of its cage. ]
molloyxx1 2 years ago
"dummy-like Vronsky"-HA
thanks for this, so great.
dnam3076 2 years ago
I wish Nabokov was still around today, his astute observations forever resonate
curtisrunstedler 2 years ago
I must respectfully disagree with the assertion that it was Lolita who seduced Humbert. The only way one could draw that conclusion is if one trusts in Humbert Humbert's narration. That would be a dubious mistake.
One must also not forget that it was HH who tried to drug Lolita. Have you read the book?
In any event, it is easily a rare and delicate work of genius; equal in the respect to Don Quixote.
pickpoche 2 years ago
Arguing that L seduced HH is ridiculous. But I don't think the issue is whether to trust HH's narration. L was undoubtedly promiscuous for a 12 year old, and she had Hollywood inspired fantasies about HH, but claiming that she seduced him (an adult male, who should know better) is like blaming children for believing in Santa--as if their naivete was to blame for the invention.
spertrand 2 years ago
wow you must know like 100 things about everything you're so smart you must have 100 friends.
you don't even know what dubious means and you're trying to talk down to people. what a dweeb!
paultheawesome 2 years ago
Chris Hansen: What are you doing here?
RATH3RUNIQUE 2 years ago
In my opinion, Humbert was honest throughout the whole novel, knowing it was bad to fall for a 12-year old girl who really didnt know anything about love or sex. Humbert IS a pervert, and the best part is that he accepts it, he knows its bad and everytime you turn a page, you see him fighting with his deamons, knowing that he will be found guilty throughout the trile and everything else. I really like Humbert Humbert because he has like a sad aura in him, he shows his love though a disorted view
SaixEqual 2 years ago
You are right about HH (except, again, he is in jail for murder, not pedophilia), so why do you like him?
urwclwg 2 years ago
'Early defenses of 'Lolita' by Hollander and Trilling center on the insistence that it was an authentic love story.....I marvel that acute readers could take it as a portrayal of human love, since Humbert and Lolita are hardly representations of human beings. They are deliberate caricatures...solipsistic nightmares.'- Harold Bloom. I entirely agree.
molloyx 2 years ago 2
Yes, that's exactly my experience. From which of Bloom's books did you take that quote? thanks..
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
vanderbilt. Novelists and Novels. I happen to love the inexhaustible old buffalo even though he over-estimates Pynchon and Delillo and, however slightly, under-estimates Roth.
molloyx 2 years ago
Recognizing that Humbert's feelings for Lolita grow from lust to love does not constitute a defense for Humbert. As for HH as a character, I can think of none other in literature so finely drawn, while Lolita is sketched by HH, with VN's help (the downy hair of her forearm, for instance). These are not caricatures, these are not טיפוסים; they are, on the contrary, unique in literature.
urwclwg 2 years ago
Don't worry, I get the richness of the book. Listen, calling someone who clearly abuses a twelve year old girl a pedophile has nothing to do with "the common vernacular of blanket labeling" or "hysterical puritanism", it's simply a truism. Yes, Humbert is more than that, he's also a very cultivated and intelligent man (some might call him a genius), but he's still a pedophile nevertheless. I don't even see what's there to discuss. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who dislikes the
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
book because of this. I simply don't let myself be fooled, unlike some people here, into liking and defending Humbert. Yes, Lolita seduced Humbert. So what? How would a normal, sexual healthy person respond to that I may ask? Like Humbert? By solopsistic I mean a very important quality of Humbert's personality; I don't care whether it's a new tag or not. I've never given a damn about intellectual fashions.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
I like the novel precisely because it doesn't seek to explain Humbert's pedophilia like some Bildungsroman with all the asociated cliches, but simply presents it as fact. Humbert, of course, does give some reasons in order to convince the jury of his innocence, but none are convincing. In fact, Humbert, being no fool, recognizes this himself, and even says at certain point in the novel that if the audience was really expecting him to be cured of his pedophilia, they're basicly idiots.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
Humbert was not defending himself against an accusation of peophilia, he was defending himself against an accusation of murder.
urwclwg 2 years ago
Looks like your correcting everyone here. If you read the book, you will encounter a number of defenses (both "partly hidden" and blatantly obvious) made by Humbert vis-a-vis his paedophilia. In fact, his entire memoir is sort of an rhetorical game where he tries to convince people into liking him (not his innocence per se).
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
I'd say that's unassailable. HH says he deserves imprisonment for rape and declares his love for "rope-veined" Lolita (i.e., versus Lolita the nymphet), so he can't be claiming innocence, though he is trying to gain our sympathy. Whether we can believe his declaration is another matter. Most critics haven't.
mrsmxyzptlk 2 years ago
Which is exactly what I was saying, so yes, we agree.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
Right, my comment was intended in support of your view.
mrsmxyzptlk 2 years ago
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roseparade1 2 years ago
Yes, Nabokov hated Freud (so do I) and was synesthetic, but he also hated Humbert the pedophile. He made this clear in every interview where the interviewer was somehow, in his view, defending Humbert (you know, the cliche that he's not so bad, it's the society that's bad and so on etc.) I don't really care what words one uses to describe Humbert, call him evil, a psychopath, a pedophile, etc. He's cunning and manipulative, and only cares about others insofar as he can (ab)use them.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
Humbert is very consciously manipulating the reader into liking him as the story progresses, even up to the point of actually defending him (defending a pedophile). The fact that this succeeds so well with so many people, is a testimony to Nabokovs writing skills, and, perhaps, also to some peoples moral sense. There are no excuses for Humbert, hes an evil pedophile. The impossibility of love is his fault, not the societys. Again, no excuses for someone who's into twelve year olds.
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
Yes, except that he does love her. It excuses nothing, but it is a fact.
urwclwg 2 years ago
This comment has received too many negative votes show
How could he fuck so much with her without children...cause one `s sure: he fucked her for a long time , nothing romantic or heroisch...he was always angry if he didn`t shit in the morning ! I loved his autobiography "memory speak!"There he describes an interesting life, without shit or children fucking .
jacckful 2 years ago
It's not a love story, as many people still think. It's story about impossibility of love within the realm of modern civilization.
mrazino 2 years ago 2
Well, I think the impossibility of love in the novel has more to do with "H.H"s" solopsistic and psychopathic personality than with modern civilization. Why do you think it
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
has to do with modern civilization?
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
Why do you think "Lolita" has become a modern classic in the first place? Exactly because it touched on the nerve of modern civilization. Not by dealing with main protagonist as a psycopath( in fact if you think of other characters in the book, they are just worse than H.H. and Lol), but by depicting a vast American tapestry as an epitome of this civilization.
mrazino 2 years ago
Lolita has become a classic for many reasons, in part because of it's beautiful style, it's clever composition, Nabokov's relation and reaction to his modern predecessors (Joyce, Proust, Kafka etc.) in this novel, and it's controversial subject theme. H.H is a psychopath, just look at how he's describing the world: he's hugely solopsistic, narcisistic, doesn't care the least bit about other people's feelings, he is a great manipulator, has zero remorse, no empathy, is impulsive etc. etc. The...
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
other characters appear to be quite strange, but not psychopathic. They appear this way, because your looking through Humbert's eyes. Everything in the story is told through Humbert's perspective. The novel does deal with American culture, as seen through Humbert's eyes (rather European). But I don't understand why the impossibilty of love has anything to do with American culture. It's Humbert's fault... I mean, he's a pedophile for crying out loud!
vanderbilt887 2 years ago
VN despised Freud and all things psychiatric and so it seems unlikely an alternative title for his 'Lolita' would have been 'Portrait of a Psychopath' or ' The Baroque Musings of a European Pedophile'. VN was an extraordinary stylist [ like those savants who see words and numbers as colors] and primarily concerned with the visible [ vs Freud whose primary concern was the invisible]. VN writes of the 'perilous magic of nymphets' who provide a feast for the eye and a prison for the fetishist.
molloyx 2 years ago
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vanderbilt887 2 years ago
half right; VN was a student of psychology, he just wasn't a follower of Freud.
urwclwg 2 years ago
The VN's novel is much richer than you interpret it. If you try to think a little bit above the common vernacular of blanket labeling (psychopathic, paedophile, etc.) and hysterical puritanism, but actually read the book, or some other works by VN, like "Invitation to beheading", "Despair", you might think differently.
By the way, in the book it was Lolita who seduced HH.
And what is "solopsistic"? Is it some sort of new tag to attach to anything that is not one-dimensional?
mrazino 2 years ago
Lolita seduced HH? The morning after he'd taken her out of boarding school, got a one-bed motel room, and drugged her? Only if the term "statutory rape" has no meaning.
urwclwg 2 years ago
LOL
urwclwg 2 years ago
Amazing footage. Thanks a bunch, JiffySpook.
VN is famously cagey and obfuscating about real ideas behind his plots. In this interview, he kinda matter-of-factly reveals his true intentions behind "Lolita"'s seemingly outrageous plot. It's about cliches, taking over the world, and the similar standardized way of thinking from top to bottom, from a European intellectual to an American nimphete.
mrazino 2 years ago
No, it is about a pederast who manages to pin his prey for a while.
urwclwg 2 years ago
Great love affairs are tragic. Nabokov is in love with language, romantic novel as a form, and himself of course. But he is so full of joy and energy, I just can't belive he's deeply and tragically in love. This all is just flirtation. Nice guy though.
reallyhatejazz 2 years ago
I'm Chris Hanson and you're all under arrest!
enoch6977 2 years ago 20
Lolita has been described as the greatest love story ever written. Trilling's comments are insightful and interesting.
terpwriter 2 years ago
This must have been one of the last live TV interviews Nabokov ever did. I didn't know much about Lionel Trilling before I watched this, but this video has not raised him in my estimation, let's just put it that way.
lexo30 2 years ago
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lexo30 2 years ago
What an incredible idiot this trilling character is
michelangeli23 2 years ago
What makes you say that?
urwclwg 2 years ago
I agree with Trilling. On the comment below: isn't asymmetry one of the most salient elements of a tragic love story? Love needn't be reciprocal to qualify as 'valid' - unilateral, subjective love is still love.
This is riveting. Reminds me of (literally) smoky contemporary book discussions on French television. 'BookTV' in the US is a sad substitute, sanitized for our protection. 'Quel dommage', as Humbert himself might say...
meredumais 2 years ago
Trilling's reading of LOLITA is crazy. Humbert may be in "love" with Lolita, if that's the word for it, but she isn't in love with Humbert.
mrsmxyzptlk 2 years ago 3
Correct, but all the more poignant
urwclwg 2 years ago
The talk about whether HH did or didn't love Lolita is interesting but I suspect the answer is undecidable. When he visits her at the end, he says he realizes two things: (a) he ruined her by destroying her childhood and (b) he genuinely loved her, i.e. not as a nymphet but as a real person. The question is whether we can believe the sincerity of this realization. After all, the man who says he truly loves Lolita has just redescribed all the nasty things he did to her with great delight.
mrsmxyzptlk 2 years ago
Wow, and wow again, thanks Jiffyspook for posting this. What absolute astral brilliance!! Trilling and Nabokov were thrillingly and passionately explicating the very soul of ideas.
coyotesong 2 years ago
Lolita is an great American novel written by a Russian just like Victory or Lord Jim are great English novels written by a Pole.
Lolita is about the confrontation of decadent European culture with the juvenile, adolescent and corrupt American culture.
NewTet 2 years ago
i've always thought of lolita as a book primarily about american culture through the eyes of a european, but i don't think nabokov would use such harsh words to describe it. he genuinely loved and was fascinated by american culture, of course he had a fine eye for absurdities and loved pointing them out.
warrenr 2 years ago
No, Lolita is about a pedophile who manages to capture his prey and pin it for a while.
urwclwg 2 years ago
It's beautiful how Nabokov dances around each point raised about his novel. He doesn't ruin it for anyone by elucidating too much.
cympltun 2 years ago 2
The interviewer is the late great Canadian icon, author and pot smoker, Pierre Burton! ( BTW )
LauryWard 2 years ago 3
Thank you for these. I'm a fan of Mr. Trilling. It's great to see and hear him for the first time.
pshisbey 2 years ago
Very nice there is not enough Nabokov on youtube
FunkyFruitHat 3 years ago
These guys are damned prophetic...nymphette clothing? The fashion & advertising industries took that little bundle and has run all the way to the $ bank $ with it!
mikey60077 3 years ago 5
Good call....nymphets are everywhere, aren't they???
coyotesong 2 years ago 2
lolita is a killer whale
Kingcobrasaurus 3 years ago
Nabokov is brilliant here- just how I would hope him to be. Watch his eyes when trilling speaks!
outtanuttin 3 years ago
Thank you so much for this. Nabokov is my favourite writer - it was brilliant to see him and hear him expressing his reasoning for Lolita.
liquoricebubblepop 3 years ago
amazing document, thanks
ilanbm 3 years ago 12
By the way, I found this thanks to James Wolcott and his blog at Vanity Fair's website. If he happens to be lurking around, "Thank you, Mr. Wolcott!"
robtran 3 years ago 2
What's so sad is that this discussion could NEVER have happened on American TV in the '50s.
robtran 3 years ago 2
"...(T))hey think in cliches...They don't know what love is and perhaps they don't know what sex is, either."
The money shot. Beautiful.
v1m 3 years ago
wonderful thanks for posting!
mayakronfeld 3 years ago 2
Newsflash to the feuders: Pretty Hilarious, Insipid, Listless, Insane Stupidity. The Inspired Nabokov's Empire's Shamed! Figure it out kids.
alborada55 3 years ago
philistines?
cyunck 3 years ago
Romance would have you believe that real love stands the test of time. However, time (and not the law) is the greatest enemy of the pederast. Humbert's love does not endure because Lolita grows up. One doesn't think of Nabokov as being an existentialist writer because he's got such a light touch. But I wonder.
bondurango 3 years ago
Humbert's love endured beyond Lolita's "growing up", to the extent that she did. Remember his visit to Mrs. Schiller?
urwclwg 2 years ago
Has anyone read Reading Lolita in Tehran? It's very useful as a discussion of Lolita, great incites, esp. from a woman';s perspective (as a man I find it fascinating how different women see the character of Lolita)what's more, women living under a theocratic regime.
RightWingCon81 3 years ago
A recommendation that Vivian Darkbloom would scoff at, when the reading of Lolita in Tehran is less essential than readings in Milwaukee or Kansas City, or "fill in any US location".
hetman1958 3 years ago 2
Actually, scratch that, I'm interested in the content of both of these pointless arguments, but it's presented in a much less irritating fashion this time around. :)
ionzorg 3 years ago
Wow, do you two ever give a good God damn about whether you're right or not. :P
It's okay though, this argument had content that I'm actually interested in, so I'm not quite as perturbed. Go nuts. Also, out of woof3x and Itzak Sonofabitch, woof's my favourite. Kudos. *thumbs up*
One more thing: No, Jesus can't suck it. Because he's dead. And gone. Forever. :|
ionzorg 3 years ago
Louder, louder! Your voice can't reach the Heaven.
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
This is incredible! Thank you so much for posting this rare thing!
klickenpod 3 years ago
Anyhow, back to the subject of Nabokov. Of his books, I've only just finished reading "Lolita" recently (laugh if you will, "scholars", men worthy indeed of Nabokov's scorn), but I plan on reading more this summer when the burden of high school is lifted.
Anyone else (note the "else") care to contribute?
ionzorg 3 years ago
Your comments are to the point. What have you read since summer? You might try "The Annotated Lolita" by VN's student Alfred Appel. Also on YT Marlon Brando interview-1965
giacblanc 3 years ago
Also, on the subject of Wikipedia: although it certainly shouldn't be where one attains his primary knowledge, it IS infinitely useful in understanding, however vaguely, virtually any subject that the "casual peruser" chooses. Many studies from non-partisan sources have shown that it's often more reliable than Brittanica (with an inarguably greater amount of content), so let no one say that you'll be misled by it.
ionzorg 3 years ago
Um, 'kay. I know this may have ended four days ago (believe me, I appreciate that), but allow me to quickly interject, and address both of you at once: Shuddup.
I'm sixteen, and I happen to be learned on a fair deal of what these two undertakers are yammering about; but I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of knowing the extent of my knowledge, because I'm not one to condescendingly bludgeon my intelligence over people's heads just to prove highly interpretable points on a YouTube comment box.
ionzorg 3 years ago 2
for a sixteen year old, u sound pretentious.
woof3x 3 years ago
I thought that Nabokov was being playful or else did not understand his own novel, which is about HH's overpowering of Lolita and continuing for as long as he could to dominate her all to her detriment. It was intellectualized child abuse and I am surprised that neither Trilling or Nabokov said so. I found the entire conversation uncrisp. These guys sure wrote better than they spoke.
Itzik Basman
vergeharget 3 years ago
morality is a dull thing when it comes to great works of human genius. you're a dull reader with a provincial worldview.
woof3x 3 years ago
Thanks for the kind words. Sharp and cosmopolitan, you intellectualize pedophilia and assimilate to Ahab's quest HH's subjugation of Lolita, his statutorily raping her, his fucking her--a 12 year old-- right after her mother dies.
I salute you.
My timid view offered in fear and trembling in the bright sun of your brilliance, woofx3, is you float on an imperceptive cloud of vague words and ideas detached from the actuality of the text.
Try reading Lolita In Tehran.
Itzik Basman
vergeharget 3 years ago
ur nowhere-near sardonic response, with using words like "sharp" "cosmopolitan" "imperceptive" and shit like that show how much a weak-minded, pseudo-intellectual you are. the book is not ABOUT "rape," it is about READING. all the marvellous texts and cultural references and heart-felt HUMOR. the so-called rape shit is only a pretext. try re-reading the book with an open mind, you douche.
woof3x 3 years ago
it is like saying moby-dick is ABOUT the depravity of whale hunting (like the japanese whale hunts of today). that's not what it's ABOUT, maybe a tiny part. as sharp and cosmopolitan and bright and brave as you are, i'd call your reading "mouldy dick".
woof3x 3 years ago
Woof3x: Predictably, you've slid from mild insult to frothing. Learn about fiction before losing your load. All texts are about reading. But criticism detached from text is a fool's vapour. Again, try Reading Lolita In Tehran. Then lord it over me and Nafisi, a Nabakov scholar. What garage did you go to? I have an M.A. in English from U.B.C.
Plus what's your name: or too gutless to say?
Twit, I can do this all night long.
Next?
Itzik Basman
I can do this all night and all day.
vergeharget 3 years ago
nothing more pretentious than a fool going around babbling about his degrees. ha! pseudo-intellectuals, indeed. not all texts are about reading, dumbass. nabokov is fairly post-modern, ahead of his time, with his self-referential and richly allusive references. nothing kills art (esp. the novels, and poetry) than these m.a. candidates and "scholars" with their dry-as-dust analysis). i won't loose my "load" over you, you sexless bore. and i don't give a FUCK about your full name.
woof3x 3 years ago
woof3x: You don't--duh-- know what you're on about. Do you know what "post modern" means? If you do, tell me without scampering to Wikipedia.
What text is not a meta comment on itself? And no inter textuality needed. Read Eliot's Tradition And The Individual Talent or Bloom on the anxiety of influence.
My degree: that's just the way it is. But you're a scared twit and out of your depth.
Name, school, intellectual doings, an argument beyond bald assertion and names?
Itzik Basman
vergeharget 3 years ago
i sure know SOME things about post-modern. i don't really care for these labels as great art defies simple names and DEFINES their own rules. and thanks to wiki, i've learned some good stuff, so don't be a snot-nosed intellectual scum-bag and claim it's not valid. nabokov himself would scoff at that type of thinking, for he combines both the high and low in his works. what the FUCK does eliot's great essay have to do with intertextuality? eliot himself REQUIRES a know of many texts.
woof3x 3 years ago
woof3x:
1. Try one coherent, gramatical sentence.
2. What "labels" goof-post modern? Apologize to yourself for introducing what you "don't care for".
3. "Great art" demands "its" not "their." "Requires a knowledge of" is what you need to say.
4. "Good stuff": sure, know nothing.
5. Intertextuality is self reference. Eliot's about the relation between a work and its tradition: two discrete points twit.
6. Answer anything I said!
7. Your name: afraid?
Itzik Basman
vergeharget 3 years ago
wat a fucktard (kathy griffin's term, watch it, she's fun; life doesn't have to be so dry as dust as ur view of academe). and i don't give a FUCK about my typos and things like that since it's only a youtube comment board. believe you me, i was an editor of a college magazine that i founded in which writers like jim crenner, the late deborah tall, james mccorkle and the famed anne carson published their original stuff. do you have myspace? so you can see my beauty body and mind?
woof3x 3 years ago
Relax woof3x. It's all just a goof. I don't have myspace.
Where else do I find your "beauty body and mind?"
vergeharget 3 years ago
did u even look up the people i mentioned, assuming with ur vast knowledge of lit, u prob don't know at least one. and i am fine--i never sweat the small stuff (let alone small-mindedness). and again: fuck typo's! ha ha. fuck it. are u a guy or a girl? i'm a beautiFUL gay! boo yeah!
woof3x 3 years ago
Nothing I need to prove to you.
I am soldier in Christ's straight army.
Over and out woof3x
vergeharget 3 years ago
jesus! at the mention of homosexuality, and of COURSE the quick insertion of christ. jesus can suck it! look up kathy griffin. and the writer paul monette wrote, hmm, jesus, straight? i'm not so sure because he's a bit too well-coiffed if you know what i mean. perfect!
woof3x 3 years ago
who the FUCK posts a nit-picking enumeration and THEN signs it with Eatshit Brasmum at the end on a utube comment board? jesus can suck it!
woof3x 3 years ago
You cannot say "human genius" in opposition to morality. That's really dull and inhuman. And as to why art is immoral - it's surely not the reader's fault.
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
"morality" is a human construct! the socalled edicts of morality, the good and bad morals, are conceived by men--the universal term for human beings, and the specific term for men as a single sex. human genius, the grandeur of creations r beyond normal means of talking. they are mysteries. dinve. something unknowable, some kinda spiritual make-up(?) art is just art--it is we as humans who put value and levels of worth to them. lolita is "immoral" because of provinciality.
woof3x 3 years ago
How well you mix and match. Albeit unnconvincingly. Is it because "the grandeur of creations r beyond normal means of talking? something unknowable?" You seem to enjoy your circles, mosaics and quotes like a candy.
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
u clearly have ur mind made up to condemn anything u see that don't gel well with YOUR conceptions of what is "right." i have no idea what "circles &mosaics "ES [was i quoting?]" u are referring to. thoughts, if u want 2 tlk about circling, are splendidly and sometimes annoyingly, layered, like ur mosaics. doesn't mean thoughts NEED 2B complicated, no. but things that are 'straight forward' aren't GREAT ART. tho u actually read, u would however fall into vn's category of phillistines.
woof3x 3 years ago
I was talking about your muddled thinking, of course. Do you think you yourself are GREAT ART, too? And that, of course, will be in the opposition to the straight forward and condemning phillistines. How predictable.
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
i don't know what is so muddled about my argument. merely that great art is tough to say with commonplace's, aka. phillistine's, ways of thinking (if they even think!). u sound like a bitter old man who are clinging to some old world's precepts. i am young, smart, and appreciate great art. AM I great art?--that's for others to decide, not i. i DO make--or attempt to make--art. i have no idea what the rest of ur post means. phillistine--btw, a nv i brought into the convo ;)
woof3x 3 years ago
Yes, you don't know what is so muddled about your argument. And you have no idea what the rest of my posts mean. Because you are young and not clinging to the old world's percepts. And I'm old, thus .... you know.
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
"make it NEW!" remember? i love the classics, the ancients, the GREAT old. u are merely a sack of bones surviving on old world's precepts and will crumble soon enough. weren't YOU young once? how sad u have amnesia of ur youth. i'm sorry.
woof3x 3 years ago
Of course I was young once. But you will be old, too, one day. But - you haven't answer me yet - in which reality do you live yourself?
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
obvs. not urs. we aren't on the same plane of "reality." my reality, to borrow vn's words i QUOTED below, is authentic and therefore, unusual or immoral in YOUR book. and ur average reality and mind will rot and stink soon enough. so will i, but i hope i wouldn't look down on the young outta bitterness and scorn.
woof3x 3 years ago
"You should have had plumbs tonight, In an eighteenth-century dish" --Wallace Stevens
the stuff of TODAY will feed us, like plums to make it thru the night. but the stuff of today being held by 18TH CENTURY plate. not one or the other, but BOTH.
perhaps, humbert humbert is the "old" and lolita the "new", aka, young. thru the stories of BOTH, of their adventures across america, nabokov created HIS america, his version of what life is like. perhaps.
woof3x 3 years ago
The only mystery for me is how does the mind of your generation work? Where are you all coming from - loud, fast with ready answers, yet unable to stick to the logic of reality?
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
Your use of the world "reality" perplexes me. To be sure, there is an average reality, perceived by all of us, but that is not true reality: it is only the reality of general ideas, conventional forms of humdrummery, current editorials ...
woof3x 3 years ago
And you yourself are living in which one?
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
i cannot post for some reason. testing...
woof3x 3 years ago
[T]he only real, authentic worlds are, of course, those that seem unusual ... Average reality begins to rot and stink as soon as the act of individual creation ceases to animate a subjectively perceived texture.
--Vladimir Nabokov, from "Strong Opinions"
woof3x 3 years ago
Art is just art - we humans put value to it, but not MAKE it?. It just is, by itself, like stones and birds?
Specific term for men "as a single sex" is man, acording to you. Thus the grandeur of creations beyond "morality" must sure belong to a woman, as another single sex, no? Just trying to unravel the logic of your impossible knits.
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
surely art--like the term artifice--is fake, is made up. by humans. but it is also humans who prescribe what is good or bad. there're bird and stones, there's no god--or we don't know if there's one.
man--is the single sex AND used sometimes for humankind. i'm saying ur beloved moralities are made up, mostly, by men. mostly. i am opening up the terminology to include "the other", i.e. women.
i've NO IDEA what ur s/n MEANS!
woof3x 3 years ago
We, humans, make art, and we make morals, too. But you contradict those, remember?
Try to think one thing at time, then you won't slip into the opposition unawares.
I'm sure that you have no idea what MANY things mean. By the way, are you a descendent from the ape?
NatureIsNotHuman 3 years ago
u make ur arguments, i make mine. we aren't agreeing, but does that mean we are not of the same species?
well, i think u MAY be. a long time ago, my lineage DID come from an african ape, methinx. i don't deny it or think i'm above it. i just am.
woof3x 3 years ago
Nabokov's voice is an artful instrument even when it's stuttering a little or reading from a notecard. It's a special pleasure to hear the rare extemporization. And my eyes enjoy the way he lounges on the couch with those glasses and that waistcoat. Man, why don't they make tv shows like this anymore? In America, I mean.
drvanveen 3 years ago 2
fantastic post!
hexag1 3 years ago
Isn't Moby Dick about Ahab's obsession with the white whale? You could define his obsession as "passionate love" or at least as a passionate fixation.
These dudes were speaking in big, general terms, but I don't think they were off-base there.
creatorswhim 3 years ago
Sorry, but I don't think you can classify Ahab's obsession as "passionate love." Unless I am out of my mind, what Ahab felt was passionate hatred.
butski 3 years ago
Just my two cents, but... I hear the phrase "passionate love" as uttered by VN to be better heard as, simply, "passion."
Perhaps he was overselling his case by tacking the word "love" onto it? Like trying to (sorry) "dumb-down" the intricate play of his meanings for an American audience?
I'm not stating that absolute, mind... just that posibility?
imematt 3 years ago
To Imematt:
After thinking about it for a couple of weeks I decided that you are probably right. Still, when NV made that comment notice that he prefixed it with the phrase "of course." In my mind this was his way of inviting further discussion of his sweeping statement. Seems like no one took the challenge until now. Thanks to YouTube
butski 3 years ago
it's a metaphore, i think, for our passionate and curious yearn to learn. then hunt.
woof3x 3 years ago
Even though I agree that "Lolita" is a masterpiece, I have to take issue with Nabokov's assertion that "all worthwhile novels are concerned with passionate love." What about "Moby Dick" to name just one "worthwhile novel." Surprised that Lionel Trilling did not jump all over Nabokov's ridiculous assertion.
butski 3 years ago
it is captain ahab and his egomaniacal "love" for the white whale. then hunt. a metaphor, i think, for learning.
woof3x 3 years ago
I haven't read Moby Dick, but it is entirely possible that Nabokov thinks of the book to be worthless (which is possible, but I don't know if it's the case). It is also possible that by love he is not necessarily referring to love between two individuals. Passionate love could refer to passion in general - like the passion in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. A magnificent obsession, if you will.
chapaev36 3 years ago
i'm not sure if it's fair to call "lolita" an erotic book. and does it seem like nabokov is toying with these two, or is it just me?
oyolar 3 years ago
It's fair
urwclwg 2 years ago
Nabokov seems a bit dull here.
MitchelWeaver 3 years ago
He's my literary star, Nabokov, that is. Pierre Berton is pretty good too.
Nabokov50 3 years ago
Fantastic. Thanks very much for posting.
yossarian9 3 years ago
Thank you so much for this. It's great!
pepy777 3 years ago 2
El nunca aceptaba entrevistas sin saber las preguntas y para hacerlas en vivo usaba siempre esas papeletas o tarjetas. El mismo lo acepta en Strong Opinions, uno de sus libros.
ZRTHSTR 3 years ago
And there he is with his note cards. Wonderful!
beansnricenveggies 3 years ago