“An elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me”
That is so Nabokov 😂
Unrelated, but it made me think of a passage about Pasternak from “Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago” (I think it was that one; I also listened to another audiobook about Pasternak/Olga/Lara/Zhivago around the same time but can’t recall the title). After the Union of Soviet Writers kicked Pasternak out for thought crimes, two of his students visited him, asking him what they should do (i.e., whether or not they should risk their careers, reputations, and lives by standing up for him). He absolved them of the need to stand up for him, and he remembers looking out the window when they left and seeing them cheerfully skipping away.
That image has always stayed with me as an example of cowardice cracking through the facade of courage paired with a profound insensitivity to the persecution Pasternak was enduring.
Those of us with a working conscience would not be skipping away after displaying that level of cowardice. A very telling anecdote, indeed. To be happy to be absolved of helping a fellow human whom you believe in? Pretty detestable to go on ones' merry way after that. Thanks for sharing.
Celia, I'm wondering what you're trying to tell us with this about Vladimir Nabokov, who is most well known for his world famous novel "Lolita", about an old man lusting after a young girl. Didn't that contribute to fueling the rampant pedophile craze? What would Dr. Judith Reisman say about him? He's also seen here as an uber privileged rich guy living on a lake in Switzerland who has a dutiful wife to do his typing, oh and he has a way with words. Please clarify where you're going with this! Thank you.
I kind of get you, Marilyn. I am really conflicted about Lolita, and don't know if I could read it again to figure out why. I remember being amazed at the writing and there was undeniable beauty in it. It was incredibly disquieting, because he masterfully managed to evoke empathy for this tortured and sick man, while simultaneously managing to portray Lolita as complicit and cruel. The whole set-up was vertiginous in its taboo-filled intensity and "off-ness". All I can say is that I put it down with a very, very bleak feeling.
And yes, the scenes of the waitress-attended wine-swilling had me recoiling. As did the mention of the typing wife. Yes, those were different times, but they carry over to today, and vestigial pockets continue in the jet-setting elitist classes. I am the product of a deeply colonial and patriarchal family and that hobnobbing around the table struck closer to home than anything. I have fought it all my life, yet am inexorably linked to it. It's in the very way I speak and write. But typing for hubby and swilling wine anti-clockwise and pretending that it matters - that I do not do. That tiny little act of power revolts me. The arrogant underlying message that "if it does not meet my standards, I can send you, oh lowly waiter, scurrying back for another bottle" is repulsive. I am no "woke" person fighting the "patriarchy" or "capitalism" with ridiculous expectations of equality of outcome, but oh boy, the struggle remains as real as ever it did.
The ritual of the wine tasting is not IMO a power play, it is how wine tasting is done, anti-clockwise aids the bouquet to rise and be savoured and there is always the possibility that the wine may be corked. It shows respect for the wine, wine producer and the sommelier or waiter who presents it.
That may well be the intention and I respect your take on it and right to enjoy your wine whichever way you see fit. To me, it just appears affected and pretentious. Also, I get hacked off that people can spend such exorbitant amounts on something that just gets peed away a few hours later. Or, if they're not spending huge amounts, then there's no point in the display anyway. But then again, I'm just a sanctimonious peasant, no doubt. 😏 And yes, I do see the point about corkage.
Nabokov was able to live on a lake in Switzerland because he earned a lot of money from his books. Before that he lived modestly and taught at Cornell. His wife adored him and thought he was a genius. I am not a fan, but let's not accuse him of making her type.
Precisely. Focusing on some innocent foibles of a supreme intellectual would be simple-minded, just as perceiving his ouevre through the notoriety of Lolita; which, incidentally, does not adorn my bookshelf. What does, however, are Tyrants Destroyed (and Other Stories), and Look at the Harlequins! Without reading those, one could only form a very superficial appreciation of what Nabokov was about.
This is a marvelous find, thank you. Life in the western world seemed to be so much possible, varied and interesting back then. It was possible, allowed and admired to be a thinker.
Once, long ago, in that river and rush of Internet babble, I heard a woman say something quite germane to the topic here. She was the surviving intellectual, perhaps even an official philosopher, from a school in Eastern Europe, I think.
When asked to reflect upon the experience that of Hitler had upon her world, she said that she and her school of intellectuals had made a great mistake In their philosophical arrogance. They denied the existence of Evil, and by focusing only upon the Good, had unwittingly empowered Evil to ride unchallenged, and unnamed, into their world, like a tsunami of Darkness.
Nabokov, Freud, Lolita and umbrellas . . at least Nabokov called it what it is. Freud, not so much.
I echo all these comments thus far ... even the contradictory ones!
Yes, Nabokov was lionised, and presumably by a pedophilia-promoting element. I wonder if he guessed that pedophilia would be replacing homosexuality as the blackmail tool for politicians, and was survivor enough to exploit it? I dislike Lolita the novel (or films), but my wife was very moved by it.
Darwin's and Freud's ideas certainly had flaws, but whose don't? They made contributions, and it is up to us to distinguish the gold from the excrement. We extract the aurum e stercore!
Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought, by Erich Fromm. copyright 1980.
Sigmund Freud’s Mission, by Erich Fromm.
The Crisis of Psychoanalysis, by Erich Fromm.
Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus: The Hidden Teachings on Life & Death, by Neil Douglas-Klotz.copyright 2022. Internationally known scholar in the fields connecting religious studies,(comparative Semitic hermeneutics) and psychology as well as a poet and musician. Also, author of
Prayers of the Cosmos, Desert Wisdom, The Hidden Gospel, and The Genesis Meditations.
Well, I must say that hearing this from the author of one of the most creepy and overrated novels, which just so happens to be about sexuality and pedophilia, does not surprise me. Freud's work -- and here I emphasise work and not the personality -- will forever be misunderstood. So few have taken the time to read, let alone study it. I happen to be one of them and I can tell you that Freud is anything but crude. Lolita, on the other hand ... I never understood its success and in my opinion Nabokov does not deserve to be mentioned in the company of Pasternak, Chekhov, Tolstoi, Dostoyevskii, et al.
I went through a Nabokov phase in my 20s. I adored books like Pnin (which I just reread), Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory, but Lolita was very disturbing and I don't think I will ever try to reread it.
I've not read "Lolita" but read from someone who supposedly has that the title character is 12 years old in the novel. In Kubrick's 1962 movie (on which Nabokov assisted as screenwriter), the actress Sue Lyon was 16 in real life (can't recall what she's supposed to be on screen). Film critic John Simon said, referring to the scenes where she's sunbathing in the garden of the inn where James Mason checks in and looks out the window to see her, that (to paraphrase) "any grown man would be crazy not to be attracted to her".
I've read the book and seen that 1962 movie. The girl played Lolita almost as a grown up. I read the book decades ago, saw the film a few years ago, but in my mind, Lolita was SO different in that movie. She was worldly in the movie. While in the book one was left guessing about Humbert and Lolita but not in the movie. I ain't no critic, this is just my rusty thoughts on this...
I see there was another movie in 1997 with Jeremy Irons and the actress who played Lolita, Dominique Swain, was apparently one month shy of her 18th birthday. I never saw it.
I have long disliked Freud. I'm not really sure at the genesis of said dislike, but I remember writing a paper in high school on stream of consciousness writing and I had come across a quote from James Joyce where he referred to Freud and Jung respectively as the tweedledum and tweedledee of Austria. I often think that Freud's theories are valid with respect to himself and with the wealthy fin de siecle culture of Vienna. That an entire cult of psychoanalysis was built from this--well, honestly for me, it's pure PT Barnum.
“An elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me”
That is so Nabokov 😂
Unrelated, but it made me think of a passage about Pasternak from “Lara: The Untold Love Story and the Inspiration for Doctor Zhivago” (I think it was that one; I also listened to another audiobook about Pasternak/Olga/Lara/Zhivago around the same time but can’t recall the title). After the Union of Soviet Writers kicked Pasternak out for thought crimes, two of his students visited him, asking him what they should do (i.e., whether or not they should risk their careers, reputations, and lives by standing up for him). He absolved them of the need to stand up for him, and he remembers looking out the window when they left and seeing them cheerfully skipping away.
That image has always stayed with me as an example of cowardice cracking through the facade of courage paired with a profound insensitivity to the persecution Pasternak was enduring.
Stunning. I feel Pasternak's solitude at the window.
Chills. That feels like it should be a line in a poem.
What a fascinating telling. That is the worst type of cowardice - one that requires permission from the persecuted not to be brave. A double wound.
🎯🎯
Those of us with a working conscience would not be skipping away after displaying that level of cowardice. A very telling anecdote, indeed. To be happy to be absolved of helping a fellow human whom you believe in? Pretty detestable to go on ones' merry way after that. Thanks for sharing.
'Zactly!
Celia, I'm wondering what you're trying to tell us with this about Vladimir Nabokov, who is most well known for his world famous novel "Lolita", about an old man lusting after a young girl. Didn't that contribute to fueling the rampant pedophile craze? What would Dr. Judith Reisman say about him? He's also seen here as an uber privileged rich guy living on a lake in Switzerland who has a dutiful wife to do his typing, oh and he has a way with words. Please clarify where you're going with this! Thank you.
I kind of get you, Marilyn. I am really conflicted about Lolita, and don't know if I could read it again to figure out why. I remember being amazed at the writing and there was undeniable beauty in it. It was incredibly disquieting, because he masterfully managed to evoke empathy for this tortured and sick man, while simultaneously managing to portray Lolita as complicit and cruel. The whole set-up was vertiginous in its taboo-filled intensity and "off-ness". All I can say is that I put it down with a very, very bleak feeling.
And yes, the scenes of the waitress-attended wine-swilling had me recoiling. As did the mention of the typing wife. Yes, those were different times, but they carry over to today, and vestigial pockets continue in the jet-setting elitist classes. I am the product of a deeply colonial and patriarchal family and that hobnobbing around the table struck closer to home than anything. I have fought it all my life, yet am inexorably linked to it. It's in the very way I speak and write. But typing for hubby and swilling wine anti-clockwise and pretending that it matters - that I do not do. That tiny little act of power revolts me. The arrogant underlying message that "if it does not meet my standards, I can send you, oh lowly waiter, scurrying back for another bottle" is repulsive. I am no "woke" person fighting the "patriarchy" or "capitalism" with ridiculous expectations of equality of outcome, but oh boy, the struggle remains as real as ever it did.
The ritual of the wine tasting is not IMO a power play, it is how wine tasting is done, anti-clockwise aids the bouquet to rise and be savoured and there is always the possibility that the wine may be corked. It shows respect for the wine, wine producer and the sommelier or waiter who presents it.
That may well be the intention and I respect your take on it and right to enjoy your wine whichever way you see fit. To me, it just appears affected and pretentious. Also, I get hacked off that people can spend such exorbitant amounts on something that just gets peed away a few hours later. Or, if they're not spending huge amounts, then there's no point in the display anyway. But then again, I'm just a sanctimonious peasant, no doubt. 😏 And yes, I do see the point about corkage.
Nabokov was able to live on a lake in Switzerland because he earned a lot of money from his books. Before that he lived modestly and taught at Cornell. His wife adored him and thought he was a genius. I am not a fan, but let's not accuse him of making her type.
Precisely. Focusing on some innocent foibles of a supreme intellectual would be simple-minded, just as perceiving his ouevre through the notoriety of Lolita; which, incidentally, does not adorn my bookshelf. What does, however, are Tyrants Destroyed (and Other Stories), and Look at the Harlequins! Without reading those, one could only form a very superficial appreciation of what Nabokov was about.
This is a marvelous find, thank you. Life in the western world seemed to be so much possible, varied and interesting back then. It was possible, allowed and admired to be a thinker.
Once, long ago, in that river and rush of Internet babble, I heard a woman say something quite germane to the topic here. She was the surviving intellectual, perhaps even an official philosopher, from a school in Eastern Europe, I think.
When asked to reflect upon the experience that of Hitler had upon her world, she said that she and her school of intellectuals had made a great mistake In their philosophical arrogance. They denied the existence of Evil, and by focusing only upon the Good, had unwittingly empowered Evil to ride unchallenged, and unnamed, into their world, like a tsunami of Darkness.
Nabokov, Freud, Lolita and umbrellas . . at least Nabokov called it what it is. Freud, not so much.
They had failed to see Evil, to name it,
Nabokov is not the critic Freud deserves. Freud, Marx and Darwin, authors of our unraveling.
I echo all these comments thus far ... even the contradictory ones!
Yes, Nabokov was lionised, and presumably by a pedophilia-promoting element. I wonder if he guessed that pedophilia would be replacing homosexuality as the blackmail tool for politicians, and was survivor enough to exploit it? I dislike Lolita the novel (or films), but my wife was very moved by it.
Darwin's and Freud's ideas certainly had flaws, but whose don't? They made contributions, and it is up to us to distinguish the gold from the excrement. We extract the aurum e stercore!
Greatness and Limitations of Freud’s Thought, by Erich Fromm. copyright 1980.
Sigmund Freud’s Mission, by Erich Fromm.
The Crisis of Psychoanalysis, by Erich Fromm.
Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus: The Hidden Teachings on Life & Death, by Neil Douglas-Klotz.copyright 2022. Internationally known scholar in the fields connecting religious studies,(comparative Semitic hermeneutics) and psychology as well as a poet and musician. Also, author of
Prayers of the Cosmos, Desert Wisdom, The Hidden Gospel, and The Genesis Meditations.
Well, I must say that hearing this from the author of one of the most creepy and overrated novels, which just so happens to be about sexuality and pedophilia, does not surprise me. Freud's work -- and here I emphasise work and not the personality -- will forever be misunderstood. So few have taken the time to read, let alone study it. I happen to be one of them and I can tell you that Freud is anything but crude. Lolita, on the other hand ... I never understood its success and in my opinion Nabokov does not deserve to be mentioned in the company of Pasternak, Chekhov, Tolstoi, Dostoyevskii, et al.
Later in that video he's giggling about how young or old one of the covers made her look.
He definitely wanted to avoid looking inward at his own emotions. Of course, I say the same thing about psychiatrists who drug their abused patients.
Civilization and its Discontents reveals Freud to be a late pioneer in atheist subversion of the West.
Can't wait.
I went through a Nabokov phase in my 20s. I adored books like Pnin (which I just reread), Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory, but Lolita was very disturbing and I don't think I will ever try to reread it.
I've not read "Lolita" but read from someone who supposedly has that the title character is 12 years old in the novel. In Kubrick's 1962 movie (on which Nabokov assisted as screenwriter), the actress Sue Lyon was 16 in real life (can't recall what she's supposed to be on screen). Film critic John Simon said, referring to the scenes where she's sunbathing in the garden of the inn where James Mason checks in and looks out the window to see her, that (to paraphrase) "any grown man would be crazy not to be attracted to her".
I've read the book and seen that 1962 movie. The girl played Lolita almost as a grown up. I read the book decades ago, saw the film a few years ago, but in my mind, Lolita was SO different in that movie. She was worldly in the movie. While in the book one was left guessing about Humbert and Lolita but not in the movie. I ain't no critic, this is just my rusty thoughts on this...
I see there was another movie in 1997 with Jeremy Irons and the actress who played Lolita, Dominique Swain, was apparently one month shy of her 18th birthday. I never saw it.
Language, the expression of Culture.
Language defines and describes Culture.
To learn about a Culture, study the Language…
Lantern Cove
Nabokov had his fingers around the chessboard (I mean, cheese- board )
;)
Okay- an umbrella-man and dreams- dreamt before my time... nuff said....
recently read in a book that freud was a crypto-sabbatean which explains his focus on degenerating society at a profit and the frankfort school of course 1666 Redemption Through Sin: Global Conspiracy in History, Religion, Politics and Finance Paperback – May 15, 2015 https://www.amazon.com/1666-Redemption-Through-Sin-Conspiracy/dp/1943494010/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=1666&s=books&sr=1-1
I have long disliked Freud. I'm not really sure at the genesis of said dislike, but I remember writing a paper in high school on stream of consciousness writing and I had come across a quote from James Joyce where he referred to Freud and Jung respectively as the tweedledum and tweedledee of Austria. I often think that Freud's theories are valid with respect to himself and with the wealthy fin de siecle culture of Vienna. That an entire cult of psychoanalysis was built from this--well, honestly for me, it's pure PT Barnum.