For What It's Worth

[viridian5]

I reached the Dostoevski section of Nabokov's Lectures on Russian Literature, and ho boy does he hate and scorn Dostoevski, so much so that every time he mentions him in sections about other authors he always makes sure to reiterate that Dostoevski is a mediocre writer and sentimental and he sucksI agree with some of his strikes at Dostoevski but a

Comments

[maitai1again]

Ive read what you said twice; and hope I do understand it. You know, there's some memoirs of Nabokov's American students , I dont know whether that girls agreed with their professor or not (but it would be very interesting to tnow _the truth_ ^__^) - and theiy remembered him as kind, wide-thinking (!) man.

I was very. veeeery surprised by that reaction.

[viridian5]

Me too, though it's possible that he's different when he's interacting with people while this book containing his lectures are all him alone.

I finished Lectures and enjoyed it, even if I disagreed with a lot of his conclusions! It made me think, and it made me sad to think of all the things I'm missing from the books in the English translations.

[maitai1again]

A pair days ago my friends from Moscow have visited me, and weve talked much about books, nabokov books, American editions and American readres, and I've mentioned your reactiion, too ^__^ We've thought that Americans who appreciate Russian literature\culture must be a bit non-Americans (in cultural way). Well, I suppose that classic _American_ style of reading can be impressed as "my histiory-my story- my opinion", while others read another \ different\ non-American authors like "oh, what did he mean? I It must be interesting because I do not understand" way.

[viridian5]

American literature can be fairly varied, since we're a big country with a lot of different peoples (among other ways, we can be divided into the West Coast vs. the East Coast, the coasts vs. the middle of the country, the south vs. the north, urban dwellers vs non-urban, longtime citizens vs. recently arrived immigrants...). We've also folded some things from the cultures of our immigrants into our literature. (Fortunately, I don't hate all American literature as much as I hate William Faulkner's work or Ernest Hemmingway's, two American writers I hate for very different reasons.) In school I was given a lot of British literature to read since they, being a collection of longer established countries, have a far longer run of fiction to offer.

I'm half Polish but haven't been exposed to much of my maternal grandfather's culture--my mom didn't even play the accordion often--so I doubt that has much to do with my interest in Russian literature.... (If you're curious, I'm also 1/4 Italian and 1/4 Irish-Anglo-Norman.)

[maitai1again]

1. I live in a huge country, too ^__^ With many controversial ways of... well, reading\understanding ^__~ I meant our (Soviet-post-Soviet-Russian) way of teaching literature in school: our pupils (im quite sure) have only one or two ways of thinking: teachers asks them only for questions like: who was the main character? What did the author meant? Why do you think you CAN understand this author ?
Funny and depresive.

2. May I ask you to tell more about hemingway? And Faulkner? They both are nearly equal to gods here O__o.

3. I _am_ curiuos! Me - I am mainly middle-Russian but with a bit of Jewish blood. It's not that I was able to lspeak Hebrew language but when I hear its sounds - well, my ears tells me it's music ^_^

[viridian5]

1. I know you have a big country too *g*, but I know that some outsiders see "American" as some monolithic single viewpoint, at least on some matters. That's a lot of what we get from literature teachers too, but I've always been a free thinker!

2. Hemmingway's work is too sparse for me. I usually feel like he's leaving a lot, too much, for the reader to insert. I'm not enthused with his subject matter or protagonists either. Though if it actually was written by Hemmingway, I was impressed by this six-word novel: "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn."

Reading Faulkner's The Sound and Fury for a college class convinced me to never seek out any more of his work. Some members of my class, me included, used the phrase "Callie smelled like trees" as shorthand for our suffering on this novel. The teacher had a guide, with notes corresponding to the page numbers in the edition we were reading from, to tell us what we were supposed to be getting out of this book. I had the most annoyance from the Quentin section, where the sentences were

[maitai1again]

2. We know that novel, it's famoys here!
And I cannot to force myself to read hemmmingways books, my parents' generation has had loved him too much.
Though his friend Fitzgerald is welcome ^__^

2a, about Faulkner: YES, I suppose most part of his books is translated by heroic people ^__^ After 2WW in our country there was the only chance for translators: to make a deal with "Anti-war!" and "anti-capitalism!" authors.

3. Too good to have mixed blood ^__^ You can play _any_ character, and all of them are the trooth ones.

[viridian5]

By the way, Nabokov's lecture about the difficulties of translation gave me an even greater respect for what you guys did with "Glass Houses," especially since the characters each have an individual way of speaking and narrating to represent.

[maitai1again]

I MISS that times. I miss it. We've had tooooo many joyful moments.
My son learns English, this month he told me that hed like to get to Roman-German lingual faculty; maybe it would be possible sincehe was near me when I translated some stories ^__^