Nabokov was right about literally everything

Nabokov was right about literally everything

Not quite. I understand his aestheticism was a reaction to the growing 'school of resentment' around him---and his haughty aristocratic upbringing (how upset Nabby would be to have his literary views psychoanalyzed!)---but to say great literature isn't about the big ideas at all is willfully ignorant and silly.

He never claimed that, though.

>“Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.”

Read his introduction to Lectures on Literature

He says while you can generalise a book with a theme aka bourgeoise culture is redundant, if you go into a book with that idea in mind it ruins your interpretation of a work, which creates its own separate world

Yup

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>austen shills are going deep

>implying his entire body of criticism isn't the height of satire

>reading Nabokov

somebody post the nabokov synaesthesia meme plz

A reference to our glorious, distant Northern land. Obviously he means that one day we will return triumphantly to the throne the we so rightfully deserve.

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>Read his introduction to Lectures on Literature

I have, many times (well, for certain books).

>1. The number three plays a considerable role in the story. The story is divided into three parts. There are three doors to Gregor’s room. His family consists of three people. Three servants appear in the course of the story. Three lodgers have three beards. Three Samsas write three letters. I am very careful not to overwork the significance of symbols, for once you detach a symbol from the artistic core of the book, you lose all sense of enjoyment. The reason is that there are artistic symbols and there are trite, artificial. or even imbecile symbols. You will find a number of such inept symbols in the psychoanalytic and mythological approach to Kafka's work, in the fashionable mixture of sex and myth that is so appealing to mediocre minds. In other words, symbols may be original and symbols may be stupid and trite. And the abstract symbolic value of an artistic achievement should never prevail over its beautiful burning life.
>So, the only emblematic or heraldic rather than symbolic meaning is the stress which is laid upon three in "The Metamorphosis." It has really a technical meaning. The trinity, the triplet, the triad, the triptych are obvious art forms such as, say, three pictures of youth, ripe years, and old age, or any other threefold triplex subject. Triptych means a picture or carving in three compartments side by side, and this is exactly the effect that Kafka achieves, for instance, with his three rooms in the beginning of the story—living room, Gregor's bedroom, and sister's room, with Gregor in the central one. Moreover, a threefold pattern suggests the three acts of a play. And finally it must be observed that Kafka's fantasy is emphatically logical; what can be more characteristic of logic than the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. We shall, thus, limit the Kafka symbol of three to its aesthetic and logical significance and completely disregard whatever myths the sexual mythologists read into it under the direction of the Viennese witch doctor.

Not once does he have real consideration for 'meaning,' 'message,' or 'moral,' and instead symbols function merely as a structural tool for aesthetic purpose.

Because the symbol behind the whole story is obvious. He is studying the work itself, not an overarching general theme.

If you say so. I've read many of his works, Speak, Memory, watched his lectures, etc. and all I've seen is disdain for 'big ideas.'

I think he believes that categorising a particular work under a blanket theme detracts from its own unique qualities.

So, if you were to place The Metamorphosis under Existensialism, while this could be the case, it detracts from its unique qualities.

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Nabokov couldn't write poetry so he tried to smuggle it into boring prose.

Overrated hack and his opinions aren't consistent at all.

> hates literature of ideas
> thinks Joyce's Ulysses isn't 100% literature of ideas
> hates Freud yet thinks Kafka's The Metamorphosis is his best
> prefers Madame Bovary to Sentimental Education
> praises Proust yet says to stop right before the best volume (vol. 4)
> pretends like the inspiration for Lolita was a dumb monkey in a cage, even nearly all his novels deal with weird sexuality
> literally wrote to the U.S. president saying more Vietnamese should be napalmed and gased with agent orange

he was a boring turbo-pseud

Ulysses was 100% world building and prose you idiot

Kafka rejects psychoanalysis himself

Ah, Lolita. One of the greatest books of the twentieth century. I loved how Nabokov manages to make HH both creepy and likable. Real sense of pathos at the end though when we see how low he brought Dolores...What is this thread about again fellow pseuds?

source?

Ulysses was 100% everything you dolt.

she was a lost cause even before he came into her life.
she would have ended as a trailer park whore anyways.

> thinks Joyce's Ulysses isn't 100% literature of ideas
> prefers Madame Bovary to Sentimental Education
I agree desu. And the Metamorphosis is also one of Kafka's best

You are a dumbass

Indeed

seriously, post the nabokov synaesthesia meme with the toot toots.

...

Lame

>it detracts from its unique qualities.
And they are?

Read the work and decide for yourself, dingus. As with any other work.

So, you had no arguments after all.

What about the kid-fucking?

what about it?
some people like well written works about fucking children and pretending it's not pornography. welcome to earth.

You're missing the point my dude. What user (and the big Nob) are trying to say is that reading and analyzing a piece of literature (like the Metamorphosis) using the means you would with a particular school of thought (such as Existentialism) creates a worry that all this could lead to a reduction to the authors ideas and/or cause the reader to falsely attribute certain aspects of the story to this over-arching theme rather than considering it as an aspect of a counter-point or unique idea.

I haven't read the Metamorphosis in awhile, but I remember taking away from it ideas about family and gender roles, and the trappings of conventional family life. Themes which don't need to be reduced or explained by an overarching theme (such as Existentialism) to have a profound impact.

>gender roles
the infection roams

You are an idiot.

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>> literally wrote to the U.S. president saying more Vietnamese should be napalmed and gased with agent orange

source?

like any of his contemporaries

>infection
>can't discuss a common them in literature in the literature section of a surinamese bicycling bulletin
i don't think you belong here pal

where can i find this book ?

He's a mediocre, schlocky novelist. I wouldn't listen to anything he has to say.

do your homework, naboshit fanboy

Yet in his diaries, Kafka remarks how much The Metamorphosis fits into Freud. It's true he didn't like the practice of psychoanalysis, but he hugely admired Freud and saw Freudian themes in his own work.

Check mate.

I wouldn't listen to anything you have to say with that opinion.

>Nabokov couldn't write poetry
Even if you're unable to read his 1930s-40s poems in Russian (earlier, much more numerous, are just juvenilia though), at least read Wanted Wanted poem in Lolita and say that again to my face.

Pale fire too niqqa

Bloated. Puffed. Ephemeral. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me.

Boats. A Puff. Elves are real. No titty.

t. butthurt dosto fan

underrated post

nabokov's essay on anna karenina is great for a laugh. shit is retaw ded

post it

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