Why did Nabokov disparage literature written for ethical or political purposes when the greatest Russian writers...

geek

Check out Mr. No Fun over here.

We'll call them Nabby, Schoppie, Witty, Joycey Boy, My Main Man Aquinas, Herman "Unimaginably Massive Penis" Melville, and whatever the hell else our hearts so desire.

gtfo

I'm assuming you haven't actually read Nabokov actually talking about the purpose of art judging by your post.

>Why did Nabokov disparage literature written for ethical or political purposes
He has never, ever done this. What he does do is disparage works of art where ethical/political purposes come at the expense of the work of art itself. There are plenty of moral writers out there but it is certainly not because Tolstoy was a moral writer that we remember him. We remember him because he was a great writer who just so happened to have a certain sort of Christian morality permeate his mature works.
If the claim that the chief aim of literature is to impart ethical or political truths than the outcome of a work of art is what is important and not the work of art itself. There is absolutely nothing incongruous about being an ethical and an aesthetic writer though there is no obligation to be both.

>when the greatest Russian writers, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky [sic], were pretty much the opposite of aesthetes
Why does he have to agree with Russians? Just because he is Russian? You do not provide an argument. Besides to say that there are moral elements to writers like Tolstoy does not automatically make them the opposite of aesthetes as you claim with no argument or evidence.

>It seems to me that art for art's sake is a rather superficial and sterile understanding of art, especially considering that the idea was primarily developed in 19th century Anglo-America and nowhere and notime else besides
This just isn't true. Also [citation needed].

>Puzzles are solved, and the book can be put back on the shelf; and yet one lives with the novels of Tolstoy (or Hawthorne, or Henry James) partly because of its loftier moral tone.
There is again no argument. You merely say I perceive something to be true therefore it is. I don't find Nabokov as compelling as Tolstoy but it certainly isn't because of Tolstoy's morality present in his writing.
>Puzzles are solved
This line here makes me question if you even know what aestheticism is. I don't mean to mock you but claiming at one point that the aesthetes (who I can only imagine you are lumping Nabokov with judging by your post) and then saying that Nabokov is a writer that can be solved and put on the shelf are contradictory ideas that belies a lack of understanding for what that term means.

>it was because he read for prose and puzzles
While puzzles are an important part of the stories he wrote it is very clear from his praise of authors who aren't known for their puzzle like literature that it is not something he sees as the purpose of the medium.

Again I don't mean to deride you but please actually learn what the terms you are using mean and what an authors position is by reading their position presented in their own terms before making a thread about it.

Scrubbing literature of subtext is the surest way to destroy the form. The novel isn't what's on the page, the words are just the way the novel is delivered to you. Anyone can slap words together. How and why words are put together comes entirely from the conceptual space, and you can't have literature if you cripple the tools of the conceptual.

>It seems to me that art for art's sake is a rather superficial and sterile understanding of art, especially considering that the idea was primarily developed in 19th century Anglo-America and nowhere and notime else besides

You are correct. Art was in crisis at that point and aestheticism is one solution but not the solution.

Because I got stuck at a young age emotionally and never grew from that childhood due to my Uncle diddling me. All I was obsessed with were books of beauty, butterflies, and a darkness of sex and incest. I could hide away in my puzzles, and skulk in the vastness of aesthetics. It was escape. My suffering bled through that quite easily, so many gaps left unfilled by love.

Nabokov liked Tolstoi btw

>morally irresponsible

And he also loved Hawthorne, which OP cites as a "moralizing" writer.

He was opposed to a specific kind of moralizing banality, especially as the primary focus of a work.

Because people who approach art ideologically are usually extremely boring, and since he was an artist he had no use for insights of this sort.
It's the difference between appreciating religious art and appreciating art for religious reasons.

While I don't think you quite understand Nabokov's views on art, I do somewhat understand the frustration. The problem I have with most critics is that they always end up positing an almost arbitrary value and then interpreting the world of literature according to it. Why not enjoy literature for the multitude of effects that it can create, rather than asserting that aesthetics are the sole purpose of art, and dogmatically dismissing everything else, almost regardless of whether you personally enjoy it or not. Why not enjoy the intellectual journey of the Magic Mountain instead of dismissing it completely because of its emphasis on ideas? However, of course, to revert to this mode of appreciation often ends up quite anti-intellectual, and we run the risk of allowing for a decline in the quality of literature. But how can the standards for literature be upheld without asserting arbitrary values and taking them to their ultimate conclusions? This is an almost unresolvable problem I see with critics a lot of the time. Every "critique" seems full of shit because one can always see the same thing in a different light, as interpreted under a different set of values.

OP doesn't understand Nabavok but neither do you. His view (which is shared by really anybody who'd ever written anything worth reading) isn't that aesthetics is about 'enjoyment' - this is a misuse/misunderstanding of the word. It sounds trivial. It's the opposite. Great art, great literature, is above ideas and ideology and philosophy. Like a critic said of Joyce, his work isn't about life, or about anything, it IS life.

When you can stop trying to decode meaning and obsessing about themes and hidden philosophies, you're ready for patrician literature.

This is the complete opposite of what Nabakov thought by the way. The idea of the aesthetes is that philosophy itself IS DRIVEL. Not that its better done elsewhere, but that its not worth doing.

How do you call Nietzsche?

Nizzy?

so like book of the new sun?
>obsessing about themes and hidden philosophies
no, how about the man without qualities?
>obsessing about themes and hidden philosophies
hrm, what's left? dickens?
>plot
you read for fucking plot. plot readers are the best. fuck the aesthetes. plot is true beauty. why all these people fall flat when writing is they have no story to tell, nothing to show. rarity if you can build an empire of dirt on a plotless exercise. Nabby weren'stve one of em.
themes are dull without puppets to show them. otherwise it's just tell and we all know how boring the germans are. true patricians read for plot. plain and simple.

Why wouldn't you go for Pale Fire, Ada, and Lolita?

>especially considering that the idea was primarily developed in 19th century Anglo-America and nowhere and notime else besides.
What did he mean by this.

Also, ethical issues are above political issues.

of all the references in the world...Gene Wolfe

This is Veeky Forums!

Ghastly rigmarole and so on. You wouldn't understand.

Horseman Freddie

>Implying philosophy isn't literature.

kek

so i guess Kant is the Chinaman from Königsberg

>We remember him because he was a great writer who just so happened to have a certain sort of Christian morality permeate his mature works.
That triple off-handed dismissal of yours seems fishy user.

I feel you, but there's no reason to take criticism so seriously. Maybe the critic in question have a project. Maybe you can take this particular piece of criticism on its own. The same thing you allow to literature can be allowed to non-fiction as well.

That's on my list too, but I was just interested in Harlequins at the moment. I haven't seen many people talk about it

30pbp

he specifically talked about Thomas Mann being shit. wtf do you mean "Anglo-America"?

>nabby
>not writing his ethical views into his work

I've been studying Lolita for almost 3 years with the intention of usurping Brian Boyd as the leading Nabokovian.

Read Nabokov; then post.

Tell me about your dramas pham.

I'm sorry, what?

Why do you want to usurp Brian Boyd and with what are you going to do it?

have an MA in English. It will be for my dissertation eventually. I want to make a name for myself in my field and I believe doing justice to Nabokov by carefully studying his most controversial and incorrectly interpreted novel is how I want to do it. Nabokov deserves at least one person to give Lolita the status and recognition it deserves as an artistic masterpiece.

I see. And how was Lolita incorrectly interpreted? Does it have anything to do with ethics?

Nabokov loves Tolstoy though.

Not at all. Who needs to be told pedophilia is wrong?? That was the text. There is a subtext. But Nabokov wasn't a moralist or philosopher. He was an artist.

>Who needs to be told pedophilia is wrong??
I thought the point Nabokov was arguing for (if he was at all) was larger than pedophilia. But still, what's your idea on him?

Lolita is standard material on college reading lists.

It's completely absurd to paint yourself as this brave Zeus of a researcher taking upon the arduous, lonely task of restoring Lolita and Nabokov's reputation, when obviously Lolita is a celebrated work.

Better yet, it's not meant to be interpreted. It was designed to be solved.

>Who needs to be told pedophilia is wrong??
Do any serious readers (much less scholars) actually think that Lolita is moralistic?
>There is a subtext.
The unreliable narrator? The Quilty puzzle? It seems like you're really proud of what you're working on, but neither of those things seem too profound desu.

Lolita, Ada and Pale Fire are much better. Stop being a hipster faggot and read them.

No. There are parallel narratives at work at two separate times. Right now, I'm trying to see who set the McCoo house on fire. Lolita was never in 'Elphinstone' hospital whatsoever which means that wasn't when she was actually kidnapped. Later characters are just earlier characters in disguise, and it's not in chronological order. For example, the guy in the convertible is actually Tony from the Quilty Scene. Valeria is Charlotte. Charlie Holmes raped Lolita, but in not sure who he is. It's also throwing me off because it's the same initials as Charlotte.

Everything is connected throughout the book in Agatha Christie style. And the last thing I was exploring was the fact that Lolita was ten at the Enchanted Hunter, not 12.

Also note that Dick Schiller was an engineer on a "hush hush" project, same as HH with the artic expedition, almost word for word.

I also have a theory that Lolita was at Hourglass Lake. I've attempted to chronologically piece together the diary by looking at weather and meals. HH is simultaneously in town at the same time as the Davenport scene. So there is an unseen character

good luck to you but i dont think this is enough for a pHD

Are you autistic? I have to publish a piece of writing in order to obtain scholar status and thus, my PhD. I have an MA in English, or did you not see that?

You clearly are not the sophisticated reader Nabokov requires and I feel sorry no one can understand the pure magic of his prose. I've already contradicted Brian Boyd and Zimmer-Deiter on several counts with sufficient support to form a project proposal. I just want to make sure that I have my notes in order before I interrupt my career to go back to school. There are a LOT of red herrings readers like you swallow up without paying attention to what is actually going on.

good luck, though i'm sure you don't need it; you are clearly a brilliant writer.

I'm not a writer. I'm a professor with scholarly literary pursuits. I enjoy admiring the writing process of an author for once and the magic of creating a world that inexorably pulls the reader in without escape

You fucking idiot. Of course it's celebrated. That doesn't mean it's understood on an authorial level. Authorial expertise is one of the most coveted roles within the *real* literary community, as in real published and peer reviewed academic journals, not pseudo-Veeky Forumserati

It's only dirty if you read it that way. Nabokov knew that and it takes a serious reader to approach the novel more than once and be a "re-reader" so as to catch the nuances (clues)

I don't know why it's almost more unsettling that a professor is in here shitposting with the rest of us. like you're gearing up for your doctorate but taking time out of your day to hang out with a bunch of 19-20 year old neets and hipsters to talk about how superior you are to them?

And your age is posted where? Besides, I'm 24.

I thought Veeky Forums was where ACTUAL literary scholars debated literature. I was wrong.

If you pay attention to the kinds of posting, the maturity of the posting, and the occasional survey threads the age demographic is definitely late teens early early twenties. I guess 24 makes more sense, your posturing was working on me.
I'm 26. Also Nabokov I could take or leave.

Bahaha 12/1990. On a Wednesday. How would I have an MA at 24? I graduated 2015, started teaching reading K-12 last summer and I do college FYW during Fall/Spring.

Usually I'm on /pol/ desu

Goes to show you just never know online, huh?

I dunno, 6 years of schooling after 18 might put you at an MA.
Cranking my guess down to 21.

I took a year off, sadly because my then boyfriend discouraged me. The minute I left him (cheated), I registered for school and went through summer to finish in a year.

I feel like you haven't actually said anything here. What does it actually mean for a work to "be life?"

Regardless I think it's a false sort of dichotomy, or trichotomy or whatever. Art should have aesthetic elements, emotional elements, and intellectual elements. Reading for ideas is just enjoying an aspect of art, and there's nothing wrong with enjoying it over any other aspect.

I think on the other end of the spectrum you have books which have no intellectual/ideological content. That's why the poster responding to you brought up Gene Wolfe. The Book of the New Sun is this big puzzle of a plot with an unreliable narrator, but ultimately it has no connecting idea. It's built around a puzzle, but not an ideological one (at least as far as I know. I haven't read the whole series). And so it's hard for some readers to find any worth in it. Of course, it doesn't have much aesthetic worth either, but that's beside the point.

The point is that there isn't a right or a wrong way to enjoy art, and you shouldn't be so disparaging of people who are more into the ideas side than the aesthetics side. Maybe people who are into the intellectual side just have difficulty justifying aesthetics as a means to its own ends, and prefer a work whose ends are an ideological discourse. I don't know how you could say that your way of thinking is superior.

You can get a doctorate by solving a mystery novel and writing about it?

eh, eh, eh?

Well yeah sure I guess there's nothing inherently wrong with it. I don't know why it bothers me.