Full of blazing and blistering opinions, and the occasional moral lesson.

Bowers has constructed this series of essays based on Nabokov's teaching notes for his college class on European Literature. The class revolves around understanding the structure and style of these greatest works, including works by Proust, Flaubert, Kafka, Joyce and more. Note that in Nabokov's view, structure and style make the pieces great literature, and anything else (eg social commentary, moral lessons) is hogwash and irrelevant to greatness.

Each essay summarises the action of one book, with particular attention to structure, and occasional diversion to style. The essays include considerable extracts of the source material. It's easy to imagine sitting in class, book open, following along with your eccentric professor.

Even if you have never read these work, or have no particular interest in learning about the pieces and Nabokov's opinion of their worth, I still recommend the starting and closing essays on the three roles of a writer and the banality of commonsense, respectively.

The essays are delightfully full of personality, wit and opinion, and a joy to read. I'm more interested in reading these novels now than before.

-İlk not: yorum biraz şahsi notlar ve yorumlar içerecektir.-

"Kişi yalnız yarım düzine kitabı bilse, alim olurdu." - Flaubert

Nabokov Amerika'da verdiği Edebiyat Dersine Flaubert'ten bu alıntıyı yaparak başlıyor; çünkü Nabokov'da da Flaubert gibi bir kitabı bilme ediminin tanımı epey derinlikli bir tanım. Göndermeler, üslup, karşılaştırmalar, yazarın düşün dünyası vs diye giden pek çok çerçeveden esere bakmayı ve bakılan bu çerçevelerden eserin manzarasını da tamamen görebilmeyi/keşfedilmiş olabilmeyi kast ediyorlar. Bu iş zor Yonca.

İlk notta belirttiğim şahsilik ise, özellikle edebi eser okuma konusunda, okuduğum kitapların bölümünde Nabokov'un açtığı pencereler muazzamdı. O kadar kötü bir okur değilimdir -biraz mütevazilik lütfen!-; ama yine de bir eseri Flaubertçi anlamıyla "bilmek" ediminde, esere yaklaşırken bazı eksikliklerim olduğunu keşfettim Nabokov sayesinde. Her ne kadar Nabokov, iyi bir okurun kitabı hayal etmemesi, karakterlerle kendini özdeşleştirmemesi gerektiği konusunda bin kere vurgu yapsa da; kendimi bir amfide Nabokov'un bu kitapları derste işleyişini düşünmekten alıkoyamadım. Bir edebiyat dersi hocası olarak seçtiği kitaplar bile sırasıyla mükemmel iken, bu kitapları okuduktan sonra böyle etraflıca ele alınmasını düşünmeyelim de ne yapalım?

Bu arada Nabokov'un derste sırasıyla işlediği romanlar:

1 - Mansfield Parkı - Jane Austen
2 - Kasvetli Ev - Charles Dickens
3 - Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
4 - Tuhaf Bir Vaka: Doktor Jeykıll ve Bay Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
5 - Swanların Tarafı - Marcel Proust
6 - Değişim - Franz Kafka [Varlık Yayınları çevirisi kullanılmış bu kitapta o yüzden Dönüşüm değil]
7 - Ulysses - James Joyce

Bu kitaplar arasında okumadığım ve çok çok öncesinde okuduğum bir kaç kitap mevcut. Buralarda Nabokov'u takip ederken biraz zorlandım, ama bolca ilgili kitaptan alıntı yaparak hatırlattığı için hafıza yenilemesi konusunda hakkını yemeyelim.

Bir sürü notum var kitaplarla ilgili, ama burada mutlaka üstünde durmam gereken ve en sevdiğim yönlerden biri Nabokov'un biraz sınırları zorlayıcı-kışkırtıcı yorumlarda bulunması, ilgili eserler hakkında bildiğimiz genel yorumları ise çoğunlukla reddetmesi. Bu kışkırtıcı dilin, gerçekten çok ufuk açıcı olduğunun altını mutlaka çizmem gerekiyor.

Aldığım sayfalarca notlar bana kalsın, ama bir mühendis olarak; edebiyat okuyanları, hatta Nabokov'dan alınan edebiyat derslerini çok kıskandım. Bu yazıyı da Nabokov'un Madame Bovary ile ilgili hazırladığı sınav sorusuyla bitirmek istiyorum:

"Kasvetli Ev'in kurgusu Dickens'ın daha önceki eserlerine göre büyük bir gelişme sergilese de Dickens yine de eserini tefrika etmenin gerekliliklerine uymak zorundaydı. Madame Bovary'yi yazarken Flaubert sanatının dışında kalan tüm meseleleri yok saydı. Madame Bovary'deki kimi yapısal noktaları belirtiniz."

Avrupa kurmaca eserleri arasından seçilen yedi eser ve yazarın, derinlemesine analizini içeren bu kitap, uzun ve teknik bir eser olmasına rağmen, akıcı, şaşırtıcı, ufuk açıcı.

Çok etkileyici.

ce tare-mi place că un băiat îndrăgostit de povești și care iubea să-și dea cu părerea a ajuns în bibliografii pt admiterea la master:) dar dincolo de asta, cred că marele dar al lui Nabokov e să scrie *pe* operă, și nu *despre* operă, valorificând cu adevărat textul original. nu m-a făcut să-mi placă jane austen, dar am savurat capitolele despre proust și flaubert

n  
n  
“A writer might be a good storyteller or a good moralist, but unless he be an enchanter, an artist, he is not a great writer.”n  
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I have always wanted to know Nabokov the reader – who hates allegories (say Animal Farm), novels where characters act are just what mouth pieces for different kind of opinions (Magic Mountain - not a fan either), moral tales (can’t agree more), allusions to other works and signs and symbolisms unless they are directly related (not a fan either), sentimental readings (chick-lit romances) and finds detective novels boring (because of their poor prose).

On Allegories

It is his dislike of allegories including those like Animal Farm which shocked me. I can see why it might be annoying when critics or readers are matching the elements in the allegories to real world but best of allegories can stand on their even if you didn’t know the real world parallels which they originally used as supporting structures. Even people who know nothing about Russian revolution can enjoy Animal farm while people knowing nothing about Odyssey can enjoy Ulysses. Rushdi's works which began like Allegories are often capable of losing themselves to natural growth of their chracters. Nabokov himself argues that Dr. Jeckyll and Hyde (a minor classic according to Nabokov) is not an allegory (I agree) and would have failed if it was one. According to him, same goes for Kafka’s Metamorphosis (don’t agree).

Nabokov's Spine

The thing is he frowns upon readers who read to gain knowledge (I do that) or/and sentimental pleasure(I do that too). So what kind of satisfaction he seeks from reading?

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“It seems to me that a good formula to test the quality of a novel is, in the long run, a merging of the precision of poetry and the intuition of science. In order to bask in that magic a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading. Then with a pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual, we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass. n  
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And thus a Tolstoy (Anna Karenina gets repeated allusions even though he wasn’t teaching it) or a Dickens (Bleak House) are kind of authors he admires – because of their ability to carry on several chains of a lot of characters and themes at the same time. And if the author is able to bring these chains of stories to a satisfactory end, the author is a genius. According to him the correct way to reading Metamorphosis is by looking at how Kafka maintains a balance between Gregor’s insect and human behavior (!!!).

This love for juggling several characters, themes and stories need notonly be fr novel as whole though, it can be shown in a single scene with lots of characters and story threads going at same time- examples being agricultural fair scene from Madame Bovary (Llosa also admired that scene) and the chapter 10 (one with several vignettes and characters) of Ulysses – with first getting a much higher praise from Nabokov.

To be honest, I think this whole juggling thing is a technical aspect which can only fascinate a writer who is trying to achieve something similar. A common reader won’t have a spine sensitive to the perfection of art and is more likely to love characters from Dostoevsky’s imperfect scenes who provide emotional and intellectual food. Nabokov thinks of such readers as bad readers but in this, he sounds very snobbish to me.

On Prose

Now some things we do agree on.

Nabokov also wants you to pay attention to details. He is someone who actually drew a sketch of bug Samsa turned into ( he was really knowledgeable about insects and bugs) as well as the design of his house as well as twin houses of Dr. Jekyll and Hyde. He wants authors to focus on all corners, and triffle spots – and work them into perfect prose, there should be no weak sentences or, Devil forbid, passages. :

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“Some readers may suppose that such things as these evocations are trifles not worth stopping at; but literature consists of such trifles. Literature consists, in fact, not of general ideas but of particular revelations, not of schools of thought but of individuals of genius. Literature is not about something: it is the thing itself, the quiddity. Without the masterpiece, literature does not exist.”n  
n

He uses graphs to show Jekyll wasn’t a perfectly good person. He goes into depths of how those two last got their names. He can quote – the lectures are 70% quotes – whole passages, sometimes whole pages. And not quotes that stand out for themselves but descriptions, descriptions like those describing Jekyll turning into Hyde. That is what he wants you to work on as an author – on prose, to keep on writing it and rewriting it until everything is perfect. If you ask him, when it comes to descriptions, no one beats Flaubert with his Madame Bovary (which Im willing to bet is Nabhokov’s favorite book along with another book on famous cheating wife of literature – Anna Karenina) and Proust with his Remembrance of things Past ( “the greatest novel of the first half of our century”) though he only discusses Swann’s Way.

On character aspects and sketches

Nabokov wants you to keep a distance from characters and so there is not a lot of time spent analyzing them (though few insights he does give are brilliant). His analysis of Emma Bovary’s is disagreeable to me (but would be agreeable to Flaubert). Same with psychology, he cracks a lot of jokes at expense of Freud (“ that medieval quack”). He doesn’t spend much time commenting on the sensitivity of Proust’s protagonist either (who and Freud unknowingly reflected much on each other’s works).

He loves Joyce’s work too but is not particularly impressed by Joyce’s “Incomplete, rapid, broken wording rendering the so-called stream of consciousness, or better say the stepping stones of consciousness” giving reasons like

n  
n   “First, the device is not more "realistic” or more "scientific" than any other. In fact if some of Molly’s thoughts were described instead of all of them being recorded, their expression would strike one as more "realistic,” more natural. The point is that the stream of consciousness is a stylistic convention because obviously we do not think continuously in words—we think also in images; but the switch from words to images can be recorded in direct words only if description is eliminated as it is here. Another thing: some of. our reflections come and go, others stay; they stop as it were, amorphous and sluggish, and it takes some time for the flowing thoughts and thoughtlets to run around those rocks of thought. The drawback of simulating a recording of thought is the blurring of the time element and too great a reliance on typography.” n  
n

I agree and I agree again when he says that Molly’s thoughts in last chapters of Ulysses would read just as good as they do now if Joyce's editor had introduced punctuation marks in those run-on sentences. Although I wonder what he would have said about Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway in which thoughts are described instead of being recorded as Nabokov would prefer them. The only female author that is included is Jane Austen with her Mansfield Park towards whom Nabokov takes a patronizing attitude as if to a younger artist. And oh, while we are on Joyce, he declares Finnegans Wake to be one of the greatest failures in literature.

On Reality

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"Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.” n  
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My best take from the book is his ideas on the use of words like realism and naturalism in criticism. He doesn’t understand the habit of dividing books into fantasies or realist ones- according to him all novels including those like The Trial, The Overcoat and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are realist as well as fantasies.

A very long quote (– must be impact of Nabhokov’s company) in spoiler about how Nabokov understands novelist’s reality  Let us take three types of men walking through the same landscape. Number One is a city man on a well-deserved vacation. Number Two is a professional botanist. Number Three is a local farmer. Number One, the city man, is what is called a realistic, commonsensical, matter-of-fact type: he sees trees as trees and knows from his map that the road he is following is a nice new road leading to Newton, where there is a nice eating place recommended to him by a friend in his office. The botanist looks around and sees his environment in the very exact terms of plant life, precise biological and classified units such as specific trees and grasses, flowers and ferns, and for him this is reality; to him the world of the stolid tourist (who cannot distinguish an oak from an elm) seems a fantastic, vague, dreamy, never-never world. Finally, the world of the local farmer differs from the two others in that his world is intensely emotional and personal since he has been born and bred there, and knows every trail and individual tree, and every shadow from every tree across every trail, all in warm connection with his everyday work, and his childhood, and a thousand small things and patterns which the other two—the humdrum tourist and the botanical taxonomist—simply cannot know in the given place at the given time. Our farmer will not know the relation of the surrounding vegetation to a botanical conception of the world, and the botanist will know nothing of any importance to him about that barn or that old field or that old house under its cottonwoods, which are afloat, as it were, in a medium of personal memories for one who was born there.

So here we have three different worlds—three men, ordinary men who have different realities—and, of course, we could bring in a number of other beings: a blind man with a dog, a hunter with a dog, a dog with his man, a pamter cruising in quest of a sunset, a girl out of gas-In every case it would be a world completely different from the rest since the most objective words tree, road, flower, sky, barn, thumb, rain have, in each, totally different subjective connotations. Indeed, this subjective life is so strong that it makes an empty and broken shell of the so-called objective existence. The only way back to objective reality is the following one: we can take these several individual worlds, mix them thoroughly together, scoop up a drop of that mixture, and call it objective reality. We may taste in it a particle of madness if a lunatic passed through that locality, or a particle of complete and beautiful nonsense if a man has been looking at a lovely field and imagining upon it a lovely factory producing buttons or bombs; but on the whole these mad particles would be diluted in the drop of objective reality that we hold up to the light in our test tube. Moreover, this objective reality will contain something that transcends optical illusions and laboratory tests. It will have elements of poetry, of lofty emotion, of energy and endeavor (and even here the button king may find his rightful place), of pity, pride, passion—and the craving for a thick steak at the recommended roadside eating place.

So when we say reality, we are really thinking of all this—in one drop— an average sample of a mixture of a million individual realities. And it is in this sense (of human reality) that I use the term reality when placing it against a backdrop, such as the worlds of "The Carrick,” "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and "The Metamorphosis," which are specific fantasies.



More Quotesn  
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n  “Gustave Flaubert’s ideal of a writer of fiction was vividly expressed when he remarked that, like God in His world, so the author in his book should be nowhere and everywhere, invisible and omnipresent. There do exist several major works of fiction where the presence of the author is as unobtrusive as Flaubert wished it to be, although he himself did not attain that ideal in Madame Bovary. But even in such works where the author is ideally unobtrusive, he remains diffused through the book so that his very absence becomes a kind of radiant presence. As the French say, il brille par son absence—"he shines by his absence.”

“There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.”


"Readers are not sheep, and not every pen tempts them.”


“The color of one's creed, neckties, eyes, thoughts, manners, speech, is sure to meet somewhere in time of space with a fatal objection from a mob that hates that particular tone. And the more brilliant, the more unusual the man, the nearer he is to the stake. Stranger always rhymes with danger. The meek prophet, the enchanter in his cave, the indignant artist, the nonconforming little schoolboy, all share in the same sacred danger. And this being so, let us bless them, let us bless the freak; for in the natural evolution of things, the ape would perhaps never have become man had not a freak appeared in the family.”


“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”


“I am aware of many things being quite as important as good writing and good reading; but in all things it is wiser to go directly to the quiddity, to the text, to the source, to the essence—and only then evolve whatever theories may tempt the philosopher, or the historian, or merely please the spirit of the day. Readers are born free and ought to remain free.”n

Nabokov teaches readers about various elements in literature using seven novels familiar to many. The reader need not have read the particular novels to understand the points made about language, structure, theme, style, innovation etc, by the authors of the novels. Nabokov's careful analysis points a reader toward doing their own analyses of what they read and why these novels gain the imagination of readers long enough to last through the question of time. Very interesting and easy to read.

„Un bun scriitor le îmbină pe toate cele trei – povestitor, profesor, vrăjitor -, dar vrăjitorul este cel care predomină, făcându-l un mare scriitor.”

Nabokov este un asemenea vrăjitor, chiar și în „Cursuri de literatură”. Iată-l vorbind despre materia lui:
„Literatura nu a luat naștere în ziua în care un băiat a strigat „Lupul! Lupul!”, țâșnind dintr-o vale preistorică, cu un lup mare și cenușiu pe urmele sale. Literatura s-a născut în ziua în care un băiat a strigat „Lupul! Lupul!”, iar în spatele lui nu era niciun lup. Faptul că bietul băiat a sfârșit mâncat de lup pentru că mințise de atâtea ori e doar un amănunt.”

Cărțile alese de Nabokov, cu citate din fiecare prelegere:
✍t„Mansfield Park” (1814), de Jane Austen („Dintre elementele stilistice ale lui Austen, iese în evidență ceea ce mie îmi place să numesc gropița specială, creată prin introducerea pe furiș în frază a unei mici ironii delicate, printre componentele unei afirmații pur informative.”)
✍t„Casa umbrelor” (1852-1853), de Chales Dickens („Lumea unui mare scriitor este, într-adevăr, o democrație magică, unde chiar și personajele absolut minore, chiar și cele episodice, cum este persoana care aruncă moneda în aer, au dreptul de a trăi și de a se reproduce.”)
✍t„Doamna Bovary” (1856), de Gustave Flaubert („Cărțile nu sunt scrise pentru cei cărora le sunt dragi poeziile care îi fac să plângă sau pentru cei care îndrăgesc personajele nobile în proză, așa cum cred Leon și Emma. Numai copiilor li se poate ierta identificarea cu personajele dintr-o carte sau bucuria pe care o simt citind niște povești de aventură prost scrise.”)
✍t„Un caz foarte straniu: doctorul Jekyll și domnul Hyde” (1885), de Robert Louis Stevenson („Scopul artistic al lui Stevenson a fost acela de a face „o dramă fantastică credibilă pentru oamenii simpli, raționali” într-o atmosferă familiară cititorilor lui Dickens, în decorul ceții sumbre a Londrei, cu gentlemeni solemni, în vârstă, care beau vin vechi, cu clădiri cu fațada urâtă, cu avocați de familie și majordomi devotați, cu vicii necunoscute care înfloresc în spatele pieței solemne unde locuiește Jekyll, cu dimineți reci și birje.”)
✍t„Swann” (1913), de Marcel Proust („Proust este o prismă. Singurul rol pe care îl are este de a refracta, iar prin refractare, de a crea o lume în retrospective.”„…cititor superficial al operei lui Proust – o contradicție în termeni, căci un cititor superficial s-ar plictisi atât de tare, ar fi atât de copleșit de propriul căscat, încât nu ar termina niciodată cartea...”)
✍t„Metamorfoza” (1915), de Franz Kafka („Bineînțeles, oricât de profund și de admirabil ar fi discutate și analizate o poveste, o piesă muzicală sau un tablou, vor exista minți care vor rămâne goale și spinări care nu se înfiorează.” „Veți observa stilul lui Kafka. Claritatea, precizia, intonația lui formală, într-un contrast izbitor cu dimensiunea coșmarescă a poveștii.”)
✍t„Ulise” (1922), de James Joyce („Faptul că există un ecou homeric foarte vag și foarte general al temei peregrinărilor este evident în cazul lui Bloom, după cum sugerează și titlul romanului, și, pe parcursul cărții, întâlnim un număr de aluzii clasice printre multe alte aluzii; dar ar fi o totală pierdere de timp să trasăm paralele apropiate la fiecare personaj și la fiecare scenă din carte. Nu e nimic mai anost decât o alegorie îndelungată și continuă, bazată pe un mit perimat.”)

Cartea face deci o selecție intimidantă de titluri pe care ni le rezumă cu o limpezime de cristal, cu observații fine, cu hărți și explicații - rezultat al recitirii fiecărui volum de mai multe ori, la modul cel mai profesionist. După cum se spune în Prefață, „Cursurile” lui Nabokov dovedesc că un scriitor bun este, în primul rând, un cititor excelent, iar cel mai profund mod de a citi rămâne recitirea.

I find it interesting that, of the seven works treated here, four are by Brits (if we may loosely count Joyce in that category, as is not unreasonable in the context), and none by Americans - the absence of Russians is accounted for, I suppose, by the fact he did a separate lecture series on them. This suggests that Nabokov had taste and, unlike some in a similar position, was not wiling to pretend to put American literature on a par with European for the sake of quiet life. So for that alone his opinions are worthy of respect.

They are detailed studies of individual books, perhaps too much so for the general reader who is only interested in the general impression that one author of note has formed of others, and is not cramming for an exam. If we are going to have things described in such minute detail, we would be better off reading or re-reading the book concerned itself. But the redeeming feature, something of which so much modern literature teaching loses sight, is the primacy gives to enjoyment, and enjoyment of a particular sort: the tingle in the spine. Personally I do not recall having been affected in this way by a novel. Perhaps I was as a child, but I don't think it is a medium particularly conducive to that kind of exaltation - poetry and music are much more so. But I'm going to assume that N means it figuratively rather than literally. 'If a person does not think he can evolve the capacity of pleasure in reading great artists, then he should not read them at all'. Hear hear.

The book is printed by Amazon, unfortunately, which as usual means a shitty cover that curls up.

This was excellent, it gave me insight on several of the authors and his analysis of the books themselves was a real treat. I look forward to reading his lectures on Russian literature as well as reading those novels as well.

Nabokov oltre ad essere stato un grande scrittore sicuramente è stato anche un grande professore.
Le lezioni raccolte in questo volume sono scorrevoli, interessanti, piene di guizzi geniali. Leggere i capitoli su Dickens e Flaubert mi ha fatto venire voglia di rileggere le loro opere. Molto bella anche la lezione su Kafka.
Ho preferito questo volume al suo gemello "Lezioni di letteratura russa" (anche se la lezione su Tolstoj è magistrale!) ma sono entrambi due volumi che consiglio vivamente agli appassionati di letteratura e agli amanti dei books on books.

Finito di leggere dopo non ironicamente 3 anni e cinque mesi da quando l’avevo iniziato

Benim acı ve hayal kırıklığı yüklü Madame Bovary'm meğer hiciv dolu bir esermiş, bunu Nabokov'dan öğrendim. Bu sayede kitap bambaşka anlamlarla dolup taştı gözümün önünde. (Sayfalarını bir çiçeğin yaprakları gibi açtı önüme, diyeyim de belki sevgili Flaubert'in hoşuna gider =P) Önce kim bilir okuduğum diğer klasiklerde neleri kaçırıyorumdur diye düşündüm. Eh, her eserin dedektifliğini yapan bir başka eser okumak da, nasıl desem, hangi yazar ister ki böyle okuru? Belki de bütün bunlar Nabokov'un aşırıyorumudur, dedim sonra, bu kıvrak zekalıyı bu kadar ciddiye almamak gerek. Ama bilirsiniz, bazen bir eser hakkında yazılan metin, eserin kendisinden de iyi olabiliyor. Nabokov da bu kitapta adı geçen ustalarla kapışır bence.