As part of his demolition of the then fashionable politico-socio-Marxist readings of Flaubert's Madame Bovary …, Nabokov would tell his students, "let us remember that literature is of no practical value whatsoever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a professor of literature."
No practical value whatsoever: ah yes, Nabokov's cherished fin-de-siécle esthetic of Art-for-Art's-Sake runs, like a string through pearls, right through [his Lectures on Literature]…. "I have tried to make of you good readers," he would say at the conclusion of the course, and to this end he would discourage his students from identifying with the novels' characters; he would dissuade them from seeking in fiction lessons on how to live their lives; and he would defy them to indulge in generalizations. Instead, he sought to focus his listeners' attention on the forms of his chosen masterpieces—their structures and styles—their visions, their art. "I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author—the joys and difficulties of creation." Surprisingly, Nabokov's Lectures on Literature do live up to this claim: not, as one might expect from the self-assertive author of Strong Opinions and the idiosyncratic translator of Eugene Onegin, by brilliant flashes of Nabokovian wit or fancy façades of interpretation that obscure the text; but by patient, meticulous, generous submission to the particularities of matter and manner of the works under study.
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Nabokov, Vladimir (Vladimirovich) 1899–1977: Critical Essay by Brian Stonehill Access Pass.
