/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10085014]

What did he mean by this?>Although I do not care for the slogan "art for art's sake"-- because unfortunately such promoters of it as, for instance, Oscar Wilde and various dainty poets, were in reality rank moralists and didacticists.

[Anonymous No.10085094]

Oscar is a hack

[Anonymous No.10085098]

>>10085094
So is Nabokov

[Anonymous No.10085155]

>>10085098
What did YOU mean by this?

[Anonymous No.10085170]

>>10085014
so, wait, he doesn't believe in art for art's sake because it's used by people who are didacticists and moralists, gotcha. but then why does he create the art that he does? if not to teach or for some moral reason? is it not art for art's sake in his own position? does he just not like the slogan, but likes the idea behind it? what a trickster he was.

[Anonymous No.10085179]

>>10085014
Well, where's the rest of the sentence?

[Anonymous No.10085183]

>>10085170
What I don't get is why he called Wilde of all men a moralist/didacticist.

[Anonymous No.10085187]

>>10085179
you mean the "although"? maybe the prick just started a statement with that to fuck with you.

[Anonymous No.10085206]

>>10085187
Then that would be the case of "I'm only pretending to be illiterate", but I think it is a case of OP being a fag in his transmission of the quote, as this is the complete quote:
> Although I do not care for the slogan "art for art's sake"-- because unfortunately such promoters of it as, for instance, Oscar Wilde and various dainty poets, were in reality rank moralists and didacticists-- there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.
http://www.lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter03.txt_with-big-pictures.html

[Anonymous No.10085215]

Dostoevski, who dealt with themes accepted by most readers as universal in both scope and significance, is considered one of the world's great authors. Yet you have described him as "a cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. " Why?

Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevski as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous, farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment-- by this reader anyway.

[Anonymous No.10085217]

>>10085206
even more interesting, considering his works are ultimately famous because of their social importance, not to say that his art itself isn't magnificent, but let's be honest, he's famous because he wrote about some old guy dicking a little girl.

[Anonymous No.10085220]

>>10085014
>What did he mean by this?
Nothing. He was a retard with nothing worthwhile to say.

[Anonymous No.10086440]

>>10085220
This. Also a pedo.

[Anonymous No.10086521]

>>10085215
More proof that Constance Garnett was the best thing to ever happen to Dosto, though Nabokov would disagree on that too

[Anonymous No.10086604]

>>10085215
all of nabby's opinions are trash. he never wrote a novel within a mile of dostoyevsky's masterpieces. even the authors he revered (tolstoy, joyce, kafka, proust, etc.) would agree.

[Anonymous No.10086656]

Dostoevsky belongs in the same category as Shakespeare, Homer, and the authors of the Bible. Nabokov isn't worthy to speak his name. For all his talk, Nabokov was a far better grammarian than he was an author and seems more suited to criticism than literature.

[Anonymous No.10086699]

>>10086521
god i love that woman, greatest female author in existence.

[Anonymous No.10086704]

>>10086656
if even that, i would say he would have been a great highschool teacher, but it might be wise to keep him away from the children.

[Anonymous No.10086735]

>>10085215

Spoilers ahead!

> young nobody coming to soulless industrial city and scheming to kill the rich merchant he works for with merchant's immoral wife
> young bitter loser whose life is even less bearable after suicide
> common whore being the bane of seemingly regular family of a man she captivates, and also his own bane (dying kid included with this item)
> maddened middle class killer on the run whose maniac plan to get rich failed
> spiritual one being tortured by worldly creatures and their vanity
> that one book you've read

I'm not even counting his stories, as I don't remember which resemble Tolstoy's heavy-headed confessions more than Dostoyevsky's ones.

Vladimir could say he was being '''''ironic''''' and mock Dostoyevsky as much as he wanted. He sure liked smokescreens.

[Anonymous No.10086749]

>“These are not really Lolitas…,” I observed, finally. “They are sixteen, seventeen years old.”
>“Yes,” she said. “Nabokov was five years off. What most men like is not the moment that precedes puberty, but the one immediately after. Anyway, he wasn’t a very good writer…”
>I too had never been able to bear that mediocre and mannered pseudo-poet, that clumsy imitator of Joyce, who had never been lucky enough to possess the energy that sometimes enabled the insane Irishman to rise above his ponderous prose.
>A collapsed pastry, that was what Nabokov’s style had always made me think of."

[Anonymous No.10086762]

>>10086749
> Nabokov was five years off.

NORMIES REEEEEOUEOUEOUEcq

[Anonymous No.10086764]

>>10086749
well, how rude. Nabokov would never insult anyone like that. how unfair.

[Anonymous No.10086767]

>>10085014
All this means is that he feels people who usually promote "art for art's sake" are really not following this code, and because of this feels using the phrase is a silly cliched gimmick used mainly by the aforementioned people. From this excerpt alone you can't really infer his actual views on "art as it's own end" because he isn't commenting on that, but rather the aestheticism movement and posturing of people like Wilde.

[Anonymous No.10086806]

>>10086749
This is rich coming from someone whose fiction is thinly veiled thinkpieces with copypasted wikipedia segments.

[Anonymous No.10086822]

>>10085183
If you take a look at The Picture of Dorian Gray, the whole work is a way of pushing Wilde's opinion on aesthetics. That's a form of moralism or didacticism.

[Anonymous No.10086825]

>>10086806
The greatest living author by far.

[Anonymous No.10086833]

>>10086825
For sure, because you can take neat little quotes out of his fiction and post it on r9k to have a circlejerk with your fellow incels about it.

[Anonymous No.10086849]

>>10086833
Volcel desu :^)

[Anonymous No.10086887]

>>10086825
Llosa.

[Anonymous No.10086922]

>>10086887
lateral hume

[Anonymous No.10086967]

>>10086735
Those are from Nabokov's books?

[Anonymous No.10087120]

>>10086749
>A collapsed pastry, that was what Nabokov’s style
Lmao
14-16 is the patrician range btw. A specific beauty that blooms and fades immediately

[Anonymous No.10087161]

>>10086822
To me it seems like when someone say something in the lines of "Never say never" and you go like:
- WoW, so paradoxical.

[Anonymous No.10087425]

>>10087120
>ren

nice

[Anonymous No.10088465]

>>10086656
Dostoevsky is widely considered to be bad with words. He was a writer of ideas. His characters feel real because of his psychology. But that does not undo his tactlessness with words. What make Shakespeare and Homer so great is their combination of insists with an unrivaled facility to manipulate words, which is what makes a great writer for writing is the manipulation of words.

[Anonymous No.10088497]

>>10087120
>14-16 is patrician
>posts a girl who's 19
ok

[Anonymous No.10090443]

>>10085220
Why does he need worthwhile things to say. Novels don't necessarily need to put forward a statement or an idea.

[Anonymous No.10091868]

>>10088465
>Dostoevsky is widely considered to be bad with words.

Do you even speak Russian?

[Anonymous No.10092582]

>>10091868
No, but Russians have expressed that opinion. Also he isn't Joyce, he isn't a writer that attempts to maximize the power of language, this is something that is still apparent in translation. Borges said that Dostoevsky is an author who does not suffer at all through translation for this very reason.