C. CLAUSS
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST JOHN New Testament, King James Bible "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." MOBY-DICK Herman Melville, 1851 "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. " The opening scene of John Huston's film adaptation (1956) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= xAmwgT8_Kzg
GREAT EXPECTATIONS Charles Dickens, 1860 "My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip." Opening scene of David Lean's film adaptation (1946) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= eXyo68s-f1E
LECTURES ON LITERATURE Vladimir Nabokov, 1980 "In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a ready-made generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it." Entretien (en français) avec Nabokov au sujet de Lolita: http://www.ina.fr/video/I00016162
QUOTE / UNQUOTE 1 Beginnings Herman Melville (1819-1891) - an American novelist. Moby-Dick, his masterpiece, is a whaling adventure combined with a revenge story led by Captain Ahab. Most of the novel takes place on the ship named the Pequod ["pi:kwOd]. It is regarded by many as the greatest [eI] work of American fiction. Its first sentence "Call me Ishmael" is certainly the most famous first sentence in American literature. "Ishmael ["ISmeI@l] is the main narrator of the novel. It refers to the Biblical Ishamel, son of Abraham (Book of "Genesis ["dZen@sIs]). The name was commonly used to mean an exile ["eksaIl] (un exilé) or an "outcast ["aUtkA:st] (un paria). pre"cisely [aI] a purse [p3:s]: a small pouch of leather or plastic used for carrying money, typically by a woman par"ticular [p@"tikjUl@] to 'interest ["IntrIst] the shore: the land along the edge of a body of water on shore [SO:]: on land to think, thought [TO:t], thought to drive (drove, driven) off: to get rid of the spleen is "melancholy (archaic) the circulation is the movement of blood through your body Charles Dickens (1812-1870) – a British novelist and a moralist. He is most famous for his great characterization (l'art du portrait) and his use of 'satire ["s&taI@] and irony against the bleak (sordides) living conditions of 19th century England. Great Expectations is a formation novel (= a Bildungsroman) narrating Pip's life and the way he gradually understands the truth about his ill-founded expectations. great [eI] expec"tations [eI] a "christian ["krIstS@n, -tI@n] name: a first name, especially one given at baptism an "infant ["Inf@nt] tongue [tVN] both [@U] ex"plicit [Iks"plIsIt] nothing longer … than a pip: a small hard seed in a fruit The name Pip is a palindrome ["p&lIndr@um] foreshadowing that, most of his life, Pip is going to go round in circles. Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) – an American novelist, short-story writer and poet, born in Russia. He wrote novels in Russian and in English. Lolita (1955) is his most famous novel and tells the "sulphurous story of the na"rrator Humbert Humbert's love and se"duction of 12-year-old Lolita. a "lecture ["lektS@]: a talk s.o. gives in order to teach people about a particular subject to" notice ["n@utIs]: to become aware of sth to"fondle: to touch gently, usually in a sexual way a "detail ["di:teIl] "moonshine: whisky made illegally, foolish comments that are not based on reality (a pun (=play on words) with "moonlight") a "trifle [aI]: une bagatelle, une broutille sth that is ready-made is sth that you can use immediately because the work has already been done
Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, on Charles Dickens "If it were possible I would like to devote the fifty minutes of every class meeting to mute meditation, concentration and admiration of Dickens. However, my job is to direct and rationalize those meditations, that admiration. All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity as attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. Let us be proud of our being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame. The brain only continues the spine : the wick really goes through the whole length of the candle. If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our book-of-the-week. But I think Dickens will prove stronger."
"A writer might be a good storyteller or a good moralist, but unless he is an enchanter, an artist, he is not a great writer. Dickens is a good moralist, a good story teller and a super enchanter, but as a storyteller he lags somewhat behind his other virtues. In other words he is supremely good at picturing his characters and their habitats in any given situation, but there are flaws in his work when he tries to establish various links between these characters in a pattern of action. (…) Despite certain faults in the telling of the story, Dickens remains nevertheless a great writer. Control over a considerable constellation of characters and themes, the technique of holding people and events bunched together, or of evoking absent characters through dialogue – in other words the art of not only creating people but keeping created people alive within the reader's mind throughout a long novel – this, of course is the obvious sign of greatness."
