Nabokov and British Literature : Rupert Brooke and Walter de la Mare - article ; n°3 ; vol.72, pg 319-332

Johnson D.Barton

Description

Revue des études slaves - Année 2000 - Volume 72 - Numéro 3 - Pages 319-332
Nabokov et la littérature britannique : Rupert Brooke et Walter de la Mare
Nabokov affirme qu'il a passé ses années de Cambridge (1919-1922) plongé dans la recréation de son monde russe perdu et qu'il est resté relativement indifférent à son environnement anglais. Cette négation de toute influence de son entourage anglais doit être relativisée. Le présent article montre que deux écrivains anglais contemporains ont joué un rôle considérable dans le développement de la carrière de Nabokov. Le premier essai critique de Nabokov est consacré au très populaire poète et héros de guerre anglais Rupert Brooke. C'est dans cet essai en russe que Nabokov utilise pour la première fois le terme potustoronnos?. Le thème de l'autre monde était aussi prédominant dans les poèmes, contes et romans de Walter de la Mare, et particulièrement dans son grand succès Mémoires d'un nain (The Memoirs ofa midget). Nabokov fait spécifiquement allusion au traitement de ce thème chez de la Mare dans son propre récit Mest'. Le présent essai révèle les nombreux échos du thème britannique de l'autre monde dans les premières œuvres en prose de Nabokov.
14 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: REVUE_DES_ETUDES_SLAVES
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 21
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Prof. Donald Barton Johnson
Nabokov and British Literature : Rupert Brooke and Walter de la
Mare
In: Revue des études slaves, Tome 72, fascicule 3-4, 2000. pp. 319-332.
Résumé
Nabokov et la littérature britannique : Rupert Brooke et Walter de la Mare
Nabokov affirme qu'il a passé ses années de Cambridge (1919-1922) plongé dans la recréation de son monde russe perdu et
qu'il est resté relativement indifférent à son environnement anglais. Cette négation de toute influence de son entourage anglais
doit être relativisée. Le présent article montre que deux écrivains anglais contemporains ont joué un rôle considérable dans le
développement de la carrière de Nabokov. Le premier essai critique de Nabokov est consacré au très populaire poète et héros
de guerre anglais Rupert Brooke. C'est dans cet essai en russe que Nabokov utilise pour la première fois le terme
potustoronnosť. Le thème de l'autre monde était aussi prédominant dans les poèmes, contes et romans de Walter de la Mare, et
particulièrement dans son grand succès Mémoires d'un nain (The Memoirs ofa midget). Nabokov fait spécifiquement allusion au
traitement de ce thème chez de la Mare dans son propre récit Mest'. Le présent essai révèle les nombreux échos du thème
britannique de l'autre monde dans les premières œuvres en prose de Nabokov.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Barton Johnson Donald. Nabokov and British Literature : Rupert Brooke and Walter de la Mare. In: Revue des études slaves,
Tome 72, fascicule 3-4, 2000. pp. 319-332.
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/slave_0080-2557_2000_num_72_3_6664NABOKOV AND BRITISH LITERATURE:
RUPERT BROOKE AND WALTER DE LA MARE
D. BARTOŇ JOHNSON
Nabokov' s évocations of Cambridge are well-known. The three versions of
the memoirs and both of Nabokov' s biographers, drawing, inter alia, on VN's
extensive correspondent with his parents, paint a picture of a young man
immersed in the récréation of a lost Russian world and relatively indiffèrent to
his English surroundings.1 So intent was Nabokov on this project that little
emotional energy was left over for England and Cambridge. At one point in
Speak, Memory, he even insists that his student years "left such trifling im
pressions upon my mind that it would be tedious to continue" describing them
(261). Although not unaware of its imposing history, the young poet "was quite
sure that Cambridge was in no way affecting my soûl,. . ."
No matter how immersed in recreating Russia, Nabokov could scarcely
hâve insulated himself from British literary life. We now think of Nabokov as a
novelist but during his Cambridge years he saw himself almost entirely as a poet
— a Russian poet, although he did publish two English poems. He was
Memory' s description obviously reading contemporary English poetry. In Speak,
of his composite English fellow-student, "Nesbit", Nabokov mentions "the poets
we both cherished". More significantly, when writing of his Cambridge Russian
poetry he mentions how "horrified" he would hâve been "to discover what I see
so clearly now, the direct influence upon my Russian structures of various
contemporaneous ('Georgian') English verse patterns that were running about
my room and ail over me like tame mice. And to think of the labor I expended!"
(266). The Russian version of this passage is at once both less and more infor-
mative, "Georgian" becomes "the stylistic dependence of my Russian construc
tions on those English poets from Marvell to Houseman who had infected the
very air of my then existence" (226). and had both been at
Trinity.
Nabokov' s asserted, if belated, realization is first voiced in a letter to
Edmund Wilson. On April 20, 1942, Wilson wrote Nabokov that he had chanced
1. Speak, Memory, New York, Putnám' s, 1966; Другие берега, New York, Chekhov,
1954; Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov : the Russian Years, Princeton, Princeton University
Press, 1990, and : the American
Press, 1991. Henceforth, Boyd RY and Boyd AY.
Rev. Étud. slaves, Paris, LXXII/3-4, 2000, p. 319-322. 320 D. BARTOŇ JOHNSON
upon an early volume of Nabokov' s poetry. Nabokov responded: "I am glad you
bought the Gornii puť though it is a rather misérable little thing. The poems it
contains were written while I was still in my teens and are strongly influenced
by the Georgian poets, Rupert Brooke, de la Mare, etc, by whom I was much
fascinated at the time." Nabokov' s comments to Wilson are noteworthy, for he
has always been quick to dispute "influence" from any side.
Nabokov exposure to the "Georgians," and specifîcally to Rupert Brooke's
work, probably did not start until after he arrived in England in May 1919. Boyd
mentions Nabokov reading Brooke, Houseman, and Walter de la Mare in his
first years at Cambridge (Boyd RY : 171). Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), son of a
Rugby headmaster and nephew of the Dean of Christ College, was a radiantly
brilliant figure at Cambridge, thanks largely to his great personal charm, blonde
good looks, and literary gifts. He was immediately tapped for "The Apostles",
the famed "secret" society whose then members would provide the maie nucleus
of the Bloomsbury circle (and, later, several spies for the USSR). Actor, poet,
scholar, and president of the University Fabian Society, Brooke, having com-
pleted the Classical Tripos at Cambridge, had, to small acclaim, published his
first small volume of verses in 191 1. While still an undergraduate at Cambridge
he had become acquainted with former Cantabrigian Edward Marsh (boni
1872), who was now Winston Churchill' s priváte secretary and a man who
moved in the highest circles of government and society. Marsh introduced the
Apollo-like Brooke to his society friends, in particular, the family of the Liberal
Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. Through Marsh, Brooke met many of his
fellow poets who were to be brought together as "Georgians" in the anthology
that the two men organized.
Marsh, as might be expected of a Minister' s secretary, was a first-rate
organizer. He had many friends in the world of literary journalism and orches-
trated reviews in ail of the leading papers and magazines. Not the least of
Marsh 's contributions was the title of the collection which he explained in his
brief introduction: There was a renaissance of English poetry in the air not un-
like the great âges of the past. It was a new poetry, deserving its own name.
Since George V had ascended the throne in 1910, his name was chosen to
represent the new poetic era. The volume, as Marsh later said, "went up like a
rocket." Its success was not undeserved and some of it contents hâve become
landmarks in 20th century poetry: Walter de la Mare' s haunting poem, The
Listeners, once known to every British school child, Brooke's The Old Vicar-
age, Grantchester and Dining-Room Tea, D. H. Lawrence' s The Snapdragon,
and so on. The volume' s success lead to four further Georgian Poetry
collections.2
During his short life, Brooke published only a single slender verse volume,
but with the appearance of Georgian Poetry he came before a much wider
public. His reál public fame came from the poems published shortly before his
April 23, 1915 shipboard death (blood poisoning from an infected mosquito
bite) in Churchill' s disastrous GallipoUi campaign. Brooke's had greeted the war
2. Robert H. Ross, The Georgian Revolt: Rise and F ail of a Poetic Ideal, Carbon-
dale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1965. NABOKOV AND BRITISH LITERATURE 321
with the guip "Well, if Armageddon is on, I suppose one should be there."3 His
exaltation to the status of a national monument rests on his five 1914 Sonnets
which enthralled the nation — thanks in large part to shrewd political mani
pulation by his powerful friends. The most famous is The Soldier with its Unes:
"If I should die, think only mis of me:/ That there' s some corner of a foreign
field/ That is forever England." [...] "And think, mis heart, ail evil shed away,/ A
puise in the eternal mind, no less..." [...] "is at peace under an English heaven."
In one of those coincidences so necessary to legend, William Inge, newly
appointed Dean of St. Paul' s in London, just days before Brooke' s death, had
read and lauded The Soldier as part of his Easter sermon (Laskowski : 29). "The
enthusiam of a pure and elevated patriotism had never found a nobler
expression," he said. Days later, Winston Churchill wrote a letter to The Times
expressing the nation' s grief. It begins "Rupert Brooke is dead" and concludes
in Churchill 's most orotund style:
The thoughts to which he gave expression in the very few incomparable war
sonnets which he has left behind will be shared by many thousands of young men
moving resolutely an