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Nabokov on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”

We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.

– Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Literature. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.)
Youtube documentary of (Christopher Plummer as) VN on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” here. (“He is the greatest German writer of our time.  Such poets as Rilke or such novelists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him.”) A text of that lecture here.

This was written by bscribe. Posted on Monday, June 11, 2007, at 1:05 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

2 Comments

  1. Aaron wrote:

    Thank you for this quote! In this first sentence of the Nabokov quote is the essence of what seems to be a main struggle in historical philosophical (and aesthetic!)thought: empiricism vs. idealism, or classicism vs. romanticism. These are dualisms, and themselves artificial constructions, but the struggle (the undefined, and the impossible to dismiss) is the thing. And I will now be more conscious of pity as a component of beauty, and that will make my world deeper yet.

    Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 8:19 am | Permalink
  2. bscribe wrote:

    As usual, Aaron, you’ve given me something new to think about — these dualisms you bring up, and the struggle, impossible to dismiss — an entirely different emphasis, than mine, on things. Thanks for another lens through which to look.

    Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 3:04 pm | Permalink

2 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Plummer on Nabokov on Kafka « Charlottesville Words on Monday, June 11, 2007 at 3:22 pm

    [...] 11th, 2007 · Thanks to Bellascribe, I now have the joy of knowing that Christopher Plummer recreated VladimirNabokov’s lectures on Kafka in a movie called, naturally enough, Nabokov on Kafka. But I also have the sorrow of knowing it’s not available on Neflix. [...]

  2. bellascribe » The Vermin in “The Metamorphosis” on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 4:55 pm

    [...] Something about beauty, truth and writing « Nabokov on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” [...]