Andrey Bely possible connection ad GR in Russian

[Mark Kohut]

Did not know that; did not expect that. Now I guess I have to read a good bio of TSE as well as 
Petersburg--ordered, thanks max--and Breton's Anthology of Black Humor--also ordered, thanks Jochen.
 
Will the learning before enough understanding never cease? 

From: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 9:44 AM
Subject: Re: Andrey Bely possible connection ad GR in Russian


"I occasionally wonder what led TRP to Blavatsky ", maybe TSE since he knew more than a bit about theosophy.

mc

From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>; "max.nemtsov at gmail.com" <max.nemtsov at gmail.com> 
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 2:49 PM
Subject: Re: Andrey Bely possible connection ad GR in Russian


"mentor' or whatever, Vera did claim in The Paris Review interview to remember P's handwriting and 
P. had his friends and great writers as influence, at least and 
read Nabokov some, we know---see Real Life of Sebastian Knight vis a vis V at least,
so N's essay in Strong Opinions comes later, it seems, from his lectures which P seems to have audited 
 BUT from the wikipedia Petersburg entry---and the one below on Bely ---we can learn that Nabokov seemed to express his love for that novel
in the US in @1958 (knowing the translation was coming?) as well as on TV in 1965!......if P did not 
hear him talk about it in a classs....
 
So, ambitious reader and writer TRP could have made sure he read Petersburg when pubbed in English.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Bely
 
A--and 'revolutionary politics" and an assassination plot and a time bomb---& Bely came to be influenced
by Steiner and his system of beliefs (I occasionally wonder what led TRP to Blavatsky and those folk among
whom I put Steiner) and does anyone see a possible thread somehow into and through Against the Day [just
one of AtD's plot threads]? 

From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
To: Max Nemtsov <max.nemtsov at gmail.com> 
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2012 7:29 AM
Subject: Re: Andrey Bely possible connection ad GR in Russian



On 20.04.2012 12:34, Max Nemtsov wrote:


Colleagues, has anyone explored the possible connection of GR and Andrey Bely's Petersburg (1913) in true detail? I don't seem to be able to find anything, apart from Belorussian researcher Alexey Lalo's rather brief and (to my mind) superficial notice on satire and historicism in PN.
https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/24320

Haven't read (neither the study nor Petersburg), just fed a search-engine with "Pynchon Bely". 

It's adequate that you write "possible mentor", because John Krafft couldn't find any proof for this.

"No reliable evidence available to date supports the persistent rumor that Pynchon took a course taught by Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita (1955), although he may have audited Nabokov's classes, known him personally or worked with him informally. Pynchon's most famous instructor of record was M. H. Abrams, later the founding editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature." 
(The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon, p. 10)

More than Nabokov I do like Bulgakov :

Would you recommend Petersburg to me? 



The theme seems valid to me (again, I may be inventing bicycle, so to say), for I have recently re-read Petersburg, and was astonished to find many stylistic parallels, from the construction of dialogues to the use of silly songs, and a whole array of key symbols (including Baedeker, bombs, zeroes, streets and crowds, etc.). What seems to support the idea, is the fact that TRP's possible mentor Nabokov thought Petersburg to be the greatest Russian modernist novel of the 20th century, and an English translation (the first one?) by John Kournos had been available in 1959, so TRP might have read it. The connection with another Russian novel (We, by Zamyatin) had already been inspected, I know. So - please suggest if anything exists in the canon of Pynchon studies )) 
>
>On the informational note, you might be also interested to know that we (Anastasia Gryzunova and myself) have finally finished the Russian translation of GR, and the book is due some time this summer, published by Eksmo Publishers in Moscow. Among other people we are grateful to, there are all members of this list, which fact is duly noted in our acknowledgements )) Thank you guys, you've been of huge help to us, and the archives of the list were in many instances invaluable. 
>
>Mx 
>
>
>
>
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