[ilds] sunny trifles

[Charles Sligh]

On 4/23/11 1:27 AM, tib pas wrote:

>     The quotation "Comme l'on serait..." is from Flaubert's 17 February 1853 letter to Louise Collet.
>     More athttp://flaubert.univ-rouen.fr/correspondance/conard/outils/1853.htm

I have already sent my regards to tib pas for his pluckiness.

Of course, there is never merely text.  Context matters.

        /Lectures on Literature/
        <http://books.google.com/books?id=jP5-XRoUVBgC&lpg=PA1&dq=nabokov%20lectures%20on%20literature%20%22sunny%20trifles%22&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false>
        Vladimir Nabokov
        ed. Fredson Bowers

It is certainly possible that the opening paragraphs came to my mind 
because I spent time at Virginia studying scholarly editing in the 
program drawn up by Professor Bowers.

But I also try hold myself to Nabokov's ethic.  Details matter.  
Lingering over them with love matters even more.

Enjoy!

C&c.
>
>         "How to be a Good Reader" or "Kindness to Authors"---something
>         of that sort might serve to provide a subtitle for these
>         various discussions of various authors, for my plan is to deal
>         lovingly, in loving and lingering detail, with several
>         European masterpieces. A hundred years ago, Flaubert in a
>         letter to his mistress made the following remark: /Comme l'on
>         serait savant si l'on connaissait bien seulement cinq à six
>         livres/: "What a scholar one might be if one knew well only
>         some half a dozen books."
>
>         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. Nothing is more boring or
>         more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, /Madame
>         Bovary/, with the preconceived notion that it is a
>         denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember
>         that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new
>         world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that
>         new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something
>         brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we
>         already know. When this new world has been closely studied,
>         then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds,
>         other branches of knowledge.
>



-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************

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