venus febriculosa

“But now I found writing such hard going that it often took me  a whole day to compose a single sentence, and no sooner had I thought such a sentence out, with the greatest effort, and written it down, than I saw the awkward falsity of my constructions and the inadequacy of all the words I had employed. If at times some kind of self-deception nonetheless made me feel that I had done a good day’s work, then as soon as I glanced at the page next morning I was sure to find the most appalling mistakes, inconsistencies, and lapses staring at me from the paper.  However much or little I had written, on a subsequent reading it always seemed so fundamentally flawed that I had to destroy it immediately and begin again.  Soon I could not even venture on the first step.”

I relate.

One of the books I am currently reading is Austerlitz, the final novel by German author W.G. Sebald who died in a car accident in 2001. Susan Sontag, for what it’s worth, called him a “contemporary master of the literature of lament and mental restlessness.” I suppose I concur, although it’s difficult to say what, exactly, makes the experience of reading this book so wonderful. The prose is clear but remains atmospheric, like a portion of a Bela Tarr film or a T.S. Eliot poem come to life. It’s surely not lament like the work of Arvo Part, for instance, nor, for that matter, a murky and merciless masterpiece like the 1964 novel Second Skin by another favorite of mine, the American writer John Hawkes. Sebald has an interesting technique of nesting narration, so that the narrator of the novel is relating the narration of his acquaintance Austerlitz who, in turn, is relating the narration of a third party. It is not nearly as unwieldly as it sounds, but it has the curious effect of softly muffling the goings on and quite successfully blurring the line between present and past.  It’s a nice feeling

It’s in French, but VN is speaking English.

First, perhaps, a word about the name of this blog, which appears in the novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.  Alfred Appel, Jr. , in his indispensible The Annotated Lolita  defines it simply as Latin for “slightly feverish Venus.” It refers, of course, to Lolita herself, at this point in the book sick in bed, quite literally with a fever. Later, Humbert tells us, “I definitely realized…how much she looked – had always looked – like Botticelli’s Venus – the same soft nose, the same blurred beauty.”  Beyond the pseudo-scientific terminology, there is something thrilling about the notion of a slightly feverish Venus, a disruption of the placidity in Botticelli’s painting, a hint of an unraveling, a loss control.

I like reading. I enjoy Nabokov. I savor interesting words.