#reality and fiction and the ways that fiction (art specifically) often paradoxically transcends reality

[dreampearls]

oughhhhh

#oc rambling incoming Sorry #okay i am thinking of how to translate pianos story into genshin bc so much of her character revolves around this contention between #reality and fiction and the ways that fiction (art specifically) often paradoxically transcends reality #and how the two are presented as diametric opposites despite that not being the case at all; theyre reflections of each other and are #carefully intertwined as each builds upon the other #art and artist; creation and creator; author and audience; all being part of one huge ouroboros #in which each party constitutes the other i.e. ''we are what we eat'' #and this concept is juxtaposed with the concept of connection and humanity i.e. we are collages of each other #we are every little fragment from every little moment that passes us by and we carry bits and pieces of all the people we have ever loved #we constitute each other #and this can be used for incredible connection and kindness and fulfillment #as well as facilitation for unimaginable hurt and violence #SO. with those as the core concepts. #i think pianos story can be translated into something similar or adjacent given the existence of irminsul #literally being able to turn reality into fiction and vice versa #and the really obvious thing of how teyvat's ''true reality'' or original timeline can only be preserved using fables #piano as a ghost because she is a work of fiction brought to life via irminsul? #something compeltely artificial only given meaning because it is observed by others? #because someone else wanted it to be there... #huh okay. add that one to the list (throwing her in a box with scara and albedo)

[literary-structures]

[Nabokov’s] method in Chapter 4 [of The Gift] was to invert the historical dialectic using its own tools. Rather than, in the conventional Belinskian manner, have historical process determine artistic production, Fyodor has his art determine history, as his mock-biography takes on a reality which renders the historical Chernyshevsky a mere copy of his later literary incarnation. The effect of this upon Zina, Fyodor’s ideal reader, is that she “got so used to considering him as belonging to Fyodor, and partly to her, that his actual life in the past appeared to her as something of a plagiarism.” The striking implication of this is that artistic time is bound by rules other than historical ones. The constant evolution of literary form, as outlined by Nabokov in [the unpublished lecture] “Batiushkov and Gnedich,” takes place in complete isolation from history and yet in complete knowledge of it. It is worth briefly exploring this important point—that Nabokov’s model of artistic evolution is both temporal and yet in some sense independent of time as we conventionally understand it. This apparent paradox is elaborated in “Father’s Butterflies,” a discarded addendum to The Gift, in relation to the evolutionary theory proposed by Fyodor’s father. It is not species that evolve, he proposes, but rather nature herself: “Just as an increase in the complexity of the brain is accompanied by a multiplication of concepts, so the history of nature demonstrates a gradual development in nature herself of the basic concept of species and genus as they take form. We are right in saying quite literally, in the human, cerebral sense, that nature grows wiser as time passes, that in a given period it has reached this or that specific stage.” If we accept the analogy between Nabokov’s theories of natural and artistic evolution, then we can see that in this sense, the evolution of literary form is temporal. However, Fyodor goes on to suggest a notion of atemporal design in the way that evolution takes place: “Long before the dawn of mankind, nature had already erected stage sets in expectation of future applause, the chrysalis of the Plum Thecla […] was already made up to look like bird droppings, the whole play, performed nowadays with such subtle perfection, had been readied for production, only awaited the sitting down of the foreseen and inevitable spectator, our intelligence of today (for tomorrow’s, a new show was in preparation).” Here it becomes evident that Nabokov’s evolutionary model provides for an omniscient consciousness existing outside time which has “already” prepared a design to unfold within it. This concept is a familiar feature of Nabokov’s metaphysics, and several critics have followed his lead in noting how Nabokov’s novels are often constructed in a way that suggests the author himself is impersonating such a consciousness within his fictional world. I am concerned, though, with how Nabokov’s model of natural time relates to his perspective on the historical, and in this case it suggests transcendence and a determining force over it. The irony is that the paradoxical operation of evolution both within and without time is also to be found in Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, where the “world spirit” is on one hand constantly evolving, “a being whose end is not the finished product but the activity of production,” and on the other is also “eternally present to itself; it has no past, and remains forever the same in all its vigor and strength.” Once more, then, Nabokov is found to assimilate and then subvert Hegel, appropriating his own models to resist the “left Hegelians” who followed him.

Will Norman, Nabokov, History and the Texture of Time (p. 11-2)

#hegel #nabokov #time