Nabokov on Kafka (1989)
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- This is a short TV movie based on Nabokov's lecture at Cornell upon "Metamorphosis," Kafka's bizarre story about a man who wakes up one morning to discover he has turned into a giant bug. This was filmed at 1989 by Peter Medak, and Christopher Plummer is portraying Vladimir Nabokov.
Wow! Thank you for sharing this, what a jewel! brilliant Nabokov, brilliant Plummer
What a marvelous actor! No one has played such a wide variety of roles! RIP Christopher Plummer.
My respect and appreciation of Nabokov grew tenfold after witnessing this remarkable man step into a storyteller's shoes. There can be no doubt after watching this, literature ran through his veins, not mere blood. Thank you so much for sharing this with the world.
FYI this isn't Nabokov,
It's an actor, Christopher Plummer portraying Vladimir Nabokov.
@@louisnooope OMG! I just googled it, they looked so alike at a certain point. That explains why he is such a great storyteller in that class, all great actors are. You kinda blew my whole theory out of the water. Thanks for letting me know.
What? Forget about this actor. Nabokov"s works are some of the greatest in English literature. You'll notice Americans are quick to claim him even though he was from Russia.
His ingenuity borders on incredible. Of course, no Russian speak that British English rich and fluent as he did any more. He is undoubtedly the very last of the Mohicans of the great literary tradition dating from the heart of that golden age represented by Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy and Dostoyevski. I am inclined to imagine his American audience of the day had been rather tempted to write by his example, his ardent vigor, in spite of the ageing body, his general drive of an artist. In that sense, the Kafkean beetle lurks in each and every of us endowed with a few droplets of talent, for it is this kind of metamorphosis that turns us as human beings into a creature of creation, however trying and even repugnant such prowess may appear to the unproductive and secondary mind of an onlooker.
Dude do you write this is like a Delillo essay
Totally, mid century American stylists owe so much to the guy.
You have to admire the old school actors , though strongly Shakespearian . Its sheer class and perfect diction and modulations
Man, what an outstanding actor
It's amazingly performed, love it . Christopher plummer RIP .
yes few star actors today would do an intellectual exercise like this let alone know what it means
The greatest short story ever written.
It bugs me.
what an incredible little film...much thanks!
Imagine knowing your English professor was writing Lolita in his downtime...
🤠
😂😂
Excellent performance that captures the personality of Nabokov.
Thank you for the video!
absolute gem
Just remarkable. Thank you.
Amazing. That story honestly gave me chills. I've never heard it before.
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@@frankuvlkan aww too bad..
I could watch him go through all of Kafka’s work, in an epic 6 hour movie of just this 😂
10/10 to the show how’s for pronouncing Vladimir Nabokov with an authentic sound of a Russian speaker.
oy... Kafka was not a "petty clerk" in a Gogolian office -- he was an executive at a large insurance firm, and his legal knowledge of labor insurance issues was invaluable to his company
Please dont delete this video forever please please please please...i am begging u🥺
Fantastic! Thank you!
Nabokov was native English speaker, he was trilingual
Well, most educated Russians then were
@@StopFear если вы сравните высокообразованную русскую интелигенцию с Набоковым, вы поймёте: что это разные измерения относительно понимания ритма и стиля английского языка, даже в случае пренебрежения сложностью лингвистических конструкций и оборотов, не говоря уже про запас слов.
You're wrong.
Is the English language the native language of Russia? No. So you're absolutely incorrect.
@@edgarbleikur1929 Can you even imagine how many nations live in Russia? Anyway, it doesn't matter in which country you have lived. What matters is what kind of person you are and what kind of meaning you possess.
Conrad taught himself English through reading. He wanted to read Shakespeare in original.
Humour in Kafka, Absurd, Marx in the novel America. Vera Nabokov translated Kafka for his husband. She was Jewish. He had a quarrel with Soljenitsin about the antisemitism of Alexander
Superbly done
This is based upon his collected lectures, edited by Fredson Bowers. One volume on Russian literature, one on English literature and one on Don Quixote. There was little to no critical theory in his lectures. Most of them illuminate the practical issues of writing stories.
My favorite things about Kafka is how he treats corpses , or bodies destined for death: with utter contempt, because… that’s how it is
Charlie day had to have been playing this character in flowers for Charlie lol
Без влияния такой литературы , интеллект все больше подчиняется инстинктам - практически возвышая их . Поэзия Владимира Набокова не уступит его прозе!
wonderful story by Franz Kafka!
"The passion of the scientist, and the precision of the artist" is probably the one quote that in my opinion separates a good writer from a great one.
I don't wish to sound unkind because Christopher Plummer would easily be one of my favorite actors of all time but I feel like his Nabokov accent drifted into a French affectation. I don't know Nabokov so perhaps he knew French as well as English? Still it's a remarkable performance like most of his roles. RIP Christopher Plummer 💜
From memory, Speak Memory, Nabokov's autobiography, saw the author describe himself as 'a pefectly normal trilingual child in a family with a large library'. He spoke French, the lingua franca of the aristocracy, before he learned Russian.
@@trevorbailey1486 Ah good to know. Thank you for the clarification.
He spoke English with a French accent and French with a Russian accent.
this has nothing to do with any accent but the intellect of Nabokov and the audible excitement of his voice
I hear Peter Sellers saying “that is not my dog” as Inspector Clouseau…”that is not my wolf” 😊
The real question is how Gregor the beetle mysteriously changes its size!
He turned into a beatle but never played with John Lennon.
Wow!
Why do they laugh whenever he says something profound and frantically write notes whenever he mentions names or facts?
Kafka was born into the Austro-Hungarian empire as Czechoslovakia was not brought into being until after WWI
Please explain the important notes to take away from such lecture?
1959 was a great year for literature like lolita and naked lunch novels that led the way for such wonderful works as the atrocity exhibition and last exit to Brooklyn clockwork orange (1962 if not mistaken) and twelve to name but a few.
I think there is something off with this narration of the Metamorphosis which might not have been approved by Nabokov. It is really great, but there is something subtle nuance missing here. It might have come from the actor’s perception of the book. I might be wrong. Any feels the same?
What was the name of this television show?
Fine performance!
Grazie
Number pad a stream deck should be it’s own video.
Pynchon's alma mater too.
holy jumping cats that's great
I thot for a bit this WAS Nabokov on Kafka. It's Plummer pretending. WTFk.
Is the “Nabokov” in this video actually Nabokov or is this a reenactment for the show?
Already mentioned: Christopher Plummer as Nabokov. Someone needs to get an eyecheck.
@@ad0906013someone needs to try to be more decent.
@@ad0906013 Shut up
While the psychology of Humbert Humbert is very literary and well-thought out in the book, I find that there is nothing particularly interesting or more than mundane in his depiction of Dolores' psychology.
Franz Kafka is a much more accomplished writer, at the sense of absurdity and psychological confusion of adults making sexual gestures, although this is only contained implicitly in his work, it never explicitly posited itself as being about molestation or rape, but it did have those feelings of societal absurdism and the subjectivity and awareness of the desires of another person not equating to how one imagines or thinks of oneself much better and more interestingly.
If it weren't for the interesting nature of the character of Humbert Humbert, Lolita would be a very empty book.
The raptures are very one-dimensional, and once you get the quirk or gimmick of the book's controversial surface, nothing in it is really that offensive or shocking, unless its to the taste of the palette of a rigidly moralist conservative mindset of a bygone period of time in which the novel gained success through its publicity of its own censorship for its simple ability to have the gimmick of being about a naughty subject, but not for having a particularly original way of expressing kitsch ironic usage of romantic 19th century love prose to apply to contradictions in its scenario plotlines for cheap thrills of reading something daring and bold in its portrayal of a taboo set of themes.
It is exactly what it appears to be; an urbane, Russian aristocrat bored in his life having fun giving writing to scandalize a spectacle in public that's imagination loves to feed on the forbidden thoughts of the public bad guy, who is Humbert Humbert, in the same way aristocratic newspaper men in New South Wales used to enjoy scandalizing the public by telling of all the bawdry and unwholesome tales of how the local alcoholic hang man romantically tried to marry his wife, a prostitute, in its chronicles of the wildly mundane and bored reading moral majority, which would love the sarcastic use of wit and irony in the romantic satire of the hang men.
In contrast Kafka was not writing for public reactions of people, Kafka even tried to impel as his last wishes that his writings should have been put into the fire - because Kafka was more ambitious than Nabokov, Kafka was so ambitious his works themselves he wanted to destroy, as his own aim of in his words making a book that could break the ice of the human feeling with a sharp edge of an axe, wasn't an aim of a popular man, or a man who had literary success and privilege, but of a man broken in his heart and sharing an imaginative, original and completely new entire philosophy of how the entire world works through his pain.
To me Nabokov was a best-Times-selling novelist of the type he portrayed and made a fame of himself to be subverting, whereas Kafka was a true genius.
I don't know much about Nabokov, but I think the analysis of Kafka's Metamorphosis was brilliant. However, I can not say I liked Plummer's pompous sounding delivery, which was overly dramatic for my taste. Being an aristocrat, Nabokov may have sounded somewhat like that. I don't know. But the way Plummer spoke reminded me of William F. Buckley Jr. debating James Baldwin, the inflections and pompousness that are meant to indicate good breading and sophistication.
you are a sad cliché...
@@sojourn-gv4uenew favorite comeback
very well breaded he was
@@douglasgerge6434 lol
Why 1989 if Nobokov died in 1977?
the movie is from 1989
Am I really the only person who'd prefer a normal reading of Nabokov's lecture to this obnoxious imitation? Especially his aghast, humourless delivery of the text itself
You know what this film stock needs? More red.
Два гения
Fun stuff...
Plummer became crap with egoyan.
Wow this guy is clearly like to give spoilers
In real Life Nabokov did speak with a strong Russian accent. It is impossible to completely eliminate foreigh accent, unless you move to a country under the age of 3. After 3, hasta la vista, baby, you will always have a foreign accent. you watch interviews with Nabokov online.
you're so confident and so wrong
I wouldn`t say that he speaks with a Russian accent, but he definitely speaks differently from native speakers. He has a very peculiar intonation which disappears when he starts speaking Russian (I watched an interview where he has read the first paragraph of Lolita in English and then in Russian). You listen to him in English and go "yeah, sounds right" and then you listen to him in Russian and its "YES THIS IS IT"