Nabakov and Shakespeare and Cervantes

Today is April 23rd, 2009, and it is the birdthday of Vladamir Nabakov and William Shakespeare.  The one born in Saint Petersburg in 1899.  The other, in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564.  Shakespeare also died on his birthday.  So today is also the death day of Shakespeare and Miguel Cervantes, who both died this same day in 1616.

Cervantes is credited with the first modern novel, Don Quixote, which was so self-conscious and complexly embedded within framed narratives that it is impossible to understand the author’s own thought.  For this reason it is a goldmine for professors and grad students who spend their days immersed in dissecting the layers of story and constructing the author’s intent.

Shakespeare is badass because he entertains on so many levels at the same time.  He invented so many words and phrases we would still be hacking poor peasants with spiked maces if it hadn’t been for his elegant word-craft.

Nabakov has inspired many modern masters, including Salman Rushdie, Edmund White and Jhumpa Lahiri.  In contrast to the lives of his tortured protagonists in Lolita and Pale Fire, Nabakov lived the last 20 peaceful years of his life retired with his wife in a hotel in Switzerland, writing books, creating chess problems, and chasing butterflies all over Europe.

Today, it would seem, is an excellent day to start an award-winning script.  Are you up for writing a Shakespearen-Cervantine-Nabakovian masterpiece?

RIP Shakespeare and Cervantes, masters of the English and Spanish language respectively, who have given us so much beauty.  Even though I can’t draw upon quotes from all of them, I know that their literary worlds exist, and they exist despite the fact that I can’t quote more than a handful of lines from each.   All our experience becomes a part of how we go on to experience the world.   And so much of our experience is consciously with us too, though unsaid.  As The Writer’s Almanac brought to my attention yesterday, the poet Louise Glück said, “I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence. … Often I wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary.”  What does McKee say about the gap… something about the space between what we expect and what happens, between what we want and what we need.  I’m sorry to say I lost my copy of McKee’s “Story” in the Madrid bus station.  What is it about Madrid and stuff disappearing?

What does Keats famously say about beauty and truth?  If beauty lies in the gap, in the unsaid, in the eloquent silence, then there could be truth there as well.  So, in thinking about how to make a short film… let’s think less about how to make it innovative (see previous post on Eva Zeisel) and more about how to hit at the gap.