Word: poshlost
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...culture," said Bly. "It turns out that we can put down a revolution as well as the Russians in Budapest, we can destroy a town as well as the Germans did at Lidice, all with our famous unconcern." For his hyperbole-the kind of thing that Vladimir Nabokov calls poshlost-Bly drew some expected cheers, and a resounding volley of jeers...
...slow story some contrapuntal rhythm and social significance, Lelouch cuts from shots of the triangle (filmed in Technicolor), to monochromatic scenes of conflict in Africa and Asia, presumably covered by the hero. The vulgar-cliche style of these sequences can only be described in Nabokov's term, "poshlost." The reporter self-righteously editorializes: "The Nazis tortured because of a guilty conscience from oppressing Europe during the war . . . In Viet Nam, the U.S. is in the same situation ..." Meanwhile the horrors of battle are shown in pictures as stilted as window displays, the blood stylistically spattered as if war were...
...Poshlost, says he, means "corny trash, vulgar cliches, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic and dishonest pseudo-literature, these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know...
...Poshlost speaks in such concepts as 'America is no better than Russia' or 'We all share in Germany's guilt.' The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as 'the moment of truth,' 'charisma,' 'existential' (used seriously), 'dialogue' (as applied to political talks between nations) and 'vocabulary' (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Viet Nam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name, that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, that is simple, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays...
Numerous contemporary writers obviously produce poshlost or are, for other reasons, Nabokov's black pets. "Many accepted authors simply do not exist for me. Their names are engraved on empty graves, their books are dummies, they are complete nonentities insofar as my taste in reading is concerned. Brecht, Faulkner, Camus, many others, mean absolutely nothing to me, and I must fight a suspicion of conspiracy against my brain when I see blandly accepted as 'great literature' by critics and fellow authors Lady Chatterley's copulations or the pretentious nonsense of Mr. Pound, that total fake. I note he has replaced...