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Dmitri Nabokov on Natalya Tolstoi; Rilke (fwd)
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From: Dieter E. Zimmer <mail@d-e-zimmer.de>
I am very glad to hear from Dmitri that Nabokov actually knew Rilke's poetry and did not dislike it. I suspected it all along but had no proof. It would be interesting to know whether he read him in German or in some other language, for the essence of Rilke certainly are not his ideas but his infinitely resourceful handling of meter and rhyme, and much of that is lost in translation. The reason why Nabokov once called him a "plaster saint" probably has to do with Rilke's attitude to the Bolshevik revolution around 1925. Unfortunately I have not been able to dig up the notes I had made on the subject a few years ago, but I clearly recall that Rilke managed to believe that the revolution may have been mainly a spiritual event returning the wonderfully profound Russian Soul to Russia. For Nabokov, somebody holding to this mystical variant of pro-Bolshevism (which seems to have been widespread in German intellectual circles of the time) must have been the worst kind of fellow-traveler.
As to Nabokov's attitude toward Germany, the Germans, German culture, etc. I urge everybody to note when the strong opinion he has in mind was written. It will be found that they are all confined between 1934 and 1946, culminating between 1943 and 1945. The reason seems obvious. In a tv interview with me (in 1966) he noted that he had not actually written, in his "flippant little book on Gogol", that he had wanted Germany exterminated to the last beer-mug and forget-me-not but that he considered such a wish, uttered at the height of a war, to be close to poshlost. Certainly he did not consider Goethe to be poshlost but was aware that he was a very great poet. Early in the 1930s, he translated the prefatory poem of "Faust" into Russian; there are echos of "Der Erlkönig" in some of his works. His misgivings about "Werther" (in PEO) were shared by many. If he detected a strain of poshlost in "Faust" (in "Gogol"), he may have been right, but so what? Nabokov was not one to swallow any author wholesale, and there is so very much in "Faust" that it would not surprise me if among it all there also were some poshlost. Nabokov also greatly preferred Kafka to Thomas Mann, and to my mind it is all but impossible to equally appreciate them both; it's either one or the other.
Dieter E. Zimmer
Berlin, January 30, 2003
I am very glad to hear from Dmitri that Nabokov actually knew Rilke's poetry and did not dislike it. I suspected it all along but had no proof. It would be interesting to know whether he read him in German or in some other language, for the essence of Rilke certainly are not his ideas but his infinitely resourceful handling of meter and rhyme, and much of that is lost in translation. The reason why Nabokov once called him a "plaster saint" probably has to do with Rilke's attitude to the Bolshevik revolution around 1925. Unfortunately I have not been able to dig up the notes I had made on the subject a few years ago, but I clearly recall that Rilke managed to believe that the revolution may have been mainly a spiritual event returning the wonderfully profound Russian Soul to Russia. For Nabokov, somebody holding to this mystical variant of pro-Bolshevism (which seems to have been widespread in German intellectual circles of the time) must have been the worst kind of fellow-traveler.
As to Nabokov's attitude toward Germany, the Germans, German culture, etc. I urge everybody to note when the strong opinion he has in mind was written. It will be found that they are all confined between 1934 and 1946, culminating between 1943 and 1945. The reason seems obvious. In a tv interview with me (in 1966) he noted that he had not actually written, in his "flippant little book on Gogol", that he had wanted Germany exterminated to the last beer-mug and forget-me-not but that he considered such a wish, uttered at the height of a war, to be close to poshlost. Certainly he did not consider Goethe to be poshlost but was aware that he was a very great poet. Early in the 1930s, he translated the prefatory poem of "Faust" into Russian; there are echos of "Der Erlkönig" in some of his works. His misgivings about "Werther" (in PEO) were shared by many. If he detected a strain of poshlost in "Faust" (in "Gogol"), he may have been right, but so what? Nabokov was not one to swallow any author wholesale, and there is so very much in "Faust" that it would not surprise me if among it all there also were some poshlost. Nabokov also greatly preferred Kafka to Thomas Mann, and to my mind it is all but impossible to equally appreciate them both; it's either one or the other.
Dieter E. Zimmer
Berlin, January 30, 2003