----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 3:31 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: VN & The Germans
Notwithstanding his possible PR strategies, I do
believe that VN was perfectly sincere when he talked to Dieter E. Zimmer - it
was in 1966, more than 20 years after the Gogol book and the quoted letter. In
1962, in Zermatt, Horst Tappe took a few memorable pictures of Nabokov (one of
them "the best ever taken of me" in VN's own words). The
photographer later wrote: "Il m'a fait confiance, malgré mon handicap:
j'étais allemand. Et lui, qui n'aimait pas les Allemands m'a confié plus tard:
'J'ai trois amis allemands'. Son éditeur Rowohlt, son traducteur Zimmer, et
moi." [He trusted me, despite my handicap: I was German. And he, who didn't like
the Germans, told me later: "I have three German friends". His editor Rowohlt,
his translator Zimmer, and me. - Magazine Littéraire, Septembre 1999,
p.45]
I would like to add that VN's comment on "the
amo et odi emotions with which Russia as a nation viewed Germany as a
nation" seems very exact. Herzen, in spite of the fact that
his mother was born in Stuttgart, showed much the same emotions, even with
a little bias towards the odi. One can also remember that VN's father
was educated in Germany, so presumably did not share some of the views of his
favourite writer.
Sergey
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 12:57 AM
Subject: Fw: VN & The
Germans
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "yuri leving"
<leving@usc.edu>
>
>
> > ----------------- Message requiring your approval (5
>
lines) -------------------
> > Whether Nabokov’s words to his German
interviewer were said as a matter of
> courtesy or were a nice PR move
having in mind those “post-war era German
> critics [who] have understood
and appreciated my books,” the writer in fact
> was far more consistent,
as one may suggest, in his private life. In a
> letter to his best school
friend, living in Palestine, Nabokov states most
> boldly: “Whole Germany
must be burnt to ashes several times in a row in
> order to quench my
hatred to it at least slightly, when I am thinking of
> those perished in
Poland” (from the unpublished letter of X.24.1945 to S.
> Rozov, Russian
original in private collection).
> >
> > Yuri Leving
>
>
> >
>