A few years ago there was a reference at the VN-L about Bakhtin on Doestoevsky's rendition of "various voices" and "polyphonic novel", in contrast to Nabokov's "native versus foreign" speakers or even his "anti-polyphonic feature".

 

A selection of one of the postings ( November 10,2004), by A. Dolinin:

" Nabokov doesn't refer to Bakhtin's theory of so-called "polyphonic novel." As Pekka Tammi
convincingly argued in his "Problems of Nabokov's Poetics" (Helsinki, 1985,
97-101) Nabokov's narrative, in terms of Bakhtinian metaphors, should be
defined as anti-polyphonic: "We may talk of a pronouncedly anti-polyphonic feature in the
author's writing: an overriding tendency to make explicit the presence of a
creative consciousness behind every fictive construction."

 

Recently I quoted VN: " I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author - the joys and difficulties of creation..."

 

Like Lex Luthor's quandary while investigating the secret components of Kryptonite, a fundamental "unknown" remains unexplored in VN's novels and texts ( as in any other author's writings), but this mystery kernel may be mistaken with the mask of a character or even with the author himself .Readers may also discover one or more "keys" in Nabokov's novels but, correct or not, these findings help to maintaing dialogues and open the way to private serendipities.

In my opinion, the VN-List allows this author to become "polyphonic" and his various voices then gain existence through us, outside of his novels.

 

Although we may be impelled to share of VN's "sweet unheard melodies", he may be telling us simply to enjoy watching how he pursues his hidden music, his craft and particular solutions. I don't suppose he ever intended to advise us to stop listening to our own unheard melodies, to enter a misguides quest to hear his particular "silent" song.  "The emotions of the author", he tells us, "are the joys and difficulties of creation". 

 

I imagine that even if Dmitri Nabokov could have knocked more often at his father's door to ask him a thing or two, we would still remain ignorant of his father's "fundamental fantasy", as we all are in relation to anybody's basic projects and dreams ... But, as readers, we may all have our share in the pains and the fun of following an author's aesthetic or mystic search ...