Not
wanting to labour this topic beyond bearance, I nevertheless believe that
telling points need addressing, or what’s a discussion forum for? Too often,
meseems, good but unwelcome chess moves in the argument are silently disregarded
by posters, who counter with poker faces. This is not playing the
game.
Suellen: My contention
is that because Nabokov wanted to be an
American writer he immersed himself in American literature and found in Melville a tradition that he
could graft himself onto. This he
did at least in
I’m happy to say that although I
haven’t read Pierre or the
Ambiguities I have done a little browsing on the title, and have been sent
scurrying off to immerse myself in it. At first I was flippantly reminded of Twelfth Night or What you Will as a
third parallel title, but the following review from 1852 has so intrigued me
that
“Pierre; or the Ambiguities is, perhaps,
the craziest fiction extant. It has scenes of unmistakeable power. The
characters, however false to nature, are painted with a glowing pencil, and many
of the thoughts reveal an intellect, the intensity and cultivation of which it
is impossible to doubt. But the amount of utter trash in the volume is almost
infinite --- trash of conception, execution, dialogue and sentiment. Whoever
buys the book on the strength of Melville's reputation, will be cheating himself
of his money, and we believe we shall never see the man who has endured the
reading of the whole of it....
Comment upon the [plot] is needless. But even this string of nonsense is
equalled by the nonsense that is strung upon it, in the way of crazy sentiment
and exaggerated passion. What the book means, we know not. To save it from
almost utter worthlessness, it must be called a prose poem, and even then, it
might be supposed to emanate from a lunatic hospital rather than from the quiet
retreats of
Anyway, even
before reading it, I am very happy to agree that
Suellen: Of course I
could go on at length but I'll stop
here simply to say that Nabokov stated over and over his love and affinity for
Here are some more
quotes from Strong Opinions [ McGraw-Hill, 1973.
Nabokov's first collection of "public prose," interviews, letters to the editor,
and articles] about VNs sense of himself as an American
"I think
of myself as an American writer who has once been a Russian one."
"I am as American as an
April in
"I am 1/3 American --- good
American flesh keeping me warm and safe."
"I am an American, I feel
American, and I like that feeling"
"I see myself as an American
writer...".
These quotes, at first glance, seem
very compelling, especially the last two. On second thoughts the first three
strike me as slightly dubious. I do think that the dates they were uttered, as
well as the contexts in which they were made, also have to be given close
consideration. I am reminded of the popular statesman who famously declared “Ich
bin ein Berliner”, and the political context in which he made
it.
Although I have already taken MR’s
earlier points about how and why VN
came to move to Switzerland with due respect, I still can’t help feeling that
they are insufficient on their own to explain a wholesale change of domicile
from 1959 onwards until his death, unless the Swiss environment was
fundamentally more congenial to the family. Somewhere I remember reading that
V&VN never owned a home in their entire lives, so I suppose they were in any
case constitutionally peripatetic. I regret I still tend to believe that VN in
Although I sincerely trust that
these remarks are not being interpreted as “snobby”, perhaps I ought to explain
what was I trying to say by suggesting that European literature/values were
elitist rather than democratic. But perhaps I ought not to go on too
long.
Two more things,
though.
Flipping through Jekyll and Hyde, I
noticed that VN got his “Danish” name etymologies from “an old book on
surnames”, on which the inaccuracies have to be blamed.
Carolyn’s thought that VN owned the
1947 Cresset edition of Hogg would have to mean that VN inserted the echo into
his 1965 translation of the 1932 original. The previous edition, in about 1922,
was not issued by Cresset (I believe).
Charles