Nabokov stated that “the nationality of a
worthwhile writer is of secondary importance […]. The writer’s art is his real
passport. His identity should be immediately recognized by a special pattern or
unique coloration” (Strong Opinions, 63)...“I am
bored by writers who join the social-comment racket. I despise the corny
Philistine fad of flaunting four-letter words. I also refuse to find merit in a
novel just because it is by a brave Black in Africa or a brave White in Russia —
or by any representative of any single group in America. Frankly, a national,
folklore, class, masonic, religious, or any other communal aura involuntarily
prejudices me against a novel, making it harder for me to peel the offered fruit
so as to get at the nectar of possible talent” (Strong Opinions,
113)*
An international writer's passport, as entertained by Nabokov, is
obviously not expressive of any paperwork that is
addressed to immigration officers. However, I was surprised that
Nabokov's passport isn't applicable everywhere among the various schools
of art criticism.
While I was going through old magazines that I needed to
trash, I found one about American XXth Century literature from the
perspective of Brazilian Art- criticism: "A Literatura Norte-Americana do
Século 20" (Cult, n.35, Ano 12). It was divided into four sections: (1)Formative
Years;(2) Post-war prose; (3) Poetry, its icons and movements;(4) A brief
panorama of theatrical prose-writing. It starts
by mentioning Ralph Elisson and Sherwood Anderson, before it moves to
the three greats, Faulkner, Hemmingway and Fitzgerald, and then goes
back to Raymond Carver, Carson McCullers, J.D.Salinger. In the second
chapter, Kurt Vonnegut, Jerzy Kosinki, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph
Ellison, Ken Keysey are mentioned together with Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and
Joseph Heller, before considering Conte's "fabrication of chaos" with
John Barth, Barthelme, Sorrentino, Don deLillo, Robert Coover and Pynchon. Next
are the poets (Pound, Eliot, Williams Carlos Williams...Rothemberg,
Bernstein), aso usw, etc and Vladimir Nabokov's name
isn't mentioned anywhere among those American authors who (as I
surmise) speak to an unspecified group of Brazilian scholars.
The absence of Nabokov's name from this particular group is not
only a matter of "great art" versus something else, or only a consequence
of conflicting literary schools, philosophical or political
postures. I used to thrive by conjectures that were
similar to Nabokov's "transcendent perspective" (G.Green)
and closed my eyes to any discrepant proposals and yet...it just occurred
to me that, unawares, I always preferred Kinbote's truly "a
chaotic" position to Shade's staid sentimentality and madness.
.
..........................................................
*Quotes copied from:
revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1473 -
excerpt from first paragraph
by Geoffrey Green ( in
"Beyond Modernism and Postmodernism: Vladimir Nabokov’s Fiction of Transcendent
Perspective") who argues that only "on a secondary basis is it useful
to observe the proximate affiliation or affinity (from an historical
perspective) that might shed additional insight or illumination on the
achievement of the artist...From our contemporary vantage point, obsessed with
“difference,” it is refreshing to appreciate Nabokov’s insistence on a shared
literary apperception: that great art may move and affect deeply responsive
readers across culture, across gender, and across social and historical
boundaries."