Subject
BIRTHDAY: Interview with an enduring gift to the reader
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Date
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[EDNOTE. Jansy Mello sends this, the first of several birthday tidbits.
-- SES.]
Exactly forty-years ago, in April 23, 1971, Alden Whitman interviewed
Nabokov for the NYT. Nabokov was celebrating his 72nd birthday, in
Switzerland.
Whitman transcribes Nabokov's words, in relation to having surpassed the
biblical span of life:
"Three score and ten sounded, no doubt, very venerable in the days when
life expectancy hardly reached one half of that length. Anyway,
Petersburgan Pediatricians ...never thought I would perform the feat you
mention: a feat of lucky endurance, of paradoxically detached willpower,
of good work and good wine, of healthy concentration on a rare bug or a
rhythmic phrase. Another things that might have been of some help is the
fact that I am subject to the embarrassing qualms of superstition: a
number, a dream, a coincidence can affect me obsessively—though not in
the sense of absurd fears but as fabulous, and on the whole rather
bracing, scientific enigmas incapable of being stated, let alone
solved...My life thus far has surpassed splendidly the ambitions of
boyhood and youth...In the first decade of our dwindling century, during
trips with my family to Southern Europe, I imagined in bedtime reveries
what it would be like to become an exile who longed for a remote, sad
and (right epithet coming) unquenchable Russia under the eucalipti of
exotic resorts. Lenin and his police nicely arranged the realization of
that fantasy. At the age of 12 my fondest dream was a visit to the
Karakorum range in search of butterflies...Twenty-five years later I
successfully sent myself, in the part of my hero's father (see my novel
"The Gift") to explore, net in hand, the mountains of Central Asia. At
15 I visualized myself as a world-famous author of 70 with a mane of
wavy white hair. Today I am practically bald...I would say that the main
favor I ask of the serious critic is sufficient perceptiveness to
understand that whatever term or trope I use, my purpose is not to be
facetiously flashy or grotesquely obscure but to express what I feel and
think with the utmost truthfulness and perception."
An invaluable warning to his future critics explicitly distinguishes his
penchant for word-games, puzzles and unreliable narrators, from his
conviction that, whatever shape, name or ghost he chooses to bring forth
his sentences, his purpose remains to express what he "feels and thinks
with the utmost truthfulness and perception."
This is a rare and enduring gift to a reader - although his words are to
be interpreted quite literally, without ascribing his "temporal"
(personal?) signature to them. After all he could affirm, with the same
splendid sincerity: "Chess problems demand from the composer the same
virtues that characterize all worthwile art: originality, invention,
conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
-- SES.]
Exactly forty-years ago, in April 23, 1971, Alden Whitman interviewed
Nabokov for the NYT. Nabokov was celebrating his 72nd birthday, in
Switzerland.
Whitman transcribes Nabokov's words, in relation to having surpassed the
biblical span of life:
"Three score and ten sounded, no doubt, very venerable in the days when
life expectancy hardly reached one half of that length. Anyway,
Petersburgan Pediatricians ...never thought I would perform the feat you
mention: a feat of lucky endurance, of paradoxically detached willpower,
of good work and good wine, of healthy concentration on a rare bug or a
rhythmic phrase. Another things that might have been of some help is the
fact that I am subject to the embarrassing qualms of superstition: a
number, a dream, a coincidence can affect me obsessively—though not in
the sense of absurd fears but as fabulous, and on the whole rather
bracing, scientific enigmas incapable of being stated, let alone
solved...My life thus far has surpassed splendidly the ambitions of
boyhood and youth...In the first decade of our dwindling century, during
trips with my family to Southern Europe, I imagined in bedtime reveries
what it would be like to become an exile who longed for a remote, sad
and (right epithet coming) unquenchable Russia under the eucalipti of
exotic resorts. Lenin and his police nicely arranged the realization of
that fantasy. At the age of 12 my fondest dream was a visit to the
Karakorum range in search of butterflies...Twenty-five years later I
successfully sent myself, in the part of my hero's father (see my novel
"The Gift") to explore, net in hand, the mountains of Central Asia. At
15 I visualized myself as a world-famous author of 70 with a mane of
wavy white hair. Today I am practically bald...I would say that the main
favor I ask of the serious critic is sufficient perceptiveness to
understand that whatever term or trope I use, my purpose is not to be
facetiously flashy or grotesquely obscure but to express what I feel and
think with the utmost truthfulness and perception."
An invaluable warning to his future critics explicitly distinguishes his
penchant for word-games, puzzles and unreliable narrators, from his
conviction that, whatever shape, name or ghost he chooses to bring forth
his sentences, his purpose remains to express what he "feels and thinks
with the utmost truthfulness and perception."
This is a rare and enduring gift to a reader - although his words are to
be interpreted quite literally, without ascribing his "temporal"
(personal?) signature to them. After all he could affirm, with the same
splendid sincerity: "Chess problems demand from the composer the same
virtues that characterize all worthwile art: originality, invention,
conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity."
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/