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Re: Nabokov an anti-Stratfordian?
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There is a parallel to the anti-Stratfordian theme in Nabokov's attitude
towards the authorship of SLOVO O POLKU IGOREVE, which most scholars
believe to be an early 12th century epic while some have maintained that
it's a much later "fake." When Nabokov started his project with Jakobson
and Szeftel in the early 1950s he seems to have shared their opinion that
the epic was genuine. After he had his falling out with Jakobson in 1957,
VN, apparently in order to spite Jakobson further, began to look for
arguments against the epic's authenticity. By the time he published his
translation -- THE SONG OF IGOR'S CAMPAIGN: AN EPIC OF THE TWELTH CENTURY
-- in 1960, he "split" the difference by calling it a 12th century epic
yet outlining the common grounds for skepticism about its origins.
I do think that the "what if" of authorship -- whether of Shakespeare's
plays or of SLOVO -- fascinated him as any interesting myth would. He even
reportedly joked, as I mention in PNINIAD, that one day all his novels
would be attributed to Gordon Fairbanks, the linguist at Cornell (and
"Leonard Blorenge" of PNIN), because Gordon would be successful in
convincing generations of students that he was the only one who truly
knew what Russian ought to be like.
What I am trying to suggest, I guess, is that it may be wrong to treat VN
as a "serious" proponent of this or that theory of authorship. I suspect
he never really doubted either the authorship of Shakespeare's plays or
that of SLOVO. He did enjoy, though, teasing people whom he didn't like
and who, he thought, took themselves entirely too solemnly as "scholars."
Pretending to entertain "heretical" thoughts about authorships and
making those scholars mad was, in all likelihood, sheer fun. He may have
also felt a great sense of advantage over them -- while they could only
speculate about someone else's authorship of great works of art, he was
busy creating his own authorship, and his own great works of art. For
someone who often felt "slighted" at Cornell by people who believed he
was not a "true" scholar like themselves, throwing red meat to
professional PhDs was probably too tempting to resist.
Galya Diment
towards the authorship of SLOVO O POLKU IGOREVE, which most scholars
believe to be an early 12th century epic while some have maintained that
it's a much later "fake." When Nabokov started his project with Jakobson
and Szeftel in the early 1950s he seems to have shared their opinion that
the epic was genuine. After he had his falling out with Jakobson in 1957,
VN, apparently in order to spite Jakobson further, began to look for
arguments against the epic's authenticity. By the time he published his
translation -- THE SONG OF IGOR'S CAMPAIGN: AN EPIC OF THE TWELTH CENTURY
-- in 1960, he "split" the difference by calling it a 12th century epic
yet outlining the common grounds for skepticism about its origins.
I do think that the "what if" of authorship -- whether of Shakespeare's
plays or of SLOVO -- fascinated him as any interesting myth would. He even
reportedly joked, as I mention in PNINIAD, that one day all his novels
would be attributed to Gordon Fairbanks, the linguist at Cornell (and
"Leonard Blorenge" of PNIN), because Gordon would be successful in
convincing generations of students that he was the only one who truly
knew what Russian ought to be like.
What I am trying to suggest, I guess, is that it may be wrong to treat VN
as a "serious" proponent of this or that theory of authorship. I suspect
he never really doubted either the authorship of Shakespeare's plays or
that of SLOVO. He did enjoy, though, teasing people whom he didn't like
and who, he thought, took themselves entirely too solemnly as "scholars."
Pretending to entertain "heretical" thoughts about authorships and
making those scholars mad was, in all likelihood, sheer fun. He may have
also felt a great sense of advantage over them -- while they could only
speculate about someone else's authorship of great works of art, he was
busy creating his own authorship, and his own great works of art. For
someone who often felt "slighted" at Cornell by people who believed he
was not a "true" scholar like themselves, throwing red meat to
professional PhDs was probably too tempting to resist.
Galya Diment