Dear Mr. Brown,
 
I must say I did anticipate your reading. VN's words
sound tantalizingly ambiguous, but since he is
speaking about the creation of world(s), I do think
he means the Bible. But I certainly would not want to
say that he was influenced by it, only that he knew
that holy book. Which reminds me of the anecdote (I am
far from my library at the moment) told in Boyd's VN:
The American Years, regarding stained glass church
windows depicting saints, and VN displayed to his
interlocutor (an expert in such matters) an impressive
knowledge about the various St Johns. The same
anecdote is to be found in another book, Nabokov at
Cornell, perhaps? And the question one may ask is, do
VN's writings evince such a knowledge? I do not think
so.
 
A. Bouazza
 
 

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