A.S[ to JM's "Your
knowledge of the Russian language, literature and Nabokov is an
inexaustible source of richness for you..."] Richness? You are joking.
I am like Humbert as he leaves, a contented pauper, Windmuller's office, or
like Pnin as he sobs before Joan Clements saying: "I
haf nofing left, nofing!" ...
JM: I just
read (BBC, Daily News, etc) about Grigory Perelman, a
mathematician who lives in St.Petersburg. He discovered the algebraic
proof for "Poincare's Conjecture," but he refused the
million-dollar prize, offered by the Clay Institute (Cambridge, Mass),
stating that he already has everything he wishes for. In 2006 he'd also refused the Fields medal and there
were even other prizes before that.Are there then two Russian "contented
paupers", happy with their special abilities?
I have no special riches and, even
resorting to Nabokov's endless source, I sometimes feel drained
(discussions are such fun, but "pleasant
tussles" seldom occur).
Probably, though, I'm afflicted by the same
symptom that plagued Beckett's "Molloy" (VN's favorite among SB's novels):
"Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say
what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that
is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition." ( and
here I shift a bunch of pebbles from one pocket into the other, reaching
out to suck on a fresh one, starting a new cycle of repetitions).
To keep on churning and chewing, here comes
another interesting tidbit from the EW/VN missives:
In his letter 161 (FEb.9,1947) Nabokov
writes: "In historical and political matters you are
partisan of a certain interpretation which you regard as absolute." (
& one may almost miss the cruel proximity bt "a partisan
interpretation," and an "absolute interpretation"). Almost exactly two
years later (letter 192), Nabokov will choose the "z" in "partizan", to invert it into "nazitrap," in an otherwise very affectionate letter to his
friend.