...I found the idea Lish editing VN very
amusing...
Yes, perhaps. I don't know Lish, but the idea of editing Nabokov
is not in itself ludicrous. Shakespeare has been edited beautifully,
for example by Trevor Nunn. (Twelfth Night) And Kubrick was so bold as
to rewrite a Nabokov work (screenplay), improving it in the
process--with the result received graciously by Himself).
Just a trifle I ran across while reading
about the last days of Swift in Craik's "The Life of Jonathan
Swift" (1894):
"Looking at
himself in the glass, he was said to have exclaimed in pity, 'Poor old
man!'."
As one would expect, the Dean had a more encompassing view of his
own death. Here's a jolly bit of his poem on the subject."
(In the words of "Someone", "Death is easy; what's hard
is comedy.")
"See, how the Dean begins to break!
Poor gentleman, he droops apace!
You plainly find it in his face.
That old vertigo in his head
Will never leave him till he's dead.
Besides, his memory decays:
He recollects not what he says;
He cannot call his friends to mind;
Forgets the place where last he dined;
Plyes you with stories o'er and o'er,
He told them fifty times before.
How does he fancy we can sit
To hear his out-of-fashioned wit?
But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
Faith! he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a quarter:
In half the time he talks them round,
There must another set be found.
"For poetry he's past his prime:
He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
His fancy sunk, his Muse a jade.
I'd have him throw away his pen; -
But there's no talking to some men!"
And then their tenderness appears,
By adding largely to my years:
"He's older than he would be reckoned,
And well remembers Charles the Second.
He hardly drinks a pint of wine;
And that, I doubt, is no good sign.
His stomach too begins to fail;
Last year we thought him strong and hale,
But now he's quite another thing:
I wish he may hold out till spring."
Then hug themselves, and reason thus:
"It is not yet so bad with us!"
Walter Miale