Don Stanley [to JM's VN gives
us to understand that he cannot become an exile since he carries the artist's
passport and that his native country is a state of mind. In this context, what
does it mean "I'll not surrender"?] He
means he will never surrender his memories. They are all safe in his head, where
Stalin and the rest of the superhuman crew can’t get at them. There is a
letter somewhere about how he wished he had immortalized every blade of
Vyra grass. He said he had the happiest childhood imaginable. We all live
via memory, but Nabokov especially.
Alexey
Sklyarenko [corrects JM] :... Ganin is the main character in Mary. The
hero in Glory is Martyn Edelweiss.
JM: Thank you for your
replies, AS's apt correction and DS's interesting
interpretation.
Memories are dependent on how they are registered
as images, sensations, emotions, gestures, language. Perhaps we
could add to Don Stanley's views about VN's refusal to "surrender his
memories," Nabokov's independence from a Soviet-determined use of
the Russian language in art. In this respect certain paragraphs of "The
Luzhin Defense," (among others ) came immediately to my mind.
In these, unlike his more objective answers to his
English interviewers, he expands on his recollections,
angers and his thoughts about ideological pressures,
using his native language and inscribing it as a
constitutive part of his novel's body and soul.
I'm still unsure about what else, besides memories
(and his Russian?) could he have meant by "I'll
not surrender."