Steve Arons [on JM's quote from Pushkin about "le bonheur"] These quotes are from two different letters ...This is a fuller extract of the "athée du bonheur" quote; the thought is more subtle: "Ce que vous me dites de la sympathie est bien vrai et bien délicat. Nous sympathisons avec les malheureux par une espèce d’égoïsme: nous voyons que, dans le fond, nous ne sommes pas les seuls. Sympathiser avec le bonheur suppose une âme bien noble et bien désintéressée. Mais le bonheur...... c’est un grand peut-être, comme le disait Rabelais du paradis ou de l’éternité. Je suis l’athée du bonheur; je n’y crois pas, et ce n’est qu’auprès de mes bons et anciens amis que je suis un peu sceptique."


Jansy Mello: Thank you very much for the links to the two distinct letters, and to the "Rabelais quote." Indeed, these two are different in every sense and mood. 

Pushkin seems to be describing how he suffers under envy, noting that for him it's easier to sympathize with those who suffer, than with happy people. This play with an unnamed "envious state" leads him to show his disbelief in happiness, that is, that there can be no truly happy people while he feels so miserable! There's no doubt something quite subtle (rethoric?) in this construction. 

 

In Pushkin's lines, Rabelais is presented as one who, although unsure, keeps his mind open to the eventuality of there existing a paradise and eternity. This might have also been VN's vision. Now Pushkin,himself, chose to close the undecidable issue concerning "le bonheur"- or, at least, while he is being kept away from his beloved, held up by a succession of quarantines. Happiness simply doesn't exist....only her affection (and that of his friends) will allow him a measure of scepticism.

 

This is one of the points that interested me when I compared Pushkin's interpretation of Rabelais's "grand potato" as related to paradise and eternity (for me it merely suggested the Godhead, without necessarily implying in a posthumous heaven or hell), to Nabokov's own attitude towards the "hereafter" presented through Shade, in the IPH canto (with the customary mingle of seriousness and blague).

In his early letter about Pale Fire's main character (an ex-King, an atheist), he considers that the issue of the "heretofore" and "hereafter" has been "beautifully solved."