Brian (pianissimo) to Mary H. Efremov "...He also translated it,and that's all we need to know. The pieces can be judged as they stand. The iliad is a great story-poem even if we do not know Homer in detail or as a person." : While the Iliad is undoubtedly great no matter who its author or authors may have been, this hasn't stopped countless readers from (understandably) speculating on....identity and personality...This healthy curiosity is one of the driving forces behind NABOKV-L, for instance, and the vast number of biographies that fill bookstores and libraries.Were someone to tell one of the published Nabokovians here, "VN wrote the books he wrote, and that's all we need to know," he might be advised to duck.

Jansy Mello: My apologies, in the first place, for having addressed you incorrectly in a former posting. Before I isolated M.Efremov's lines above, I felt you'd been making a reference to my comments about aestheticism and to Keats's lines "Beauty is truth.." * and advising me, indirectly, "to duck" because, in a way, I also think that "VN wrote the books he wrote and that's all...". However, please note the careful modulation of "in a way."

There's a lot of invention mingled with historical facts in a biography.Actual words pronounced by any author in a moment of passion, need to be sorted out from other discrepant utterances.

Speculations about Nabokov's secret drives and unconscious fantasies are seldom fair to the author, but they fuel a lot of "titillating" debates and articles: these are more misleading, than informative in connection to VN's novels, plays and poems.

By adding "in a way" I intend to mark my position against many of the so-called "biographies" and "psychological speculations" about Nabokov, without excluding many valuable books about Nabokov (such as the disputed one by Andrew Field, Brian Boyd's and others). Nabokov, himself, wasn't shy about revealing his "reading habits" (SO,p.43), thoughts, feelings, experiences. But he also made a distinction (I couldn't find the interview to quote it here) between this kind of information about his style, the context of his writing, his environment and other interviewer's probings, when they invaded his privacy.

My caveat lies in emphasizing a writer's right to keep personal secrets to himself, and to preserve his intimacy (instead of enjoying pseudo-disclosures such as those I found in D.Maar's "Speak, Nabokov")