It was the first time that I heard Nabokov pronounce a
sentence that is rather familiar to me: "Freudians, keep out (please)," quite a
novelty for me!
But there are always new things to notice when one
rereads anything Nabokovian. Now I was surprised by the sentence copied
below:
"Unpacking the
radiant, beautiful, plump advance copy, opening it — and discovering a stupid
oversight committed by me, allowed by me to survive. After a month or so, I get
used to the book’s final stage, to its having been weaned from my brain. I now
regard it with a kind of amused tenderness as a man regards not his son, but the
young wife of his son."
Nabokov is writing about an experience he didn't have
directly (looking at the young wife of his son), but the intensity of the image
he passes on is strangely clear. From a female reader's
perspective, it's almost titillating to try to imagine myself seeing a
Nabokov novel as a "young bride" (fresh, radiant, vulnerable????) - because
there's a level of emotion in Nabokov's writings that reaches me
quite independently of the meaning and content of the plot, actually it's
almost its opposite. As if the fullness of his artistic experience came through
by the link between good and evil.