Stubbornness

Author: V. Nabokov
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1998-02-01
Features: I think like a genius, write like a respected writer, but speak like a child. In America, throughout my entire academic career, from a humble lecturer to a full professor, I never presented to an audience without a prepared typescript, and my eyes never left the brightly lit lectern with my notes. On the phone, I often mumbled incoherently, making long-distance callers switch from their own English to a pathological French. At gatherings, if I wanted to cheer people up with a good story, I had to make oral revisions every other sentence. Even describing dreams to my wife over breakfast could only be considered a first draft. In such cases, no one should ask me to be interviewed if "interview" refers to a conversation between two normal people. Earlier, I had at least tried twice, once even in front of a recording device; when the tape was played back, my laughter stopped too. I knew I would never repeat that performance again in my life. Now, I prepare very carefully to ensure I can fan leisurely. The interviewer's questions must be sent to me in writing, and I also answer in writing, publishing them exactly as written. These are three prerequisites. However, the interviewer wants to visit me. He wants to see my pencil paused on the page, wants to see my colored lampshade, my bookshelf, my old white cat sleeping by my feet. He thinks he needs background music, a pretentious informal setting. He also wants as many colorful details as possible, as many as he can remember, whether written down (e.g., "Nabokov—swallows a mouthful of vodka, grinning with mockery—"). Have I any desire to cancel this comfort? Yes, I do. The (some high-quality hair pomade) used for my sparse hair is essentially an ugly emulsion. The person who made the pomade added a bit of green to make it less unattractive—using the traditional beauty parlance, green is meant to suggest the freshness of spring, like pine trees, jade, tree frogs, and the like. However, to make the contents of the bottle appealing, it must be shaken vigorously before use; otherwise, a still bottle will reveal a one-inch-wide green edge, with the unchanged, pure, milky liquid column beneath. In my view, shaking the bottle before use is a principle to be upheld. Similarly, when it comes to printed interview results, I ignore the superficial decorations and retain only the essential substance. My files contain about 40 interview results in several languages, but only a few from British and American journalists are included here. Some were skipped because they were terrible compounds—not just a matter of shaking the bottle a few times, but my authentic answers were muddled with artificial colors of interest to humans, and the manufacturers had added oil and vinegar, making them inseparable. It wasn’t hard to remove a few well-intentioned little tricks (and some vulgar journalistic fabrications), so I gradually eliminated every spontaneous element, restoring the conversation to its original form. This thing ultimately became a clean and orderly article. This is the ideal form that written interviews should take. My novels rarely give me the opportunity to express personal opinions, so I occasionally welcome charming, polite, and wise visitors to suddenly question me. After the interviews in this volume, there are several letters to the editors. These letters are like the "self-explanations" a lawyer would call them—completely the same thing. At the end, there is also a collection of short articles, except for one, all written in America or Switzerland. Swinburne has a perceptive comment on "a gang of vicious poets (who later became critics)." Around the late 1930s, this strange phenomenon was typical in the Russian émigré literary circles in Paris. The aesthetic ideas of Bunin, Hodeievich, and two other outstanding writers were subjected to particularly disgusting attacks by various "mission-driven" critics. During those years, I cleverly mocked those who attacked art, and I was delighted to see the anger my works provoked in that small group. However, today, translating my numerous old articles from awkward Russian into archaic English and explaining how they were once chaotic and how I remedied them—whether for me or for the readers—is a tedious task. I allow myself only one exception: to discuss Hodeievich’s article. To conclude, this collection of my occasional English essays (with the long shadow of Russian cut out) seems to reflect the thoughts of a more amiable "V. Sinyavsky." Speaking of Sinyavsky, the author of Russian émigré memoirs, politicians, poets, and mystics would evoke complex emotions; these people still remember the ambushes we faced in Paris in the 1930s. Despite my stubbornness, today, my expressions of opinion are permeated with gentleness. And so they should be. Vladimir Nabokov, 1973, Montreux.