[See EDNote below Sam Schuman's post]


Subject:
Nabokov and Shakespeare
From:
Samuel Schuman <sschuman@ret.unca.edu>
Date:
Wed, 4 Jul 2012 19:34:55 -0400
To:
Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>

Surely it is more important to celebrate Nabokov's admiration for the works of Shakespeare, and the many many ways in which those works are magically transmuted into VN's novels than to rehash the anti-Stratfordian theories and/or the extent to which the mature Nabokov subscribed to them...
--
Sam
Dr. Samuel Schuman
828 258-3621
559 Chunns Cove Rd. Asheville, NC 28805
sschuman@ret.unca.edu

[EDNote: I had wanted to comment on this thread, since the topic came up in my work on the presentation I'll give at the Nabokov Museum in St. Petersburg today.  Interestingly, in his theory of authorship, in which he argues strongly for the importance of the author's personality as embodied in the text, Nabokov's friend Iulii Aikhenvald claims that it makes no difference (to the plays themselves) whether Shakespeare, Bacon, or Rutland wrote the plays in question.  It also seems plausible that Nabokov's poem was deliberately adopting a temporary perspective--has a fictitious lyrical I, in other words, or--is one of Nabokov's "serial selves," rather than a "sincere" or autobiographical voice.  Aikhenvald's comment is in the introduction (written circa 1910) to Silhouettes of Russian Writers.  ~SB]
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