Here are some other examples of non-solitary creativity, either explicit or implicit:
In The Defense, Luzhin is taught chess by his favorite aunt, who is, if I remember correctly, having an affair with his father. Chess then becomes his life, and surely those psychologists not to be mentioned here might have something to say about it. Had someone else taught him (perhaps the violinist--the book frequently compares chess to music), would he have become obsessed with the game?
In Glory, at the end of the novel, Martin (returning from the Otherworld) passes on his love for
Malory/Pushkin/mystery/art to Darwin, who had lost his inspiration as a promising artist. This is all implied, and if necessary, see my article on it in the London conference volumes.
And of course in Pale Fire, Shade reads all his notecards to Sybil as he writes them. She has been his muse since high school.
On Saturday, July 19, 2014 11:21 PM, Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
The following op-ed article in todays
Times proposes that
the solitary genius myth has outlived its usefulness (if it ever had
any), implicitly crediting Véra Nabokov with a goodly portion of her
husband's productivity and/or creativity. The essay concludes with
a discussion of the importance of
pairs in the creative
venture. I argued, in
Zina's Paradox, that Nabokov was onto
something similar in
The Gift. Yet publicly, especially (I
think) in the lectures on theater, Nabokov appears to disparage the
idea of collaboration. Can any in our community think of other
positive portrayals of non-solitary creativity in Nabokov, explicit
or implicit?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-genius.html?ref=opinion
Stephen Blackwell
All private editorial
communications are read by both co-editors.