Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017845, Sat, 7 Mar 2009 18:45:54 -0800

Subject
Fwd: question of homosexuality in J & H
Date
Body
jansymello wrote: VN mentions RLS’s intention to deal with the
issue of a repressed homosexuality. In spite of his enumeration of
Stevenson’s mysoginous characters, I find it hard to adhere to this
hypothesis (which might still have influenced his creation of Kinbote).

Actually, Jansy, this is not as preposterous as it might appear. We
do know that the first draft of J & H was suppressed by - - oh my
god. Carolyn

to which jansymello wrote: who??????????????

Dear Jansy,

Sorry, as I was writing I suddenly saw something I hadn't noticed
before. As I started to say, we know tlhat the first draft of J & H
was suppressed by RLS himself (he burned it) because of his wife's
negative reaction to the original story. VN was not the only one to
speculate that the sexual and specifically homosexual nature of Hyde's
crimes may have been more apparent in the original draft and that is
what Fanny could not allow.

I had never noticed before that Kinbote's antagonism to Sybil, in
particular his belief that she is the one responsible for suppressing
all mention of "Zembla" (i.e. homosexuality) in Shade's poem was
further proof of the debt PF owes to J & H.

Carolyn



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