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Fwd: Re: Dolinin's Chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Nabokov
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EDNOTE. GAvriel Shapiro is the author of two books on Nabokov and teaches in the
Russian Department at Cornell. Below he comments on Alexander Dolinin's essay
"Nabokov as a Russian Author" in the _Cambridge Companion to Nabokov_, editred
by Julian Connolly.
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>Quoting Gavriel Shapiro <gs33@cornell.edu>:
I am writing to express my shock and dismay at Alexander Dolinin's chapter
"Nabokov as a Russian Writer" that appeared in the recently published
Cambridge Companion to Nabokov.
Two brief quotations will suffice:
1. "In a sense, the Russian writer Sirin fell victim to the tricky
mythmaking and playacting Nabokov indulged in during his later years. Like
those unhappy expatriates who leave their native country in search of a
better life and then are doomed again and again to prove to themselves that
their decision was right, Nabokov had to justify his emigration from his
native language and literature to their acquired substitutes. For this
purpose, he would argue that 'the nationality of a worthwhile writer is of
secondary importance' (SO, 63) and present himself as a born cosmopolitan
genius who has never been attached to anything and anybody but his
autonomous imagination and personal memory" (p. 53).
2. "It seems that memoirists, biographers, and critics alike tend to fall
under the spell of Nabokov's own inventions, evasions, exaggerations, and
half-truths and perpetuate his mythmaking game by sticking to its rules"
(p. 54).
I find the resentful and virulent tone of Dolinin's "formulations"
unbecoming of a scholar. It is rather reminiscent of the infamous Soviet
journalistic lingo.
Aside from the inadmissible tone in which Dolinin's chapter is written, his
assertions are malevolently misleading. Such is the simile in the first
passage: Dolinin knows full well that Nabokov did not leave his native land
for Western Europe "in search of a better life" but had to flee the mortal
danger of the Bolshevik terror, just as twenty years later he came to the
United States because he had to flee the mortal danger of the Nazi menace.
Dolinin must be also well aware that the shift from Russian to English was
Nabokov's personal tragedy. Nabokov's books were banned from his native
country turned Zoorlandian, and his Russian reading audience in the West
was shattered to smithereens by the cataclysms of World War Two.
Therefore, Dolinin's presenting Nabokov's shift from Russian to English as
a carefully calculated opportunistic move is a cruel and truth-bending
attack on the writer.
In the second passage, Dolinin once again subjects the writer to a
slanderous attack and arrogantly "dismisses" the achievements of Nabokov
scholarship.
It is lamentable that this otherwise fine volume is marred by such
deceitful and disgraceful pronouncements.
Gavriel Shapiro
----- End forwarded message -----
Russian Department at Cornell. Below he comments on Alexander Dolinin's essay
"Nabokov as a Russian Author" in the _Cambridge Companion to Nabokov_, editred
by Julian Connolly.
>------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>Quoting Gavriel Shapiro <gs33@cornell.edu>:
I am writing to express my shock and dismay at Alexander Dolinin's chapter
"Nabokov as a Russian Writer" that appeared in the recently published
Cambridge Companion to Nabokov.
Two brief quotations will suffice:
1. "In a sense, the Russian writer Sirin fell victim to the tricky
mythmaking and playacting Nabokov indulged in during his later years. Like
those unhappy expatriates who leave their native country in search of a
better life and then are doomed again and again to prove to themselves that
their decision was right, Nabokov had to justify his emigration from his
native language and literature to their acquired substitutes. For this
purpose, he would argue that 'the nationality of a worthwhile writer is of
secondary importance' (SO, 63) and present himself as a born cosmopolitan
genius who has never been attached to anything and anybody but his
autonomous imagination and personal memory" (p. 53).
2. "It seems that memoirists, biographers, and critics alike tend to fall
under the spell of Nabokov's own inventions, evasions, exaggerations, and
half-truths and perpetuate his mythmaking game by sticking to its rules"
(p. 54).
I find the resentful and virulent tone of Dolinin's "formulations"
unbecoming of a scholar. It is rather reminiscent of the infamous Soviet
journalistic lingo.
Aside from the inadmissible tone in which Dolinin's chapter is written, his
assertions are malevolently misleading. Such is the simile in the first
passage: Dolinin knows full well that Nabokov did not leave his native land
for Western Europe "in search of a better life" but had to flee the mortal
danger of the Bolshevik terror, just as twenty years later he came to the
United States because he had to flee the mortal danger of the Nazi menace.
Dolinin must be also well aware that the shift from Russian to English was
Nabokov's personal tragedy. Nabokov's books were banned from his native
country turned Zoorlandian, and his Russian reading audience in the West
was shattered to smithereens by the cataclysms of World War Two.
Therefore, Dolinin's presenting Nabokov's shift from Russian to English as
a carefully calculated opportunistic move is a cruel and truth-bending
attack on the writer.
In the second passage, Dolinin once again subjects the writer to a
slanderous attack and arrogantly "dismisses" the achievements of Nabokov
scholarship.
It is lamentable that this otherwise fine volume is marred by such
deceitful and disgraceful pronouncements.
Gavriel Shapiro
----- End forwarded message -----