Subject
Re: Pasternak's "Lara" and KGB
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Gene may be right to take offense at the light-heartedness of my posting
since the real story behind the published story does deal with very
grave issues of camps and persecution. But he is also reading into my
message what it didn't contain: there was no implication that Nabokov --
who really never cared much for Pasternak either as a poet or a writer,
or, for that matter, as an anointed heir to Mayakovsky in the 1930s --
would have rejoiced at Pasternak's lack of artistic freedom which he
himself enjoyed so fully in emigration.
The part about *Lolita* and the effect that the possible delay in
publication of *Dr. Zhivago* may have had on its fate was really meant as
a joke, given the fierce competition between the two novels at the time.
As to the mistresses/girlfriends and GPU/KGB, it just struck me how
tragically both cases underscore the same abyss which existed between
people's lives inside Stalin's Russia and fictionalized romances.
Galya Diment
since the real story behind the published story does deal with very
grave issues of camps and persecution. But he is also reading into my
message what it didn't contain: there was no implication that Nabokov --
who really never cared much for Pasternak either as a poet or a writer,
or, for that matter, as an anointed heir to Mayakovsky in the 1930s --
would have rejoiced at Pasternak's lack of artistic freedom which he
himself enjoyed so fully in emigration.
The part about *Lolita* and the effect that the possible delay in
publication of *Dr. Zhivago* may have had on its fate was really meant as
a joke, given the fierce competition between the two novels at the time.
As to the mistresses/girlfriends and GPU/KGB, it just struck me how
tragically both cases underscore the same abyss which existed between
people's lives inside Stalin's Russia and fictionalized romances.
Galya Diment