Subject
DN on VN's Moon (GLORY) & Kinbote (PaLE FIRE)
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. In a continuation of Dmitri Nabokov's recent series of
responses to issues raised on NABOKV-L, we offer the following. For those
who wish to look into the Russian cultural context of VN's attitude toward
homosexuality, the editor recomends Olga Skonechnaya's fine essay on
"Lunar People" in the current issue of NABOKOV STUDIES.
-----------------------------------
"'Vot i poekhali' [And away we go! --DBJ]. I knew it was only a matter of
time before the sexual-preference police would go to town on my father. If
we're talking about Moon, I can only say that I perceive an undercurrent
of authorial compassion when Martin rejects him. Kinbote is a special
creature, with some aberrations we aren't even quite sure about. And I
continue to find hilarious the episode in "Solus Rex" that was restored
when we translated it. I have nothing to "defend," so why not lighten up?
Does a nympholept association come after Nabokov in defense of Humbert?
After all, fiddling with fourteen-year-olds is perfectly legal in Japan,
and, as has been aptly pointed out, I believe by the perceptive Mr.
Kartsev, gay old England is particularly prolific in Philias, and I don't
mean the heroic, somewhat idealized England embodied, say, by Scott of
_The Pole_, and the very real heroes who flew WW I Sopwith Camels and WW
II Supermarine Spitfires (I fly a modern heliocopter, but have loved
since boyhood the romance of those old airplanes.) Anat Ben-Amos is right
on a couple of points, the main one being that I was indeed acquainted
with my father. I remember his funny but in no way cruel hypotheses about
certain putative techniques: phallic fencing, for example. If I were a
closet fencer I might know, but I doubt is the joke qualifies VN as one of
the world's great omophobes' -- the current buzzterm I believe."
responses to issues raised on NABOKV-L, we offer the following. For those
who wish to look into the Russian cultural context of VN's attitude toward
homosexuality, the editor recomends Olga Skonechnaya's fine essay on
"Lunar People" in the current issue of NABOKOV STUDIES.
-----------------------------------
"'Vot i poekhali' [And away we go! --DBJ]. I knew it was only a matter of
time before the sexual-preference police would go to town on my father. If
we're talking about Moon, I can only say that I perceive an undercurrent
of authorial compassion when Martin rejects him. Kinbote is a special
creature, with some aberrations we aren't even quite sure about. And I
continue to find hilarious the episode in "Solus Rex" that was restored
when we translated it. I have nothing to "defend," so why not lighten up?
Does a nympholept association come after Nabokov in defense of Humbert?
After all, fiddling with fourteen-year-olds is perfectly legal in Japan,
and, as has been aptly pointed out, I believe by the perceptive Mr.
Kartsev, gay old England is particularly prolific in Philias, and I don't
mean the heroic, somewhat idealized England embodied, say, by Scott of
_The Pole_, and the very real heroes who flew WW I Sopwith Camels and WW
II Supermarine Spitfires (I fly a modern heliocopter, but have loved
since boyhood the romance of those old airplanes.) Anat Ben-Amos is right
on a couple of points, the main one being that I was indeed acquainted
with my father. I remember his funny but in no way cruel hypotheses about
certain putative techniques: phallic fencing, for example. If I were a
closet fencer I might know, but I doubt is the joke qualifies VN as one of
the world's great omophobes' -- the current buzzterm I believe."