Dear Don,
I trust you will run my rebuttal to Dolinin's response, entitled
"Dolinin's Defense," in full and without delay.
Many thanks.
Best,
Gavriel
Mr. Dolinin's defense, I am afraid, is no more successful than that of
his by far more attractive namesake. His attributing my sharp reaction to
his chapter to my being "ardent but naive" is merely half true.
I do become ardent when I see manifestations of cruelty, dishonesty, and
arrogance. As for naive, Mr. Dolinin evidently confuses me with his
pseudonymous namesake from Nabokov's story "Lips to Lips."
Unlike his gullible namesake, however, I see very well through my
correspondent's desperate attempts to extricate himself from the
scandalous situation he himself created. Such, for example, is Mr.
Dolinin's disingenuous claim that he does "not discuss Vladimir
Vladimirovich Nabokov's personal problems, tragedies, challenges and
choices." "What interests me," he says, "is the
'model author' or, better, two 'model authors' that happened to be named
'Sirin' and 'Nabokov,' two differently constructed personae, and their
strategies in the changing literary field." This apologetic
statement, although it sounds very scholarly, does not tally at all with
Mr. Dolinin's attacks on Nabokov and his integrity, and no degree of
sophistication is needed to comprehend this.
As for Mr. Dolinin's idea about "Sirin" and "Nabokov"
as "two differently constructed personae," I am willing to give
it a try, even though at first glance this bifurcation seems
oversimplified. Let us see: there is "Aleksandr Dolinin,"
habitually referred to as "the leading Russian Nabokov
scholar," and there is "Alexander Dolinin," the
unfortunate author of the chapter in question. Are they two different
individuals or two faces of one and the same person? It seems that my
luckless correspondent's best strategy at this point is to assert that he
has nothing to do with "Alexander Dolinin." No. My
recommendation "betrays an ardent but naive mind": a fleeting
character in The Gift had already tried and miserably failed
"to dissociate himself from a villainous namesake, who subsequently
turned out to be his relative, then his double, and finally
himself."
My other recommendation for Mr. Dolinin: in the future, to avoid such
lamentable statements as those that appeared in his chapter, he ought to
re-read Nabokov. Speak, Memory and Strong Opinions will be
the best way to start. No. This recommendation will not work
either: Mr. Dolinin might unwittingly "fall under the spell of
Nabokov's own inventions, evasions, exaggerations, and half-truths"
and, Heavens forbid, will abandon his resentful tone and will give up his
slanderous attacks on the writer, the attacks that he clumsily dubs
"demythologization" and passes them off as representing his
scholarly objectivity.
I suppose I am running out of recommendations for Mr. Dolinin. My last
recommendation for him: to behave as a decent human being and as a
conscientious scholar. But perhaps it is too much to ask.
Gavriel Shapiro