In reply to Jansy's statements, below, I note that there are many 
exceptions: Mary, Glory, The Gift, Pnin, The Real Sebastian Knight, 
The Return of Chorb spring to mind.  The compassion is readily 
accessible in all of these--sometimes overflowing.  No one can read 
Glory, I believe, without being struck by the tremendous warmth the 
author feels for its protagonist.  Critics, however, seem most 
fascinated by the "crueler" works, so we hear much more about them.

 

The "fatidic webs," I must admit, do seem to enmesh these works--save, 
perhaps, for Mary and The Gift.

 

Jamie McEwan

 

On Apr 5, 2009, at 12:04 PM, jansymello wrote:

 

> Nabokov's compassion in his novels is real, but accessible to any 
> suffering reader only after a complicated process...

 

> I've always been intrigued by VN's cruel protagonists, narcisistic 
> perverts, murderers, delusional psychotics,sweet alienated 
> professors, vague dreamers and... his almost voiceless heroines. 
> Contrary to what Nabokov expresses in his interviews and forewords, 
> where he links Art to "Beauty,Tenderness, Compassion," in his novels 
> he repeatedly controls his creatures - and not at all as a merciful 
> deity ( not even in BS, when he intervenes as The Author and brings 
> madness to Krug), but as a totalitarian God, thereby overtly 
> engendering rather monstruous characters. These move in plots that 
> seldom emphasize "beauty."