J Zalbidea: news at El
Pais - Spain 2009-Nov-17 http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Publicado/manuscrito/Nabokov/quiso/destruir/elpepucul/20091117elpepucul_10/Tes
excerpts:
"El placer no es el mismo que el que proporciona una novela acabada, pero la
intimidad de la lectura de las fichas tal y como las escribió Nabokov permite a
los lectores penetrar en la interioridad del hombre y del escritor como nunca
antes", sostiene el director editorial de Penguin Classics, Alexis Kirschbaum,
en un artículo que publica el diario británico The Guardian para defender la
posición de la familia del escritor de origen ruso. Frente a críticas como la
vertida por el novelista Martin Amis, asegurando que la lectura del manuscrito
le ha convertido en testigo de la muerte de un genio, Kirschbaum asegura que "El
original de Laura estaba ya completo en la mente de Nabokov, aunque no llegara a
plasmarse sobre el papel".
JM: The opinions of
certain critics are more effective, and valuable, than others. Ellen
Wilson's observations concerning "Lolita" were practical, enthusiastic
and prophetic - but she was second fiddle to Edmund's
performances.
Martin Amis's versus A. Kirschbaum's, though,
are well-matched. Time will tell.
What fascinates me in this story is the almost
platonic debate, with biblical kinbotean tints, about the structure of VN's
novel - because it sometimes strikes me that the testimonies go
even further to suggest that the entire novel was ready in VN's mind.
I thought at first that I understood what these
words about the "entire novel"meant but, on second thoughts, I realize
that I'm still in the dark..
It seems that there is an ellusive
additional "something" which would round it up, envelop or transcend it,
quite independently of the novel's structural qualities, characters, plot.
And it would exist outside Nabokov's mind, ready for any "good reader"
to discern had he been able to write it down.
Nabokov: “the not
quite finished manuscript of a novel which I had begun writing and reworking
before my illness and which was completed in my mind.”..."
As he drifted from hospital room to hospital
room, and in and out of lucidity, he could see the complete book in his mind but
couldn’t get it down on paper. He had to settle for reciting the finished
product to (as he described it in a letter) 'a small dream
audience'."
Biographer
B.Boyd: Nabokov would customarily “envisage a novel in his mind complete from
start to finish before writing it down”
Critics:
"I’m willing to believe that the real novel —
not the one we now see through a glass darkly — was Nabokov’s last-minute
masterwork..." (David Gates)
"Laura was complete in Nabokov's mind, if not on
paper, and he told his son Dmitri that he considered it one of his three most
important works." (A.Kirschbaum)