JM: An interesting synchronicity (?) arises at the end of this
essay, which I received through a "google alert," related to
Nabokov's last lines in "An Evening of Russian Poetry" (Cf.
Jan 2011, #68, subject: "Wandering in a crystal landscape"). It also offers a quote that is related to one of the
themes we've been discussing and it seems to be relevant to bring it up
again here: "Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To
call a story a true story is an insult to truth and art."
"… What I feel the real modern world the world the artist creates,
his own mirage, which is a new MIR (" world "in Russian) shed by the
act of his, as it were, the age he lives in ". Nabokov was once such a
response to an interviewer who was interested in his opinion on the
modern world and contemporary politics. The book, which includes this
interview as well as many others, is entitled to have a strong opinion,
and although Nabokov is known not only for his brilliant fiction, but
for his original, independent and uncompromising view of creativity,
art and the place of artists in the world...The art of writing is a
futile business if it does not mean, especially the art of seeing the
world as the potentiality of fiction. "This statement, reflecting
visions of cosmic size and a clear reference to the story of Adam and
Eve, a parallel . between the author-artist and creator-god in one of
his interviews Nabokov explicitly expresses this comparison: "A
creative writer must carefully the works of his rivals, including
studying the Almighty. He has the innate ability not only of
recombining but re-created the world given to possess. " Nabokov's
position, to some degree a reaction to the situation in the Soviet
Union, where demands on the state dominates the needs of the people,
the individual by the collective and information was suppressed by
generalities. He claims to build again the power and independence of
personal creativity, the ability of their own imagination to their own
worlds, and makes a sharp distinction between a work of fiction, and
everything outside of him, including the personality of its creator.
"Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true
story is an insult to truth and art." [...]
"Combinatorial Joy" is indeed important not only in Shade's poem, but
in the whole novel. As in The Gift, is the artistic detail is a focus
of concentration in Pale Fire, but here is the attention to a more
subtle level, where the language itself is analyzed concentrated. Pale
Fire is an example of extremely dense prose, where individual words are
more than carriers of meaning: they are in a manner which is itself a
subject of the novel....Nabokov speaks of memories, saying openly: “I
must remind you in conclusion that I am followed everywhere and that
space is collapsible.” ...
His private tragedy is lost on his young listeners, whose innocent
inquiry prompts what becomes the most remarkable ending of a poem:'
...Insomnia, your stare is dull and ashen, my love, forgive me this
apostasy..." All of Nabokov's carefully hidden private world that, he
insists, “cannot, indeed should not, be anybody's concern”, is suddenly
revealed in these poignant lines: long nights, loneliness, the feeling
of guilt over abandoning one's language and nostalgia for inaccessible,
unforgettable, “unquenchable Russia”.