"... hence, the source of his claim in
Strong Opinions: "
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is
only important to the individual, and only the individual reader is important to
me' (
SO 33). This individual contact between poet and
reader does not preclude either the author's artistic formulation or the
reader's identification of a 'message,' ethical, political, or otherwise; it
does, however, preclude the mass proselytizing of a message, as the fixing of
such a message would impinge upon the freedom crucial to the poet-reader
relationship. The potential ethical or moral value of fiction is
realizable alonge in individual contexts. The ethical value of literature
cannot be ideological in the usual sense, as this assumes a group base and the
intention of mass propagation, a descent from the open potential of the
individual imagination to the enforced strictures of a mass-understanding of
common sense.[...] It is along this continuum, from appreciation and poetic
recreation of the trifle and detail of the world to acknowlegdement and
verification of its essential goodness, that Nabokov saw his own transformation
from 'frivolous firebird' to 'rigid moralist'; '
... I believe that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that,
far from having been a frivolous firebird, I was a rigid moralist kicking sin,
cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel - and assigning sovereign
power to tenderness, talent, and pride" (
SO 193).