A. Sklyarenko: "In his "Silhouettes of Russian Writers" Aihenvald compares Valeriy Bryusov to Salieri (immediately after mentioning Hamlet's feigned madness):...Aihenvald points out that, the author of countless Fore- and Afterwords,Bryusov is his own critic and commentator:...In Hodasevich's memoirs "Necropolis," one of the essays is dedicated to
Bryusov. ...Carolyn's theory is not so far-fetched, after all, is it?

 

Jansy Mello: I'm unsure if A.S is indicated C.Kunin's former posting about VN's clay feet. 

Only those who consider that a real artist needs to be worshiped on a pedestal would worry about His dirty feet.

An an artist's production and deeds must be distinguished from this person as a human being, subject to all our ordinary failings (who doesn't harbor, at least for a little while, any feelings of jealousy, envy, murderous rage, aso?) Virtue (ie:force) lies in getting a grip on such primary emotions, or trying to deal with them in one way or another. Why must Nabokov be seen as a paragon of wisdom in his life, and a role-model, only because he is a great (ethical) artist?

 

........................................................................

Savely Senderovich: ..."VN exercised his aesthetic judgment in regard to Doctor Zhivago – he was amazed to see in BP’s novel treatment the same motif as in his Lolita: the affair of a mature man with a teenage girl which messed up all her life, an ambivalent motif as concerns the question of who is guilty, that is, a motif escaping a simple moral judgment. VN was firmly wedded to his peculiar artistic optics through which BP’s novel is simply unreadable. Some years ago, I delivered a course at Cornell dedicated to these two novels in order to show that two works linked by a remarkable affinity and written by two writers of the same generation and culture require quite different tuning of the reader’s optics which can be developed only in the process of very attentive reading overcoming preset habits."

 

Jansy Mello: Thanks for the clarification about Nabokov's qualms concerning BP's Dr.Ghivago.