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VN & Quixote. DN replies to Walter Miale
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----- Original Message -----
From: Dmitri Nabokov
Dear friends,
Brian Boyd's suggestion that PNIN may in a sense be a polemic reply to DON QUIXOTE has merit. However, Walter Miale, in proposing the notion that Nabokov might, instead, have been vindicating N.G. Chernyshevski, thereby polemizing with THE GIFT'S protagonist Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, devises a devious gambit to coax one back onto territory that has jointly been declared taboo. In the case of DON QUIXOTE, as Greg MacKinnon points out as well, VN does quarrel with the author's cruel derision of the "gaunt Hidalgo," ridiculous as he may sometimes seem, finding Quixote "ultimately undeserving of such scorn," and of Cervantes' attempt to enlist the reader's complicity in mocking him. And sad-faced, bumbling PNIN, with all his misfortunes, can be construed as a Quixote who gets the last laugh. In the second case, that of the historical personage Chernyshevski (see THE GIFT, ch. 4), things are very different, and Nabokov subtly but clearly shows whose side he is on. I know why. Mr. Miale knows why. One shall not be coaxed.
Cordially,
Dmitri Nabokov
----- Original Message -----
From: Dmitri Nabokov
Dear friends,
Brian Boyd's suggestion that PNIN may in a sense be a polemic reply to DON QUIXOTE has merit. However, Walter Miale, in proposing the notion that Nabokov might, instead, have been vindicating N.G. Chernyshevski, thereby polemizing with THE GIFT'S protagonist Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, devises a devious gambit to coax one back onto territory that has jointly been declared taboo. In the case of DON QUIXOTE, as Greg MacKinnon points out as well, VN does quarrel with the author's cruel derision of the "gaunt Hidalgo," ridiculous as he may sometimes seem, finding Quixote "ultimately undeserving of such scorn," and of Cervantes' attempt to enlist the reader's complicity in mocking him. And sad-faced, bumbling PNIN, with all his misfortunes, can be construed as a Quixote who gets the last laugh. In the second case, that of the historical personage Chernyshevski (see THE GIFT, ch. 4), things are very different, and Nabokov subtly but clearly shows whose side he is on. I know why. Mr. Miale knows why. One shall not be coaxed.
Cordially,
Dmitri Nabokov