Subject
Joseph Brodsky on VN
Date
Body
Solomon Volkov's _Conversations with Joseph Brodsky: A Poet's Journey
Through the Twentieth Century_ ,[Tr. Miriam Schwartz. The Free Press: NY,
1998] is a skillful compilation of Volkov's dialogues with Brodsky from
1978 until near Brodsky's recent death. Nabokov is mentioned in passing
several times, but the most extended exchange is on pp. 268-9.
The context is a discussion of "literary" St. Petersburg.
--------------------------------
Volkov: What about Nabokov?
Brodsky: I read his _Laughter in the Dark_ when I was twenty-two or
twenty three, I think. It was the first Nabokov work I'd ever come
across. Within a few years I had read everything by Nabokov you could get
a hold of in the Soviet Union at that time. ...
V: Did you read Nabokokv's _Other Shores_ in Leningrad as well?
B: _Other Shores_, oddly, I read only in the West in its English-language
version, _Speak, Memory_, and this book didn't produce the same impression
on me as it did on most readers.
V: Didn't reading Nabookv make you feel at all nostalgic?
B: Definitely not. To me, strangely enough, is mainly a writer not from
St. Petersburg but from somewhere else. I see him more as a kind of
Moscow-Berlin writer. I think Nabokov's appetite for reality scares me off
to a certain extent. The gentleman is very firmly tied to the material
world, and it is in this sense that he is too "modern" for me.
V: Remember, you were once telling me that you perceive all of Nabokov's
life and work as a kind of gigantic rhyme. That is, his two "Lolitas," the
Russian and the Englih, rhyme, the two versions of his memoirs, and even
more broadly, his Russian and English-language novels, and even the fact
that Nabokov wrote both prose and poetry. You explained this by
saying that all his life Nabokov really wnated to be a poet, although his
poems, as we know, do not stack up well againt his prose. So here he was
rhyming his whole existence. Hence, the literary figure of the double that
Nabokov loved so well.
B: Yes, the principle of rhyme permeates Nabokov's entire work. Here,
contradicting myself, I might say that in this it is not hard to catch the
Petersburg influnce, since it is in his native city that the idea of
reflection was always extremely strong and naturally enough."
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618
Through the Twentieth Century_ ,[Tr. Miriam Schwartz. The Free Press: NY,
1998] is a skillful compilation of Volkov's dialogues with Brodsky from
1978 until near Brodsky's recent death. Nabokov is mentioned in passing
several times, but the most extended exchange is on pp. 268-9.
The context is a discussion of "literary" St. Petersburg.
--------------------------------
Volkov: What about Nabokov?
Brodsky: I read his _Laughter in the Dark_ when I was twenty-two or
twenty three, I think. It was the first Nabokov work I'd ever come
across. Within a few years I had read everything by Nabokov you could get
a hold of in the Soviet Union at that time. ...
V: Did you read Nabokokv's _Other Shores_ in Leningrad as well?
B: _Other Shores_, oddly, I read only in the West in its English-language
version, _Speak, Memory_, and this book didn't produce the same impression
on me as it did on most readers.
V: Didn't reading Nabookv make you feel at all nostalgic?
B: Definitely not. To me, strangely enough, is mainly a writer not from
St. Petersburg but from somewhere else. I see him more as a kind of
Moscow-Berlin writer. I think Nabokov's appetite for reality scares me off
to a certain extent. The gentleman is very firmly tied to the material
world, and it is in this sense that he is too "modern" for me.
V: Remember, you were once telling me that you perceive all of Nabokov's
life and work as a kind of gigantic rhyme. That is, his two "Lolitas," the
Russian and the Englih, rhyme, the two versions of his memoirs, and even
more broadly, his Russian and English-language novels, and even the fact
that Nabokov wrote both prose and poetry. You explained this by
saying that all his life Nabokov really wnated to be a poet, although his
poems, as we know, do not stack up well againt his prose. So here he was
rhyming his whole existence. Hence, the literary figure of the double that
Nabokov loved so well.
B: Yes, the principle of rhyme permeates Nabokov's entire work. Here,
contradicting myself, I might say that in this it is not hard to catch the
Petersburg influnce, since it is in his native city that the idea of
reflection was always extremely strong and naturally enough."
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618