Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0002243, Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:15:36 -0700

Subject
VN, Gorky, & Dostoevsky.
Date
Body
One of the ways I avoid work is to stop and look at my "snail-mail" when
it arrives about 11am. In the July 18 TLS review of a collection of
Gorky's letters by Donald Fanger, I note the following quote from a letter
by Gorky to Leonid Andreev:

"I have never allowed anyone to touch upon my private life....To reveal
one's wounds to the world, to scratch them in public, to bathe in pus, to
squirt one's bile into people's eyes as many have done -- the most
disgusting being our evil genius Fedor Dostoevsky -- is a vile occupation,
and a harmful one..."

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