Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0002873, Wed, 25 Feb 1998 17:01:58 -0800

Subject
Re: Shakspere a playwright? (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Earl Sampson <esampson@cu.campus.mci.net>


Roman Jakobson a nonentity?

>From: "Peter A. Kartsev" <petr@glas.apc.org>
>
>Nabokov changing his opinion on the authorship of SLOVO (or on any other
>matter) in order to spite Roman Jakobson (or some other nonentity) is
>about as easy to believe as the illiterate oaf from Stratford writing
>HAMLET. I guess a case could also be made that VN wrote the poem
>"Shakespeare" (as well as all his other works, why not?) in order to
>spite Adamovich, Ivanov, Wilson and a succession of others. This,
>however, will be inconsistent with just about everything he ever wrote
>(thus making him an inveterate liar) and with everything we know about
>him. It seems rather more logical to suppose that with his aristocratic
>and individualistic view of art, the picture he drew in the poem would
>appeal to his imagination much more than that of Will Shakspere penning
>masterpieces casually and carelessly after a hard day of moneylending
>and debt collecting. In this respect, I think, Nabokov fits remarkably
>well with the dissenting group.
>
>And if this is "toying with anti-Stratfordianism", as somebody called
>it, then what Samuel Schoenbaum does is surely nothing more than toying
>with Stratfordianism. While Nabokov never names his candidate for the
>authorship, Schoenbaum et al. drag out the most preposterous candidate
>of all, the Stratford boor. The anti-Stratfordian contention, by the
>way, is NOT that William Shakespeare did not write the plays. The
>heretics only maintain that there is absolutely no proof that whoever
>chose to hide behind that name and William Shakspere of Stratford are
>one and the same. This subtle difference with all its implications has
>to be understood by anyone who is interested in the subject. Oxford may
>not have been the author; but Shakspere couldn't have been.
>
>And a first-class teacher Samuel Schoenbaum probably wasn't, unless it
>be compatible with crafty evasion of all difficult points in one's
>subject. I refer the interested few to Charlton Ogburn's "The Mysterious
>William Shakespeare", which cites the examples. It also gives a list of
>dissenters almost a page long, none of them nitwits or congenital
>idiots.
>
>Peter.