Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022035, Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:50:19 +0000

Subject
Re: surrender and exile...
Date
Body
I do not think that “will not surrender” here means just “surrender memories” - it is much larger than that, and includes “will never submit” [to Khan Sosso and his heirs at Sovietnamur Khanate]. In Nabokov’s own words (1944):
No matter how Soviet tinsel glitters
Upon the canvas of a battle-piece,
No matter how the soul dissolves in pity,
I will not bend, I will not cease

Loathing the filth, brutality and boredom
Of silent servitude. No, no, I shout,
My spirit is still quick, still exile-hungry,
I’m still a poet, count me out!
>>> (Jansy): VN gives us to understand that he cannot become an exile…
He was an exile (and more than once), as well as millions of others.

Victor Fet
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Don Stanley
Sent: Sunday, September 25, 2011 2:24 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] surrender and exile...




Hi

He means he will never surrender his memories. They are all safe in his head, where Stalin and the rest of the superhuman crew can’t get at them.

There is a letter somewhere about how he wished he had immortalized every blade of Vyra grass. He said he had the happiest childhood imaginable. We all live via memory, but Nabokov especially.

All the best
don



>>> Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US> 9/24/2011 11:40 AM >>>
In one of the latest video presentations in which Vladimir Nabokov is being interviewed he mumbles, with a lowered head: "I'll not surrender." I found a printed interview for BBC, in 1962, (SO,Vintage, p.9/10) where VN replies to "Would you ever go back to Russia?" saying that he "will never go back, for the simple reason that all the Russia I need is always with me: literature, language, and my own Russian childhood. I will never return. I will never surrender..." VN gives us to understand that he cannot become an exile since he carries the artist's passport and that his native country is a state of mind. In this context, what does it mean "I'll not surrender"?
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