On May 26, 2010, at 7:46 PM, Stan Kelly-Bootle wrote: Carolyn now completely reframes her original question: What I am saying is, did Nabokov have the right to criticize those who stayed behind? I am thinking for example of Pasternak. Did Nabokov forgive the murdered? -- CK
My answer is YES, VN has the right to criticize anything/anyone about which/whom he is critical. We, in turn, have the right to review specific criticisms and judge their merits. (To avoid any confusion, it should be noted that Pasternak died of lung cancer, to the best of our knowledge! He’s far from typical of ‘those who stayed behind.’)
Dear Stan,
Before I tackle your response, allow me to pose a question that occurred to me today. Was Pasternak really that much more a novelist of ideas (which was what VN purported to despise about him, and others) than was Tolstoy? I don't know for sure, but I suspect not. Did Nabokov ever attack the truly ridiculous ideas of Tolstoy? or the ideas that are expressed quite openly in his great novels? I'm not aware that he ever did. If so, why should that be?
It seems to me possible that there is some kind of suppression of guilt feelings going on in some of VN's more outrageous attitudes to Soviet writers. I think it similarly possible that this same motivation informs his overweening* attitude toward such things as homosexuality.
Pasternak may not have been murdered as others were - - his relationship with Stalin I'm finding from my reading in Volkov's book was more complex than I had realized, but he certainly was hounded in life. If lung cancer allowed him to escape the fate of others it seems to me to make little difference.
Carolyn
* to overween: to regard one's own thinking or conclusions too highly; overweening (adj): unduly confident, arrogant, presumptuous. On a personal note - - I had an extremely overweening person in my immediate family, and it took me many years to understand that it covered up a deep sense of self-doubt.