In a posthumour edition of Ana Cristina César's "Letters"  ("A.C - Correspondência Incompleta", Aeroplano editora, 1999) I came across a reference to Nabokov

 

Portsmouth, March 7, 1980. 

"I'm attempting yoga, psychology manuals e varied rituals such as taking down dreams, perfecting diaries and heart-of-palm soufflés, learning English with Nabokov (for the first time do I see the English language in Lolita, it was Armando who told me to read it for some psychoanalytic reason - ...) What I admire in Lolita, is it's long sinuous syntax, the kind the Campos Brothers dislike, but it's [Nabokov's] syntax that makes me tick, and so what (sic)?" (p.41-42)

 the translation is mine.

 

On p.57 she quotes in English Emily Dickinson (she is the process of translating her into Portuguese, while working on Katherine Mansfield and feminine/masculine women writers): "Going-to-her! / Happy-letter! Tell her -/Tell her - the page I never wrote!/ Tell her, I only said the syntax - /And left the Verb and the Pronoun - out! - "

Funny  AC "sees" the English language when she reads Nabokov. Myself, I feel his words roll like marbles in my mouth, a sensuous and concrete  and external experience with a foreign language that he forbids me to inhabit.

I wonder how different non-native English readers react to VN's slithering sentences.