Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
The year is 1937, and Nabokov is in the grip of a passionate love affair in Paris, all the while sending tender letters full of affection that a person couldn’t fake back to Véra, who is in Berlin with their son. And yet he is … he is with another woman. Soon after his reunion with his family in Czechoslovakia in May 1937, Nabokov wrote the story ‘Cloud, Castle, Lake’ in which he talks about addressing a real person, the only woman he has ever loved but cannot be with. And there is an otherworldly feminine presence there, too, present in the lives of both the main character and his fictional creator. This incredible story about a Russian émigré is set in Nazi Germany. So, what is one to make of all that? Grayson addresses Nabokov’s affair soberly and with clinical precision and artful brevity.
Now Jane Grayson’s short life of Nabokov.
I like this book very much. It’s short and beautifully illustrated, and you can read it in one sitting. When I teach graduate students I make them read it before the first session of the seminar, so that they have an overview in advance. Thirty years ago Grayson wrote a very important book called Nabokov Translated; she is a serious scholar. But this is a slender book for the general public, and it does not shy away from the hard questions.
What are the hard questions?
Well, consider this, for example. The year is 1937, and Nabokov is in the grip of a passionate love affair in Paris, all the while sending tender letters full of affection that a person couldn’t fake back to Véra, who is in Berlin with their son. And yet he is … he is with another woman. Soon after his reunion with his family in Czechoslovakia in May 1937, Nabokov wrote the story ‘Cloud, Castle, Lake’, in which he talks about addressing a real person, the only woman he has ever loved but cannot be with. And there is an otherworldly feminine presence there, too, present in the lives of both the main character and his fictional creator. This incredible story about a Russian émigré is set in Nazi Germany. So, what is one to make of all that? Grayson address Nabokov’s affair soberly and with clinical precision and artful brevity.
Why would anyone expect a great writer not to have had affairs?
Certain things have been obfuscated, which is inevitable. In the aftermath of fame Nabokov, aided by diligent Nabokovians, carefully constructed a public myth of his past, and his family life withstood a great deal of curiosity and was seen as impermeable, impenetrable. That was until some archival materials came to light, and they almost always do eventually, including some letters. Of course, it is one thing to look at them as private facts, and another to look at Nabokov in light of some of the revelations and personal testimonies. All I can tell you is that when I came to this country 23 years ago and, as a young poet, actively took part in Russian émigré cultural life, I met intellectuals and writers of the first and second waves of immigration who had known Nabokov… The kinds of responses they had to him as a man made me very uncomfortable because I had idealised him from the life inferred from his art. People said he was unkind, unfriendly, haughty… these are things that may or may not become subjects of further investigation. All in all, I would predict that there is going to be a revisionist Nabokov biography. Not by me, I assure you, I have my own literary garden to tend at this point!
But, in a way, as regards Nabokov’s life, my Pnin, my Glory and my stories are enough for me…
Maxim D. Shrayer's answers copyright 2010 © by Maxim D. Shrayer
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Maxim D Shrayer (www.shrayer.com) immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1987. A bilingual author and translator, Dr Shrayer is Professor of Russian, English, and Jewish Studies at Boston College. His publications on Nabokov include The World of Nabokov’s Stories and Nabokov: Themes and Variations (in Russian). Shrayer has edited and co-translated two volumes of fiction by his father, David Shrayer-Petrov. In 2007 Shrayer received the National Jewish Book Award for An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature. Shrayer’s recent books are the literary memoir Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration and the collection of stories Yom Kippur in Amsterdam. He says a revisionist biography of Nabokov is due, one that comes to terms with the Jewish influence on his work.
