Personally, I think Nabokov is prejudiced agaisnt Dostoevski, too shallow and superficial to understand his countryman. By these two severe words, I don't refer to his scope or depth of mind but to his different "style" --- a pet word of Nabokov. Nabokov loved words, beautiful words. In reading his works (I've read Lectures on Literature in Chinese, the first several chapters of Lolita, which I, much regretablly, had neither the patience nor the vocabulary to finish), I become more and more assured in the impression that "structure" is his beloved criterion in evaluating a work of genius that overwhelmingly outweighs any other standards.
Nabokov has genius in twiddling most freely on his finger those beautiful and exquisite words, phrases, sentences, and, structure. Nabokov's works remind us of his butterfly specimen: pinned to the dead leaves of a book, dried up, arranged in an order most studied. The beauty is reserved, but life has passed out of the vein. Oeuvres d'art on the whole, but we are supposed to appreciate it as an artifact only, as strongly propounded by Nabokov himself: bear it in mind that it is make-believe, no more, no less. At this point, Vladimir Nabokov says something that I greatly admire: "the true measure of genius is in what measure the world he has created is his own, one that has not been here before him."
Dostoevski is simply different. Nabokov is the laboratory kind, his books are ready to be dissected and rumpled and crumbled: he appeals to sense rather than mind, while Dostoevski appeals to heart rather than soul. Where Nabokov succeeds Dostoevski is mediocre or banal. Nabokov despises his repetition of words and clumsy transition and make-believe. In front of this master of words, Dostoevski appears stark naked. The 20th century literary star actually classifies Dostoevski's characters into four categories of persons affected with mental illnesses. They are not real in the literary sense, he diagnosies, but hasn't his Humphrey Humphrey gone mad also, with his nymph pursuit? Dostoevski triumphs over Nabokov in his profundity in dealing with madness, the bitterness and acidity of his characters has that magnificent and enthralling quality that is akin to the stark cold climate in Russian, while Nabokov merely manages to entice us in his nymphized world of words, in his "masterpiece" --- the reader is easily illusioned, but not impressed.
Nabokov loved genius. I admit he was a genius in his own definition and in general sense, but he was not and would never have been a great writer. Fyodor Dostoevski was.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't see much beauty in Nabokov. I read only the Chinese translation of his renowned Lolita. It was rather a disappointment. I was not, as his readers are supposed to be, fascinated by his "words". and I attribut this not so much to the awkward Chinese as to the story itself.
回复删除Maybe I'm judging on the moral level, which I presume is unbecoming and out-dated with regards to the proper literary criticism of Nabokov, but the story of the hairy middle-aged man deliberately immersing himself in the sexual hallucination of a teenage girl-a "nymph" he calls her-simply repels me so much that I cannot possibly identify in any degree with the narrator's emotions. Nor do I find much enjoyment in the assorted images in the more coherent and more beautiful passages. Maybe for these passages I'm reading in the wrong language.
I'm sure I won't try Lolita in English, though. Not if there's no one explaining with true hilarity and insight and expressiveness the advantages of this celebrated work. No.
It repulses me too, but without regard to the moral aspect of this novel, the persistent and strong impression it leaves me is that Nabokov is playing with words, much as Humphrey is playing with his nymphic mania.
回复删除That's right. I think it obsessive and repulsive. He's too pleased with himself.
回复删除I've read essays that proclaim Nabokov justifies Humphrey with his change of points of view, critical with third person and sympathetic with first person, that sort of talk. But I see nothing to that effect except the demonstration of Humphrey slipping heedlessly into the abyss of his addiction and Nabokov's own addiction with his train of "words".
That's it! Too pleased with himself！
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