2 - VN: The Critic

Summary

A full assessment of Nabokov as critic, in the broad sense of the term, would require an evaluation of his critical writings and published lectures, including his translations and editions, as well as a consideration of the briefer expressions of literary comment found in the letters and interviews. Throwaway as many of these latter utterances may appear, they were invariably carefully prepared and meticulously delivered, by means of copious notes or inscribed index cards. Published interviews and letters to the press were revised and re-edited by Nabokov for the collected volume Strong Opinions (1973). We shall here deal mainly with the critical writings and the translations into English.

Nabokov wrote his literary lectures in the 1940s and 1950s, for delivery over an academic career spanning nearly two decades at Wellesley College and Cornell; their publication came only posthumously, and there has been some questioning of the editorial approach adopted in the three volumes that we now have. Further refinements are to be expected in due course. Many critical and scholarly advances have been made since Nabokov penned his lectures; moreover, they were intended for student consumption, and not as academic essays. Former students have described the impact made by the lectures and the style in which they were delivered. The enthusiasm they inspired can be easily imagined and, despite Nabokov's reticence over public speaking, there is plentiful anecdotal evidence of his histrionic lecturing abilities.

Nabokov approached his chosen texts by way of a fresh, no-nonsense close reading. ‘Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash’: such was the ‘central dogma’ to be culled from his courses (LL xxiii). Utilitarianism has no place in art; all theory is nonsense; ‘it is the style peculiar to this or that individual writer of genius that is alone worth discussion’ (LL 60). ‘Realism’, to Nabokov, is a meaningless term: ‘all fiction is fiction. All art is deception…. The isms go; the ist dies; art remains’ (LL 146, 147). Although he would doubtless dismiss any theoretical influence (one shudders to think of his reaction to poststructuralism, as to political correctness!), Nabokov's approach is closest (though unsystematically so) to his contemporary compatriots, the Russian Formalists.