Strong opinions

by Vladimir Nabokov

  Do you feel that Lolita's twofold success has affected your life for the better or for the worse?

  I gave up teaching — that's about all in the way of change. Mind you, 1 loved teaching, 1 loved Cornell, 1 loved composing and delivering my lectures on Russian writers and European great books. But around 60, and especially in winter, one begins to find hard the physical process of teaching, the getting up at a fixed hour every other morning, the struggle with the snow in the driveway, the march through long corridors to the classroom, the effort of drawing on the blackboard a map of James Joyce's Dublin or the arrangement of the semisleeping car of the St. PetersburgMoscow express in the early 1870s — without an understanding of which neither Ulysses nor Anna Karenina, respectively, makes sense. For some reason my most vivid memories concern examinations.

  Big amphitheater in Goldwin Smith. Exam from 8 a.m. to 10:30. About 150 students — unwashed, unshaven young males and reasonably wellgroomed young females, A general sense of tedium and disaster. Halfpast eight. Little coughs, the clearing of nervous throats, coming in clusters of sound, rustling of pages. Some of the martyrs plunged in meditation, their arms locked behind their heads. I meet a dull gaze directed at me, seeing in me with hope and hate the source of forbidden knowledge. Girl in glasses comes up to my desk to ask: «Professor Kafka, do you want us to say that . . . ? Or do you want us to answer only the first part of the question?» The great fraternity of Cminus, backbone of the nation, steadily scribbling on. A rustle arising simultaneously, the majority turning a page in their bluebooks, good teamwork. The shaking of a cramped wrist, the failing ink, the deodorant that breaks down. When I catch eyes directed at me, they are forthwith raised to the ceiling in pious meditation. Windowpanes getting misty. Boys peeling off sweaters. Girls chewing gum in rapid cadence. Ten minutes, five, three, time's up.

  Citing in Lolita the same kind of acidetched scene you've just described, many critics have called the book a masterful satiric social commentary on America. Are they right?

  Well, I can only repeat that I have neither the intent nor the temperament of a moral or social satirist. Whether or not critics think that in Lolita I am ridiculing human folly leaves me supremely indifferent. But I am annoyed when the glad news is spread that I am ridiculing America.

  But haven't you written yourself that there is «nothing more exhilarating than American Philistine vulgarity»?

  No, 1 did not say that. That phrase has been litted out ot context, and, like a round, deepsea fish, has burst in the process. If you look up my little afterpiece, «On a Book Entitled Lolita», which I appended to the novel, you will see that what I really said was that in regard to Philistine vulgarity — which 1 do feel is most exhilarating — no difference exists between American and European manners. I go on to say that a proletarian from Chicago can be just as Philistine as an English duke.

  Many readers have concluded that the Philistinism you seem to find the most exhilarating is that of Americas sexual mores.

  Sex as an institution, sex as a general notion, sex as a problem, sex as a platitude — all this is something I find too tedious for words. Let us skip sex.

  Have you ever been psychoanalyzed?

  Have I been what? Subjected to psychoanalytical examination. Why, good God?

  In order to see how it is done. Some critics have felt that your barbed comments about the fashionability of Freudianism, as practiced by American analysts, suggest a contempt based upon familiarity.

  Bookish familiarity only. The ordeal itself is much too silly and disgusting to be contemplated even as a joke. Freudism and all it has tainted with its grotesque implications and methods appears to me to be one of the vilest deceits practiced by people on themselves and on others. I reject it utterly, along with a few other medieval items still adored by the ignorant, the conventional, or the very sick.

  Speaking of the very sick, you suggested in Lolita that Humbert Humberts appetite for nymphets is the result of an unrequited childhood love affair; in Invitation to a Beheading you wrote about a 12yearold girl, Emmie, who is erotically interested in a man twice her age; and in Bend Sinister your protagonist dreams that he is «surreptitiously enjoying Mariette (his maid) while she sat, wincing a little, in his lap during the rehearsal of a play in which she was supposed to be his daughter». Some critics, in poring over your works for clues to your personality, have pointed to this recurrent theme as evidence of an unwholesome preoccupation on your part with the subject of sexual attraction between pubescent girls and middleaped men. Do you feel that there may be some truth in this charge?

  I think it would be more correct to say that had I not written Lolita, readers would not have started finding nymphets in my other works and in their own households. I find it very amusing when a friendly, polite person says to me — probably just in order to be friendly and polite — «Mr. Naborkov», or «Mr. Nabahkov», or «Mr. Nabkov» or «Mr. Nabohkov», depending on his linguistic abilities, «I have a little daughter who is a regular Lolita». People tend to underestimate the power of my imagination and my capacity of evolving serial selves in my writings. And then, of course, there is that special type of critic, the ferrety, humaninterest fiend, the jolly vulgarian. Someone, for instance, discovered telltale affinities between Humhert's boyhood romance on the Riviera and my own recollections about little Colette, with whom I built damp sand castles in Biarritz when I was ten. Somber Humbert was, of course, thirteen and in the throes of a pretty extravagant sexual excitement, whereas my own romance with Colette had no trace of erotic desire and indeed was perfectly commoner place and normal. And, of course, at nine and ten years of age, in that set, in those times, we knew nothing whatsoever about the false facts of life that are imparted nowadays to infants by progressive parents.

  Why false?

  Because the imagination of a small child — especially a town child — at once distorts, stylizes, or otherwise alters the bizarre things he is told about the busy bee, which neither he nor his parents can distinguish from a bumblebee, anyway

  What one critic has termed your «almost obsessive attention to the phrasing, rhythm, cadence and connotation of words» is evident even in the selection of names for your own celebrated bee and bumblebee — Lolita and Humbert Humbert. How did they occur to you?

  For my nymphet 1 needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is «L». The suffix «ita» has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Lowleeta, with a heavy, clammy «L» and a long «o». No, the first syllable should be as in «lollipop», the «L» liquid and delicate, the «lee» not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in «Dolores» My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the surname «Haze», where Irish mists blend with a German bunny — I mean, a small German hare.

  You're making a wordplayful reference, of course, to the German term for rabbit — Hase. But what inspired you to dub Lolita's aging inamorato with such engaging redundancy?

  That, too, was easy. The double rumble is, I think, very nasty, very suggestive. It is a hateful name for a hateful person. It is also a kingly name, and I did need a royal vibration for Humbert the Fierce and Humbert the Humble. Lends itself also to a number of puns. And the execrable diminutive «Hum» is on a par, socially and emotionally, with «Lo”, as her mother calls her.

  Another critic has written of you that «the task of sifting and selecting just the right succession of words from that multilingual memory, and of arranging their manymirrored nuances into the proper juxtapositions, must be psychically exhausting work”. Which of all your books, in this sense, wo
uld you say was the most difficult to write?

  Oh, Lolita, naturally. I lacked the necessary information — that was the initial difficulty. I did not know any American 12yearold girls, and I did not know America; I had to invent America and Lolita. It had taken me some forty years to invent Russia and Western Europe, and now I was faced by a similar task, with a lesser amount of time at my disposal. The obtaining of such local ingredients as would allow me to inject average «reality» into the brew of individual fancy proved, at fifty, a much more difficult process than it had been in the Europe of my youth.

  Though born in Russia, you have lived and worked for many years in America as well as in Europe. Do you feel any strong sense of national identity?

  I am an American writer, born in Russia and educated in England where 1 studied French literature, before spending fifteen years in Germany. I came to America in 1940 and decided to become an American citizen, and make America my home. It so happened that I was immediately exposed to the very best in America, to its rich intellectual life and to its easygoing, goodnatured atmosphere. I immersed myself in its great libraries and its Grand Canyon. I worked in the laboratories of its zoological museums. I acquired more friends than I ever had in Europe. My books — old books and new ones — found some admirable readers. I became as stout as Cortez — mainly because I quit smoking and started to munch molasses candy instead, with the result that my weight went up from my usual 140 to a monumental and cheerful 200. In consequence, I am onethird American — good American flesh keeping me warm and safe.

  You spent 20 years in America, and yet you never owned a home or had a really settled establishment there. Your friends report that you camped impermanently in motels, cabins, furnished apartments and the rented homes of professors away on leave. Did you feel so restless or so alien that the idea of settling down anywhere disturbed you?

  The main reason, the background reason, is, I suppose, that nothing short of a replica of my childhood surroundings would have satisfied me. I would never manage to match my memories correctly — so why trouble with hopeless approximations? Then there are some special considerations: for instance, the question of impetus, the habit of impetus. I propelled myself out of Russia so vigorously, with such indignant force, that I have been rolling on and on ever since. True, I have rolled and lived to become that appetizing thing, a «full professor», but at heart I have always remained a lean «visiting lecturer». The few times I said to myself anywhere: «Now, that's a nice spot for a permanent home», I would immediately hear in my mind the thunder of an avalanche carrying away the hundreds of far places which I would destroy by the very act of settling in one particular nook of the earth. And finally, I don't much care for furniture, for tables and chairs and lamps and rugs and things — perhaps because in my opulent childhood I was taught to regard with amused contempt any tooearnest attachment to material wealth, which is why I felt no regret and no bitterness when the Revolution abolished thai wealth.

  You lived in Russia for twenty years, in West Europe for 20 years, and in America for twenty years. But in I960, after the success of Lolita, you moved to France and Switzerland and have not returned to the U.S. since. Does this mean, despite your selfidentification as an American writer, that you consider your American period over?

  1 am living in Switzerland for purely private reasons — family reasons and certain professional ones too, such as some special research for a special book. I hope to return very soon to America — back to its library stacks and mountain passes. An ideal arrangement would be an absolutely soundproofed flat in New York, on a top floor — no feet walking above, no soft music anywhere — and a bungalow in the Southwest. Sometimes I think it might be fun to adorn a university again, residing and writing there, not teaching, or at least not teaching regularly.

  Meanwhile you remain secluded — and somewhat sedentary, from all reports — in your hotel suite. How do you spend your time?

  I awake around seven in winter: my alarm clock is an Alpine chough — big, glossy, black thing with big yellow beak — which visits the balcony and cunts a most melodious chuckle. For a while I lie in bed mentally revising and planning things. Around eight: shave, breakfast, enthroned meditation, and bath — in that order. Then I work till lunch in my study, taking time out for a short stroll with my wife along the lake. Practically all the famous Russian writers of the nineteenth century have rambled here at one time or another. Zhukovski, Gogol, Dostoevski, Tolstoy — who courted the hotel chambermaids to the detriment of his health — and many Russian poets. But then, as much could be said of Nice or Rome. We lunch around one p.m., and I am back at my desk by halfpast one and work steadily till halfpast six. Then a stroll to a newsstand for the English papers, and dinner at seven. No work after dinner. And bed around nine. I read till halfpast eleven, and then tussle with insomnia till one a.m. About twice a week I have a good, long nightmare with unpleasant characters imported from earlier dreams, appearing in more or less iterative surroundings — kaleidoscopic arrangements of broken impressions, fragments of day thoughts, and irresponsible mechanical images, utterly lacking any possible Freudian implication or explication, hut singularly akin to the procession of changing figures that one usually sees on the inner palpebral screen when closing one's weary eyes.

  Funny that witch doctors and their patients have never hit on that simple and absolutely satisfying explanation of dreaming. Is it true that you write standing up, and that you write in longhand rather than on a typewriter

  Yes. I never learned to type. I generally start the day at a lovely old-fashioned lectern I have in my study. Later on, when I feel gravity nibbling at my calves, I settle down in a comfortable armchair alongside an ordinary writing desk; and finally, when gravity begins climbing up my spine, I lie down on a couch in a corner of my small study. It is a pleasant solar routine. But when I was young, in my twenties and early thirties, I would often stay all day in bed, smoking and writing. Now things have changed. Horizontal prose, vertical verse, and sedent scholia keep swapping qualifiers and spoiling the alliteration.

  Can you tell us something more about the actual creative process involved in the germination of a book — perhaps by reading a few random notes for or excerpts from a work in progress?

  Certainly not. No fetus should undergo an exploratory operation. But I can do something else. This box contains index cards with some notes I made at various times more or less recently and discarded when writing Pale Fire. It's a little batch of rejects. Help yourself. «Selene, the moon. Selenginsk, an old town in Siberia: moonrocket town»

  . . . «Berry: the black knob on the bill of the mute swan»

  . . . «Dropworm: a small caterpillar hanging on a thread»

  . . . «In The New Bon Ton Magazine, volume five, 1820, page 312, prostitutes are termed 'girls of the town'«

  . . . «Youlh dreams: forgot pants; old man dreams: forgot dentures»

  . . . «Student explains that when reading a novel he likes to skip passages 'so as to get his own idea about the book and not be influenced by the author'«

  . . . «Naprapathy: the ugliest word in the language».

  «And after rain, on beaded wires, one bird, two birds, three birds, and none. Muddy tires, sun'y

  . . . «Time without consciousness — lower animal world; time with consciousness — man; consciousness without time — some still higher state» . . .

  «We think not in words but in shadows of words. James Joyce's mistake in those otherwise marvelous mental soliloquies of his consists in that he gives too much verbal body to thoughts»

  . . . «Parody of politeness: That inimitable 'Please' — 'Please send me your beautiful' which firms idiotically address to themselves in printed forms meant for people ordering their product».

  «Naive, nonstop, peeppeep twitter of chicks in dismal crates late, late at night, on a desolate frostbedimmed station platform»

  . . . «The tabloid headline TORSO KILLER MAY BEAT CHAIR might be translated: 'Celui qui tu
e un buste peut bien battre une chaise»«

  . . . «Newspaper vendor, handing me a magazine with my story. 'I see yon made the slicks.' « «Snow falling, young father out with tiny child, nose like a pink cherry. Why does a parent immediately say something to his or her child if a stranger smiles at the latter? 'Sure,' said the father to the infant's interrogatory gurgle, which had been going on for some time, and would have been left to go on in the quiet falling snow, had I not smiled in passing»

  . . . «Intercolumniation: darkblue sky between two white columns».

  . . . «Placename in the Orkneys: Papilio»

  . . . «Not 'I, too, lived in Arcadia,1 but 'I,' says Death, even am in Arcadia1 — legend on a shepherd's tomb (Notes and Queries, June 13, 1868, p. 561)»

  ... «Marat collected butterflies»

  . . . «From the aesthetic point of view, the tapeworm is certainly an undesirable boarder. The gravid segments frequently crawl out of a person's anal canal, sometimes in chains, and have been reported a source of social embarrassment». (Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 48:558).

  What inspires you to record and collect such disconnected impressions and quotations?

  All I know is that at a very early stage of the novel's development I get this urge to garner bits of straw and fluff, and eat pebbles. Nobody will ever discover how clearly a bird visualizes, or if it visualizes at all, the future nest and the eggs in it. When I remember afterwards the force that made me jot down the correct names of things, or the inches and tints of things, even before I actually needed the information, I am inclined to assume that what I call, for want of a better term, inspiration, had been already at work, mutely pointing at this or that, having me accumulate the known materials for an unknown structure.