Classes varied from term to term during my seventeen years of teaching. I do remember that my approach and principles irritated or puzzled such students of literature (and their professors) as were accustomed to «serious» courses replete with «trends», and «schools», and «myths», and «symbols», and «social comment», and something unspeakably spooky called «climate of thought». Actually, those «serious» courses were quite easy ones, with the student required to know not the books but about the books. In my classes, readers had to discuss specific details, not general ideas. «Dirty Lit» was an inherited joke: it had heen applied to the lectures of my immediate predecessor, a sad, gentle, hard-drinking fellow who was more interested in the sex life of authors than in their books. Activist, demonstration-struck students of-the present decade would, I suppose, either drop my course after a couple of lectures or end by getting a fat F if they could not answer such exam questions as: Discuss the twinned-dream theme in the case of two teams of dreamers, Stephen D.Bloom, and Vronski Anna. None of my questions ever presupposed the advocacy of a fashionable interpretation or critical view that a teacher might wish to promote. All my questions were impelled by only one purpose: to discover at all cost if the student had thoroughly imbibed and assimilated the novels in my course.
I can now see that if you don't share Van’s system of «distressibles», you well might. Are you, like him, insomniac?
1 have described the insomnias of my childhood in Speak, Memory. They still persecute me every other night. Helpful pills do exist but I am afraid of them. I detest drugs. My habitual hallucinations are quite monstrously sufficient, thank Hades. Looking at it objectively, I have never seen a more lucid, more lonely, better balanced mad mind than mine.
Immediately following the above quote, Van warns against the «assassin pun». You are obviously a brilliant and untiring punner and it would seem particularly appropriate if you would briefly discuss the pun for Time which, God knows, is porous from the bullets of a particularly clumsy but determined assassin.
In a poem about poetry as he understands it, Verlaine warns the poet against using la pointe assassine, that is introducing an epigrammatic or moral point at the end of a poem, and thereby murdering the poem. What amused me was to pun on «point», thus making a pun in the very act of prohibiting it.
You have been a Sherlock Holmes buff. When did you lose your taste for mystery fiction. Why?
With a very few exceptions, mystery fiction is a kind of collage combining more or less original riddles with conventional and mediocre artwork.
Why do you so dislike dialogue in fiction?
Dialogue can be delightful if dramatically or comically stylized or artistically blended with descriptive prose; in other words, if it is a feature of style and structure in a given work. If not, then it is nothing but automatic typewriting, formless speeches filling page after page, over which the eye skims like a flying saucer over the Dust Bowl.
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In April, 1969, Alden Whitman sent me these questions and came to Montreux for a merry interview shortly before my seventieth birthday. His piece appeared in The New York Times, April 19, 1969, with only two or three of my answers retained. The rest are to be used, I suppose, as «Special to The New York Times» at some later date by A. W., if he survives, or by his successor. I transcribe some of our exchanges.
You have called yourself «an American writer, born in Russia and educated in England». How does this make you an American writer?
An American writer means, in the present case, a writer who has been an American citizen for a quarter of a century. It means, moreover, that all my works appear first in America. It also means that America is the only country where I feel mentally and emotionally at home. Rightly or wrongly, I am not one of those perfectionists who by dint of hypercriticizing America find themselves wallowing in the same muddy camp with indigenous rascals and envious foreign observers. My admiration for this adopted country of mine can easily survive the jolts and flaws that, indeed, are nothing in comparison to the abyss of evil in the history of Russia, not to speak of other, more exotic, countries.
In the poem «To My Soul, «you wrote, possibly of yourself, as «a provincial naturalist, an eccentric lost in paradise». This appears to link your interest in butterflies to other aspects of your life, writing, for instance. Do you feel that you are «an eccentric lost in paradise»?
An eccentric is a person whose mind and senses are excited by things that the average citizen does not even notice. And, per contra, the average eccentric — for there are many of us, of different waters and magnitudes — is utterly baffled and bored by the adjacent tourist who boasts of his business connections. In that sense, I often feel lost; but then, other people feel lost in my presence too. And I also know, as a good eccentric should, that the dreary old fellow who has been telling me all about the rise of mortgage interest rates may suddenly turn out to be the greatest living authority on springtails or tumblebugs.
Dreams of flight or escape recur in many of your poems and stories. Is this a reflection of your own years of wandering?
Yes, in part. The odd fact, however, is that in my early childhood, long before the tremendously dull peripatetics of Revolution and Civil War set in, I suffered from nightmares full of wanderings and escapes, and desolate station platforms.
What did you enjoy (and disenjoy) in your Harvard experience? And what induced you to leave Cambridge?
My Harvard experience consisted of seven blissful years (19411948) of entomological research at the wonderful and unforgettable Museum of Comparative Zoology and of one spring term (1952) of lecturing on the European novel to an audience of some 600 young strangers in Memorial Hall. Apart from that experience, I lectured at Wellesley for half-a-dozen years and then, from 1948, was on the faculty of Cornell, ending as full professor of Russian Literature and author of American Lolita, after which (in 1959) I decided to devote myself entirely to writing. I greatly enjoyed Cornell.
In the United States you are probably more widely known for Lolita than for any other single book or poem. If you had your way, what book or poem or story would you like to be known for in the U S. ?
I am immune to the convulsions of fame; yet, I think that the harmful drudges who define today, in popular dictionaries, the word «nymphet» as «a very young but sexually attractive girl», without any additional comment or reference, should have their knuckles rapped.
Has the sexual kick in literature reached a peak? Will it not now decline?
I am completely indifferent to the social aspect of this or any other group activity. Historically, the pornographic record set by the ancients still remains unbroken. Artistically, the dirtier typewriters try to get, the more conventional and corny their products become, e.g. such novels as Millers Thumb and Tailors Spasm.
What is your attitude toward modem violence?
I abhor the brutality of all brutes, white or black, brown or red. I despise red knaves and pink fools.
Reflecting on your life, what have been its truly significant moments?
Every moment, practically. Yesterday's letter from a reader in Russia, the capture of an undescribed butterfly last year, learning to ride a bicycle in 1909.
How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?
I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile — some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.
If you were writing your own obituary, what would you stress or emphasize as your contribution to literature, to the climate of opinion (an and esthetics) of the last 50 years?
In my case the afterglow of a recent work (say, Ada, finished last Christmas) mingles at once with the hazy aurora of a new task. My next book, dawning as it does in ideal tint and tone, seems for the moment better than anything I wrote before. What I am trying to emphasize is a special thrill of anticipation which by its very nature cannot be treated necrologically.
What books have you enjoyed lately?
I seldom experience nowadays the spinal twinge which is the only valid reaction to a new piece of great poetry — such as, for example, Richard Wilbur's «Complaint», a poem about his marvelous duchess (Phoenix Bookshop edition, 1968).
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In early June, 1969, Philip Oakes sent me a series of Questions on behalf of The Sunday Times, London. I happened to be greatly annoyed by the editorial liberties that periodicals in other countries had been taking with material 1 had supplied. When he arrived on June 15, I gave him my written answers accompanied by the following note.
When preparing interviews I invariably write out my replies (and sometimes additional questions) taking great care to make them as concise as possible. My replies represent unpublished material, should be printed verbatim and in toto, and copyrighted in my name. Answers may be rearranged in whatever order the interviewer or the editor wishes: for example, they may be split, with insertion of the questioner's comments or bits of descriptive matter (but none of the latter material may be ascribed to me). Unprepared remarks, quips, etc., may come from me during the actual colloquy but may not be published without my approval. The article will be shown to me before publication so as to avoid factual errors (e.g., in names, dates, etc.).
Mr. Oakes' article appeared in The Sunday Times on June 22, 1969.
As a distinguished entomologist and novelist do you find that your two main preoccupations condition, restrict, or refine your view of the world?
What world? Whose world? If we mean the average world of the average newspaper reader in Liverpool, Livorno, or Vilno, then we are dealing in trivial generalities. If, on the other hand, an artist invents his own world, as I think I do, then how can he be said to influence his own understanding of what he has created himself? As soon as we start defining such terms as «the writer», «the world», «the novel», and so on, we slip into a solipsismal abyss where general ideas dissolve. As to butterflies — well, my taxonomic papers on lepidoptera were published mainly in the nineteen forties, and can be of interest to only a few specialists in certain groups of American butterflies. In itself, an aurelian's passion is not a particularly unusual sickness; but it stands outside the limits of a novelist's world, and I can prove this by the fact that whenever I allude to butterflies in my novels, no matter how diligently I rework the stuff, it remains pale and false and does not really express what I want it to express — what, indeed, it can only express in the special scientific terms of my entomological papers. The butterfly that lives forever on its type-labeled pin and in its U. D. («original description») in a scientific journal dies a messy death in the fumes of the arty gush. However — not to let your question go completely unanswered I must admit that in one sense the entomological satellite does impinge upon my novelistic globe. This is when certain place-names are mentioned. Thus if I hear or read the words «Alp Grum, Engadine» the normal observer within me may force me to imagine the belvedere of a tiny hotel on its 2000-meter-tall perch and mowers working along a path that winds down to a toy railway; but what I see first of all and above all is the Yellow-handed Ringlet settled with folded wings on the flower that those damned scythes are about to behead.
What was the most amusing item you recently found in the papers?
That bit about Mr. E. Pound, a venerable fraud, making a «sentimental visit» to his alma mater in Clinton, New York, and being given a standing ovation by the commencement audience — consisting, apparently, of morons and madmen.
Have you seen the cinema version of your Laughter in the Dark?
I have. Nicol Williamson is, of course, an admirable actor, and some of the sequences are very good. The scene with the water-ski girl, gulping and giggling, is exceptionally successful. But 1 was appalled by the commonplace quality of the sexual passages. I would like to say something about that. Cliches and conventions breed remarkably fast. They occur as readily in the primitive jollities of the jungle as in the civilized obligatory scenes of our theater. In former times Greek masks must have set many a Greek dentition on edge. In recent films, including Laughter in the Dark, the porno grapple has already become a cliche though the device is but half-a-dozen years old. I would have been sorry that Tony Richardson should have followed that trite trend, had it not given me the opportunity to form and formulate the following important notion: theatrical acting, in the course of the last centuries, has led to incredible refinements of stylized pantomine in the representation of, say, a person eating, or getting deliciously drunk, or looking for his spectacles, or making a proposal of marriage. Not so in regard to the imitation of the sexual act which on the stage has absolutely no tradition behind it. The Swedes and we have 10 start from scratch and what I have witnessed up to now on the screen — the blotchy male shoulder, the false howls of bliss, the four or five mingled feet — all of it is primitive, commonplace, conventional, and therefore disgusting. The lack of art and style in these paltry copulations is particularly brought into evidence by their clashing with the marvelously high level of acting in virtually all other imitations of natural gestures on our stage and screen. This is an attractive topic to ponder further, and directors should take notice of it.
When you are writing your novels, you have a remarkable sense of history and period, although the situations in which your characters are involved reflect perennial dilemmas. Do you feel that any given time creates special problems which interest you as a writer?
We should define, should we not, what we mean by «history». If «history» means a «written account of events» (and that is about all Clio can claim), then let us inquire who actually — what scribes, what secretaries — took it down and how qualified they were for the job. I am inclined to guess that a big part of «history» (the unnatural history of man — not the naive testimony of rocks) has been modified by mediocre writers and prejudiced observers. We know that police states {e.g., the Soviets) have actually snipped out and destroyed such past events in old books as did not conform to the falsehoods of the present. But even the most talented and conscientious historian may err. In other words, I do not believe that «history» exists apart from the historian. If I try to select a keeper of records, I think it safer (for my comfort, at least) to choose my own self. But nothing recorded or thought up by myself can create any special «problems» in the sense you suggest.
You say somewhere that, artistically speaking, you prefer Lolita to all your other books. Has your new novel Ada superseded Lolita in your affection?
Not really. It is true that Ada caused me more trouble than all my other novels and perhaps that bright fringe of overlapping worry is synonymous with the crest of love. Incidentally, speaking of my first nymphet, let me take this neat opportunity to correct a curious misconception profferred by an anonymous owl in a London weekly a couple of months ago. «Lolita» should not be pronounced in the English or Russian fashion (as he thinks it should), but with a trill of Latin T's and a delicate toothy «t».
Do you feel isolated as a writer?
Most of the writers I have met were Russian emigres in the nineteen twenties and thirties. With American novelists I have had virtually no contact. In England, I had lunch once with Graham Greene. I have dined with Joyce and have had tea with Robbe-Grillet. Isolation means liberty and discovery. A desert island may be more exciting than a city, but my loneliness, on the whole, has little significance. It is a consequence of chance circumstance — old shipwrecks, freakish tides — and not a matter of temperament. As a private person I am good-natured, warm, cheerful, straightforward, plainspoken, and intolerant of bogus art. I do not mind my own writings being criticized or ignored and therefore think it funny that people not even concerned with literature should be upset by my finding D. H. Lawrence execrable or my seeing in H. G. Wells a far greater artist than Conrad.
What do you think of the so-called «student revolution «?
Rowdies are never revolutionary, they are always reactionary. It is among the
young that the greatest conformists and Philistines are found, e.g., the hippies with their group beards and group protests. Demonstrators at American universities care as little about education as football fans who smash up subway stations in England care about soccer. All belong to the same family of goofy hoodlums — with a sprinkling of clever rogues among them.
What are your working methods?
Quite banal. Thirty years ago I used to write in bed, dipping my pen into a bedside inkwell, or else I would compose mentally at any time of the day or night. I would fall asleep when the sparrows woke up. Nowadays I write my stuff on index cards, in pencil, at a lectern, in the forenoon; but I still tend to do a lot of work in my head during long walks in the country on dull days when butterflies do not interfere. Here is a disappointed lepidopterist's ditty:
It's a long climb
Up the rock face
At the wrong time
To the right place.
Do you keep a journal or seek documentary reminders?
I am an ardent memoirist with a rotten memory; a drowsy king's absentminded remembrancer. With absolute lucidity I recall landscapes, gestures, intonations, a million sensuous details, but names and numbers topple into oblivion with absurd abandon like little blind men in file from a pier.
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