ADV ERT ISE ME NT

Vladimir Nabokov, The Art of Fiction

No. 40

Interviewed by Herbert Gold

ISSU E 41, SU M MER- FAL L 1 967

Vladimir Nabokov lives with his wife Véra in

the Montreux Palace Hotel in Montreux,
Switzerland, a resort city on Lake Geneva
which was a favorite of Russian aristocrats of
the last century. They dwell in a connected
series of hotel rooms that, like their houses
and apartments in the United States, seem
impermanent, places of exile. Their rooms
include one used for visits by their son
Dmitri, and another, the chambre de
debarras, where various items are deposited
—Turkish and Japanese editions of Lolita,
other books, sporting equipment, an
American flag.
Nabokov arises early in the morning and
works. He does his writing on filing cards,
which are gradually copied, expanded, and
rearranged until they become his novels.
During the warm season in Montreux he likes
to take the sun and swim at a pool in a garden
near the hotel. His appearance at sixty-eight
is heavy, slow, and powerful. He is easily
turned to both amusement and annoyance,
but prefers the former. His wife, an
unequivocally devoted collaborator, is
vigilant over him, writing his letters, taking
care of business, occasionally even
interrupting him when she feels he is saying
the wrong thing. She is an exceptionally
good-looking, trim, and sober-eyed woman.
The Nabokovs still go off on frequent
butterfly-hunting trips, though the distances
they travel are limited by the fact that they
dislike flying.
The interviewer had sent ahead a number
of questions. When he arrived at the
Montreux Palace, he found an envelope
waiting for him—the questions had been
shaken up and transformed into an interview.
A few questions and answers were added
later, before the interview’s appearance in the
1967 Summer/Fall issue of The Paris
Review. In accordance with Nabokov’s
wishes, all answers are given as he wrote them
down. He claims that he needs to write his
responses because of his unfamiliarity with
English; this is a constant seriocomic form of
teasing. He speaks with a dramatic
Cambridge accent, very slightly nuanced by
an occasional Russian pronunciation. Spoken
English is, in fact, no hazard to him.
Misquotation, however, is a menace. There is
no doubt that Nabokov feels as a tragic loss
the conspiracy of history that deprived him of
his native Russia, and that brought him in
middle life to doing his life’s work in a
language that is not that of his first dreams.
However, his frequent apologies for his grasp
of English clearly belong in the context of
Nabokov’s special mournful joking: he means
it, he does not mean it, he is grieving for his
loss, he is outraged if anyone criticizes his
style, he pretends to be just a poor lonely
foreigner, he is as American “as April in
Arizona.”
Nabokov is now at work on a long novel
that explores the mysteries and ambiguities
of time. When he speaks of this book, his
voice and gaze are those of a delighted and
bemused young poet eager to get to the task.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Good morning. Let me ask forty-odd
questions.

V LA DI MI R NA B O KOV
Good morning. I am ready.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Your sense of the immorality of the
relationship between Humbert Humbert and
Lolita is very strong. In Hollywood and New
York, however, relationships are frequent
between men of forty and girls very little
older than Lolita. They marry—to no
particular public outrage; rather, public
cooing.

NAB O KOV
No, it is not my sense of the immorality of the
Humbert Humbert-Lolita relationship that is
strong; it is Humbert’s sense. He cares, I do
not. I do not give a damn for public morals, in
America or elsewhere. And, anyway, cases of
men in their forties marrying girls in their
teens or early twenties have no bearing
on Lolita whatever. Humbert was fond of
“little girls”—not simply “young girls.”
Nymphets are girl-children, not starlets and
“sex kittens.” Lolita was twelve, not eighteen,
when Humbert met her. You may remember
that by the time she is fourteen, he refers to
her as his “aging mistress.”

I NT ERV I EW E R
One critic (Pryce-Jones) has said about you
that “his feelings are like no one else’s.” Does
this make sense to you? Or does it mean that
you know your feelings better than others
know theirs? Or that you have discovered
yourself at other levels? Or simply that your
history is unique?

NAB O KOV
I do not recall that article; but if a critic makes
such a statement, it must surely mean that he
has explored the feelings of literally millions
of people, in at least three countries, before
reaching his conclusion. If so, I am a rare fowl
indeed. If, on the other hand, he has merely
limited himself to quizzing members of his
family or club, his statement cannot be
discussed seriously.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Another critic has written that your “worlds
are static. They may become tense with
obsession, but they do not break apart like
the worlds of everyday reality.” Do you agree?
Is there a static quality in your view of things?

NAB O KOV
Whose “reality”? “Everyday” where? Let me
suggest that the very term “everyday reality”
is utterly static since it presupposes a
situation that is permanently observable,
essentially objective, and universally known. I
suspect you have invented that expert on
“everyday reality.” Neither exists.

I NT ERV I EW E R
He does [names him]. A third critic has said
that you “diminish” your characters “to the
point where they become ciphers in a cosmic
farce.” I disagree; Humbert, while comic,
retains a touching and insistent quality—that
of the spoiled artist.

NAB O KOV
I would put it differently: Humbert Humbert
is a vain and cruel wretch who manages to
appear “touching.” That epithet, in its true,
tear-iridized sense, can only apply to my poor
little girl. Besides, how can I “diminish” to the
level of ciphers, et cetera, characters that I
have invented myself ? One can “diminish” a
biographee, but not an eidolon.

I NT ERV I EW E R
E. M. Forster speaks of his major characters
sometimes taking over and dictating the
course of his novels. Has this ever been a
problem for you, or are you in complete
command?

NAB O KOV
My knowledge of Mr. Forster’s works is
limited to one novel, which I dislike; and
anyway, it was not he who fathered that trite
little whimsy about characters getting out of
hand; it is as old as the quills, although of
course one sympathizes with his people if
they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or
wherever he takes them. My characters are
galley slaves.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Clarence Brown of Princeton has pointed out
striking similarities in your work. He refers to
you as “extremely repetitious” and that in
wildly different ways you are in essence
saying the same thing. He speaks of fate being
the “muse of Nabokov.” Are you consciously
aware of “repeating yourself,” or to put it
another way, that you strive for a conscious
unity to your shelf of books?

NAB O KOV
I do not think I have seen Clarence Brown’s
essay, but he may have something there.
Derivative writers seem versatile because
they imitate many others, past and present.
Artistic originality has only its own self to
copy.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Do you think literary criticism is at all
purposeful? Either in general, or specifically
about your own books? Is it ever instructive?

NAB O KOV
The purpose of a critique is to say something
about a book the critic has or has not read.
Criticism can be instructive in the sense that
it gives readers, including the author of the
book, some information about the critic’s
intelligence, or honesty, or both.

I NT ERV I EW E R
And the function of the editor? Has one ever
had literary advice to offer?

NAB O KOV
By “editor” I suppose you mean proofreader.
Among these I have known limpid creatures
of limitless tact and tenderness who would
discuss with me a semicolon as if it were a
point of honor—which, indeed, a point of art
often is. But I have also come across a few
pompous avuncular brutes who would
attempt to “make suggestions” which I
countered with a thunderous “stet!”

I NT ERV I EW E R
Are you a lepidopterist, stalking your
victims? If so, doesn’t your laughter startle
them?

NAB O KOV
On the contrary, it lulls them into the state of
torpid security which an insect experiences
when mimicking a dead leaf. Though by no
means an avid reader of reviews dealing with
my own stuff, I happen to remember the
essay by a young lady who attempted to find
entomological symbols in my fiction. The
essay might have been amusing had she
known something about Lepidoptera. Alas,
she revealed complete ignorance, and the
muddle of terms she employed proved to be
only jarring and absurd.

I NT ERV I EW E R
How would you define your alienation from
the so-called White Russian refugees?

NAB O KOV
Well, historically I am a “White Russian”
myself since all Russians who left Russia as
my family did in the first years of the
Bolshevik tyranny because of their
opposition to it were and remained White
Russians in the large sense. But these refugees
were split into as many social fractions and
political factions as was the entire nation
before the Bolshevist coup. I do not mix with
“Black-Hundred” White Russians and do not
mix with the so-called “bolshevizans,” that is
“pinks.” On the other hand, I have friends
among intellectual Constitutional
Monarchists as well as among intellectual
Social Revolutionaries. My father was an old-
fashioned liberal, and I do not mind being
labeled an old-fashioned liberal, too.

I NT ERV I EW E R
How would you define your alienation from
present-day Russia?

NAB O KOV
As a deep distrust of the phony thaw now
advertised. As a constant awareness of
unredeemable iniquities. As a complete
indifference to all that moves a
patriotic Sovietski man of today. As the keen
satisfaction of having discerned as early as
1918 (nineteen eighteen)
the meshchantsvo (petty bourgeois
smugness, Philistine essence) of Leninism.

I NT ERV I EW E R
How do you now regard the poets Blok and
Mandelshtam and others who were writing in
the days before you left Russia?

NAB O KOV
I read them in my boyhood, more than a half
century ago. Ever since that time I have
remained passionately fond of Blok’s lyrics.
His long pieces are weak, and the famous The
Twelve is dreadful, self-consciously couched
in a phony “primitive” tone, with a pink
cardboard Jesus Christ glued on at the end. As
to Mandelstam, I also knew him by heart, but
he gave me a less fervent pleasure. Today,
through the prism of a tragic fate, his poetry
seems greater than it actually is. I note
incidentally that professors of literature still
assign these two poets to different schools.
There is only one school: that of talent.

I NT ERV I EW E R
I know your work has been read and is
attacked in the Soviet Union. How would you
feel about a Soviet edition of your work?

NAB O KOV
Oh, they are welcome to my work. As a
matter of fact, the Editions Victor are
bringing out my Invitation to a Beheading in
a reprint of the original Russian of 1938, and a
New York publisher (Phaedra) is printing my
Russian translation of Lolita. I am sure the
Soviet Government will be happy to admit
officially a novel that seems to contain a
prophecy of Hitler’s regime, and a novel that
condemns bitterly the American system of
motels.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Have you ever had contact with Soviet
citizens? Of what sort?

NAB O KOV
I have practically no contact with them,
though I did once agree, in the early thirties
or late twenties, to meet—out of sheer
curiosity—an agent from Bolshevist Russia
who was trying hard to get émigré writers and
artists to return to the fold. He had a double
name, Lebedev something, and had written a
novelette entitled Chocolate, and I thought I
might have some sport with him. I asked him
would I be permitted to write freely and
would I be able to leave Russia if I did not like
it there. He said that I would be so busy liking
it there that I would have no time to dream of
going abroad again. I would, he said, be
perfectly free to choose any of the many
themes Soviet Russia bountifully allows a
writer to use, such as farms, factories, forests
in Fakistan—oh, lots of fascinating subjects. I
said farms, et cetera, bored me, and my
wretched seducer soon gave up. He had
better luck with the composer Prokofiev.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Do you consider yourself an American?

NAB O KOV
Yes, I do. I am as American as April in
Arizona. The flora, the fauna, the air of the
western states, are my links with Asiatic and
Arctic Russia. Of course, I owe too much to
the Russian language and landscape to be
emotionally involved in, say, American
regional literature, or Indian dances, or
pumpkin pie on a spiritual plane; but I do feel
a suffusion of warm, lighthearted pride when
I show my green USA passport at European
frontiers. Crude criticism of American affairs
offends and distresses me. In home politics I
am strongly antisegregationist. In foreign
policy, I am definitely on the government’s
side. And when in doubt, I always follow the
simple method of choosing that line of
conduct which may be the most displeasing
to the Reds and the Russells.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Is there a community of which you consider
yourself a part?

NAB O KOV
Not really. I can mentally collect quite a large
number of individuals whom I am fond of,
but they would form a very disparate and
discordant group if gathered in real life, on a
real island. Otherwise, I would say that I am
fairly comfortable in the company of
American intellectuals who have read my
books.

I NT ERV I EW E R
What is your opinion of the academic world
as a milieu for the creative writer? Could you
speak specifically of the value or detriment of
your teaching at Cornell?

NAB O KOV
A first-rate college library with a comfortable
campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer.
There is, of course, the problem of educating
the young. I remember how once, between
terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a
transistor set with him into the reading room.
He managed to state that one, he was playing
“classical” music; that two, he was doing it
“softly”; and that three, “there were not many
readers around in summer.” I was there, a
one-man multitude.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Would you describe your relationship with
the contemporary literary community? With
Edmund Wilson, Mary McCarthy, your
magazine editors and book publishers?

NAB O KOV
The only time I ever collaborated with any
writer was when I translated with Edmund
Wilson Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri for The
New Republic twenty-five years ago, a rather
paradoxical recollection in view of his making
such a fool of himself last year when he had
the audacity of questioning my
understanding of Eugene Onegin. Mary
McCarthy, on the other hand, has been very
kind to me recently in the same New
Republic, although I do think she added quite
a bit of her own angelica to the pale fire of
Kinbote’s plum pudding. I prefer not to
mention here my relationship with Girodias,
but I have answered in Evergreen his scurvy
article in the Olympia anthology. Otherwise, I
am on excellent terms with all my publishers.
My warm friendship with Katharine White
and Bill Maxwell of The New Yorker is
something the most arrogant author cannot
evoke without gratitude and delight.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Could you say something of your work
habits? Do you write to a preplanned chart?
Do you jump from one section to another, or
do you move from the beginning through to
the end?

NAB O KOV
The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I
fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I
happen to choose. These bits I write on index
cards until the novel is done. My schedule is
flexible, but I am rather particular about my
instruments: lined Bristol cards and well
sharpened, not too hard, pencils capped with
erasers.

I NT ERV I EW E R
Is there a particular picture of the world
which you wish to develop? The past is very
present for you, even in a novel of the
“future,” such as Bend Sinister. Are you a
“nostalgist”? In what time would you prefer
to live?

NAB O KOV
In the coming days of silent planes and
graceful aircycles, and cloudless silvery skies,
and a universal system of padded
underground roads to which trucks shall be
relegated like Morlocks. As to the past, I
would not mind retrieving from various
corners of space-time certain lost comforts,
such as baggy trousers and long, deep
bathtubs.

I NT ERV I EW E R
You know,
L ASTyou doAnot
/ N EXT RTICLhave
E to answer all my
SH A RE