Word: nabokovs
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...this, the old aristocrat cannot help dropping a few historical observations in his Russian course. History, after all, forced him into exile in the first place. He unequivocally condemns the Soviet Union and the literature it has produced. Beyond this point, however, his politics are naive. Nabokov was fond of arguing in vaguely libertarian terms: that the ideal state would be one where everyone left everyone else alone. With this, he would wash his hands of politics, along with philosophy, theology, ethics, and any other stray ideas...
...NABOKOV hated many things--popular culture, for instance, including advertising, journalism, and psychology (Freud was the Viennese witch doctor). He hated Thomas Mann. And most interesting of all, he hated Dostoevsky. Nabokov is at his most provocative when he ranks the great Russians. Most of his own emotions, it seems, were poured into his worshipping of Tolstoy, on the one hand, and his vicious debunking of Dostoevsky, on the other. The final ranking is, officially: 1. Tolstoy; 2. Gogol; 3. Chekhov; 4. Turgenev. Dostoevsky is dead last. Nabokov accuses him of sloppy and melodramatic Christianity, reactionary slavophilism (which Nabokov links...
...Nabokov's rankings are dogmatic but for the most part congenial. Yet, something seems wrong in his assessment of Dostoevsky: His tone is too violent, too bitter. The attack on Dostoevsky apparently became obsession for the writer. His criticism of Crime and Punishment as petty and simple-minded seems also to have entirely missed the point of Notes from Underground. Dostoevsky, after all, was a novelist of ideas; Nabokov is unwilling to deal with him on his own terms. Perhaps if he paid more attention to the larger intellectual context of Dostoevsky's work, he would appreciate the importance...
...NABOKOV THE NOVELIST has a special affinity with Gogol. They are both obsessed with words, with the curious and beautiful poetic possibilities of their languages. They both love a story for its own sake; they shy away from messages and morals. They twist the literary conventions. Above all, they challenge the imagination. Nabokov treats Gogol lovingly; it makes for a delightful and intelligent opening chapter...
After perfunctorily and unenthusiastically praising Turgenev, the professor arrives at Tolstoy. Tolstoy was a moralizer if ever there was one, and he was never known for his poetry or stylistic ingenuity--and yet Nabokov approves. He scolds Tolstoy, of course, for his digressions on agriculture, but he does seem to appreciate, for once, the human elements of the story. And there are indeed human elements in Tolstoy. His insights into Tolstoy's use of time sequences and sense of timing seem keen and impressive...