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Dmitri's ChoiceNabokov wanted his final, unfinished work destroyed. Should his son get out the matches?

By Ron RosenbaumPosted Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008, at 6:18 PM ET

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James Wood and Richard Lamb discussed the reissue of Nabokov's memoir, Speak, Memory. Stephen Metcalf asked whether Lolita is still shocking at 50, while Louis Menand argued that the Adrian Lyne film adaptation of Lolita isn't perverse enough. Chris Suellentrop examined "famfic": children who continue their dead parents' literary franchises. Jacob Weisberg reviewed Juneteenth, a posthumously published novel culled from Ralph Ellison's copious unfinished manuscript notes.

When I say, "once again," it's because he's zigged and zagged on the question over the past two years since I first provoked comment from him that he would "probably destroy" Laura.

He made that statement in an e-mail exchange we had about an essay I'd written on the "ur-Lolita" problem: the discovery by a German professor of an obscure novella published in Berlin in 1916 that seemed to prefigure some features of V.N.'s later Lolita. The "ur-Lolita" disclosure was mistakenly characterized as a "plagiarism" scandal by some of the less acute members of the European press, although the German professor, Michael Maar, explicitly said the parallels were not plagiarism and suggested instead a case of "cryptomnesia"—the technical term for, say, reading something in 1916 and not having a conscious memory of it 20 years later, so that one isn't aware of the source when elements of it surface in one's own later work.

In any case, when I asked Dmitri about Laura—this was two years ago—he said he was inclined to burn it because of the lamentable state of what he called "Lolitology."

At the time I assumed he was referring to the ur-Lolita controversy, and in a column in the New York Observer, thinking only of myself, the vast pleasure and mystery Nabokov's work offers, and the thrilling prospect of reading his final manuscript, I penned a public plea to Dmitri not to burn Laura.

The attention this brought to Dmitri's dilemma caused something of a stir, with headlines around the world blaring variations of NABOKOV SON TO DESTROY FATHER'S LAST WORDS, when in fact what he actually said in his e-mail to me was that he would "probably destroy it." In the aftermath of this brouhaha, Dmitri announced that he hadn't yet made an irrevocable decision about burning Laura. At the time, I counted it a victory in helping him move back from the brink.

But after things died down, I began to think of the matter from Dmitri's perspective: It was a Hamlet-like dilemma he faced. His stern regal father, like the ghost in Hamlet, demanding posthumous fulfillment of a blood-chilling pledge. Dmitri has been enjoined with carrying out the last act of one of the most demanding purists in literary history, a man who would have, his son must know, felt pain at the release of a maimed or not fully formed version of his last words.

Indeed a Nabokov specialist at Oberlin College, professor Abraham P. Socher, drew my attention to a quote in V.N.'s first English-language novel, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. V.N. describes a Nabokov-like writer figure as "that rare type of writer who knows that nothing ought to remain except for the perfect achievement."

Does it matter what V.N. would feel, since he's long dead? Do we owe no respect to his last wishes because we greedily want some "key" to his work, or just more of it for our own selfish reasons? Does the lust for aesthetic beauty always allow us to rationalize trampling on the artist's grave? Does the greatness of an artist diminish his right to dispose of his own unfinished work?

It is in this context that the new Dmitri pronouncement figures. Shortly after the New Year, I received an e-mail from a mutual friend saying, "Dmitri asked me to send this…something about yr article being the reason for this interview…Dmitri said he wanted you to have it before it came out."

It was a transcript labeled, "Final draft; small changes made after transmission … on Dec. 29, 2007. Interview with Dmitri Nabokov for Nabokov online, No. 1, 2008."

I reached Dmitri by phone just to make sure he had not changed his views since the interview, but he reaffirmed the substance of his sentiments on Laura and—though he asked that I not quote him directly until the interview appears—he agreed that I could share some of his thoughts on the Laura question with you.

In the interview, Dmitri initially says that he is reserving judgment as to whether to preserve or destroy the manuscript, but he subsequently admits to feeling protective about Laura, especially in light of the treatment of his father's works by certain writers he regards as deeply misguided in their "psychological" analyses of Lolita and other works, analyses he characterizes as virtually criminal idiocy. In particular, he singles out critics who have used close readings of Nabokov's work to suggest that V.N. himself was molested or abused.

And though Dmitri hasn't made a final decision, he says the desire to spare Laura similar molestation by the "Lolitologists" inclines him to obey his father's wishes and consign the manuscript to oblivion.

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Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler.

Photograph of Vladimir Nabokov in 1976 from AP Photo.

COMMENTS

Comments from the Fray Editor

Author Ron Rosenbaum actually solicited readers' views on the Nabokov dilemma, and perhaps it was this that led to a very well-behaved and thoughtful Fray--an unexpected side effect. Fearful syzygy was the first of many readers to cite the comparable case of Kafka, who asked Max Brod to destroy his works. Dairving says "The dead have no wishes," while Moebius is equally clear: "Burn it. For the dying to have faith in the living he should have done it long ago." Alex K brought the tone down, but made us laugh, with this: "Boy--I wish someone had destroyed the last drunken email I sent."

Comments from the Fray

Sell half of the notes and give the money to a worthy charity. The rights of the dead should not outweigh the needs of the living, and by burning the other half you preserve the wonderful mystery of it all.

--Nacoran

(To reply, click here)

Now we're going to start taking orders from dead people? I think not. It doesn't matter a whit what VN wanted-- they guy's dead, gone, not here. We're people, we don't take orders from ghosts. Sure, we respect a lot of ghosty stuff-- the Bible, the Constitution, the Magna Carta.. Lots of things that were thought up and written down by people who came before. But this is a case of here and now. If D sets fire to the ms, he goes down in history as a book-burning pinhead. If he sets the ms free, then the literary world gets to ooh and ah and deconstruct for years, decades, centuries…

--ihatethenewlogin

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How about neither? Of course it shouldn't be published; it's not a finished work. Reading this fragment as a work of literature is pointless. But as an item of scholarship, it has value. Donate it to a library, where scholars, who have a very different motivation for reading the scraps of an author's life, whether unfinished novel or grocery lists, can get at it. Those of us who read can get what we need of it from the next biography that is published. Burn it? Don't be ridiculous.

--fnarf

(To reply, click here)

Dmitry Vladimirovich, I would first like to thank you for your thoughtful handling of your parents' legacy. One can hardly imagine a heavier burden, and you have carried it well. I am sure that no matter what decision you make, and it does seem like a zero-sum proposition, you will do it with care and love for both your father and those who love your father's work.

I only have one suggestion: if you do decide to carry out the elimination of Laura, please do not do so because you fear that some might subject the work to bad reading and ideologies of "oneiromancy and mythogeny." I would venture that this will occur regardless of your decision. Some would-be witchdoctor will conjure and publish his idea of what the work ought to have been. Some worse offender will invent reasons for why it had to be destroyed, what it could have contained.

Unfortunately, if you destroy it, there will be no solid grounds for rebuttal. More unfortunately, you will be depriving the good readers of joy because of the bad behavior of others. While those who regard art poorly surely deserve the cold shoulder, don't those who honor it deserve reward? In any case, they don't deserve the punishment, too.

So, if you banish Laura, do so because you were asked to do so by the man who gave you his legacy. By all means, honor that. But for those of us who have worn out their copies of Invitation and Ada for the pure joy of those books and who would love to read more, it would be tragic on the level of Hamlet to have that opportunity destroyed for the misdeeds of a vulgar, if vocal, few.

--danaadamfu

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