Vladimir Nabokov's opinions on various writers, culled from Strong Opinions.

i don't know where we go after we die and our bodies turn to rust and stardust (as Nabokov would put it), but i think we'll all be pleasantly surprised when we're dead and finally open up our eyes.

"My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation — and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine — mounds of happiness. And I am floating with you, in you, aflame and melting — and a whole life with you is like the movement of clouds, their airy, quiet falls, their lightness and smoothness, and the heavenly variety of outline and tint — my inexplicable love. I cannot express these cirrus-cumulus sensations."

- Vladimir Nabokov's love letter to his wife, Véra ❤️

Some of my strongly held Nabokov defense opinions, some of which I can back up and others which I cannot:

Obviously he's a csa survivor, he tells us this in Speak, Memory in which of course he minimizes the abuse which is entirely unsurprising, but clearly it was an extremely important experience to him, why are we even still discussing this

Sure, he obviously had some homophobic baggage, but also it's not totally fair to blame him for not wanting to publicly write about his gay brother who was killed in a concentration camp because of all the many reasons why that might have been a painful thing to do

Véra was for all intents and purposes a co-author on almost all of his works to the extent that 'VN' really needs to be treated functionally as an authorial entity encompassing both of them

Why did she choose to work in this way and not write independent works under her own name? We don't know and likely will never know

But the fact that their son also chose to write fiction under a pseudonym which he never revealed probably tells us a lot about that family's feelings about privacy and secrecy and the meaning of artistic work

VN&VN (VNx2) were very traumatized, very neurodivergent people who found participating in general social life notably challenging, and we should be grateful that they were willing to write for the public gaze at all

Harold Bloom's anecdote about playing chess with Nabokov as an undergraduate is amazing and tells us everything we need to do know about both of them

Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain — the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed — then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavour will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.

— Vladimir Nabokov, from Lectures on Russian Literature

I think the most interesting thing in the whole world is application of DOTA to times where the Author's journey and nature is supposedly important. Kit Conner as Nick, whoever that is-what changed? To one who watches without knowledge, what will they assume of all that? Some say Nabokov had the right to write Lolita due to his experiences-but the reality of that theory shows little actual support! So does anything change there? Muir, who was inspired by him, her stories so personal to her-I knew she was a lesbian dealing with great trauma even before I opened Gideon, but not of her schizophrenia, and so latched onto and understood the personal elements of Nona, so close to Nabokov-but thought Harrow, at one point, was being revealed as "not actually schizophrenic" as a plot element, until I was told otherwise. Art Spiegelman had to declare the unsympathetic greed of his own Jewish father was reality. The themes of the Matrix; have they changed with the directors? Were they always there? And do those line up necessarily with the assumptions of viewers with lenses of queer theory, then versus now?

This fascinates me, it really does. Where does the right to risk offense derive? What is the line between an unusual, perhaps stereotypical, depiction, as personal versus bigoted? Is there a duty to assume? To research? To inform? Does it change if you assume the blind viewer will take offense, or will assume the offensive fine and personal?

Pierre Menard was no Spaniard; how could he say his depiction of the nation's history was accurate, and not merely based in stereotypes?

you’re either a letters to véra typa girl or a letters to milena typa girl there’s no inbetween

Sounds, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

"If I knew I should hang for it," he thought, "I would still look at her."

Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.

- Vladimir Nabokov  

when somebody refers to dolores as “lolita” an angel loses its wings

"actually, the question of moral precedence has now hardly any importance, i mean, the hero and the heroine should held so close to each other, so 𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 close that they overlap, intergrade, interache..."

ada or ardor - vladimir nabokov

my art insta