Do you still feel in Exile?
Art is exile. I felt an exile when I was a child in Russia among other children. I kept goal on the soccer field, and all goalkeepers are exiles.
Does being a refugee mean being rootless?
Rootlessness is less important than a confirmed refugee’s capacity to branch and blossom in a complete—and very pleasant—void.
In which language do you think, count, and dream?
I do not think in any language, I think in images, with some brief verbal surfacing of a utilitarian sort in any of the three tongues that I know, such as “damn those trucks” or “espèce de crétin.” I dream and count mostly in Russian.
How far do you get involved with your characters while writing? Do you think of them after the book has been published?
I suspect that the Almighty’s interest in Adam and Eve was neither very sincere nor very enduring, despite the success, on the whole, of a really marvelous job. I, too, am completely detached from my characters, while making them and after making them.
How do you want your books to be read? Do you think about your reactions?
I cannot expect any reader to know any of my books as well as I do, but if his mind cannot retain at least a certain percentage of specific details then he is a bad reader, that’s all.
What is boring for you? What is most amusing for you?
Let me tell you instead what I hate:
Background music, canned music, piped-in music, portable music, next-room music, inflicted music of any kind.
Primitivism in art: “abstract” daubs, symbolic bleak little plays, junk sculpture, “avant-garde” verse, and other crude banalities.
Clubs, unions, fraternities, etc. (in the course of these last twenty-five years I must have turned down some twenty offers of glamorous membership).
Oppression. I am ready to accept any regime—Socialistic, Royalistic, Janitorial—provided mind and body are free.
The touch of satin. Circuses—especially animal acts and robust ladies hanging by their teeth in the air. The four doctors: Dr. Freud, Dr. Schweitzer, Dr. Zhivago and Dr. Castro.
Causes, demonstrations, processions.
“Concise” dictionaries, “abridged” manuals. Journalistic clichés: “the moment of truth,” for example, or the execrable “dialogue.”
Stupid, inimical things: The spectacles case that gets lost; the clothes hanger that topples down in the closet; the wrong pocket. Folding an umbrella, not finding its secret button. Uncut pages, knots in shoelaces. The prickly aura of one’s face after skipping one’s morning shave. Babies in trains. The act of falling asleep.
What do you think of the situation in the Middle East?
There exist several subjects in which I have expert knowledge: certain groups of butterflies, Pushkin, the art of chess problems, translation from and into English, Russian, and French, wordplay, novelism, insomnia, and immortality. But among these subjects, politics is not represented. I can only reply to your question about the Near East in a very amateur way: I fervently favor total friendship between America and Israel and am emotionally inclined to take Israel’s side in all political matters.
* “Sicha im ‘avi Lolita’ ” (“A Conversation with ‘the father of Lolita’ ”), Ma’ariv, Feb. 13, 1970, 60. Typescript questions and answers, in English, VNA Berg; questions sent on Jan. 5, 1970, answered on Jan. 9, interview conducted on Jan. 19.