7
Letter to the Editor, Zveno (1926)*1
In connection with a vicious article in Zveniya, Paris 1926 (or 1927)*2
Dear Mr. Editor, Sir,
I will allow myself the liberty of noting several factual inaccuracies in Mr. Mochulsky’s rather blockheaded article on my novel.1 Here they are: in my novel there are no “sleepy lakes,” no “walks through the forest to the sound of rain,” no “stormy summer nights.” Nor do I employ the words “groundless,” “steeped,” or “analysis” and so on, which Mr. Mochulsky cites in quotation marks. In general, I would advise that a critic:
-
actually reads the book he is analyzing
-
refrains from an “ideological” approach to literature while doing so and turns his critical gaze to the remarkable things present in the stories and poems that Zveno publishes.
Nabokov’s draft letter to the editor of Zveno, protesting an inaccurate review of his first novel Mary (Mashen’ka, 1926)