488
JULIAN MOYNAHAN
career. In my opinion Field writes best on Nabokov's early poetry
and
on his earlier "minor" fiction, which is
to
say that I found the book
most valuable in its treatment of relatively neglected aspects of Nabokov's
work.
Despite its shortcomings as criticism Field's study is, and will remain
for some time to come, an essential item in the meagre list of useful
Nabokov studies in English. In future editions one hopes that Field will
introduce notes, since it is maddening to be told what "a prominent
emigre political figure said" and to be given a long quotation from
I
Nabokov on the relation of poetry to prose without also being told who
the figure was and where Nabokov made his remarks. Field should
also
eliminate all those passages where he exhibits an enthusiastic and callow
compliance with Nabokov's depreciations of such figures as Dostoevsky,
Belinsky, Turgenev, Chernyshevsky. Nabokov's literary opinions, many
of them markedly eccentric and not always graciously expressed, are
the
necessary tactics of literary genius, but who can take seriously a critical
commentator capable of asserting that to regard Nabokov as having been
influenced by Dostoevsky is like speaking of Melville as a disciple of •
Richard Henry Dana, Jr.?
Julian Moynahan
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