PARTISAN REVIEW
313
language is native, by ohildhood associations or conventional m–
terpreta,tions.
Wilson's iteration of this makes it clear that he wished his readers to
bear it in mind, and never more so than on those occasions when his
essay had, as they very often did, some polemical basis, when he was
coming at a Russian writer by disputing what a na,tive Russian critic had
to say of him. In the 1952 essay on Gogol, Wilson takes on a fairly easy
opponent in Janko Lavrin, a conventional academic (and not actually a
Russian by birth), and a much more dangerous one in Vladimir Nabo–
kov. Nabokov's little ·book on Gogol, it ought to be said, is a gaily in–
souciant pastiche of insight, homage, and reckless half-truth which, if
one chooses one's quotations with a sufficiently malevolent care, can be
made to look si11y merely by citing it.
But some dozen or so years later, in the mid-1960s, Wilson's con–
sciousness of the foreigner's disadvantage was a good deal less present
to his mind, and his confidence in his own perceptions, not to mention
the judgments that he based upon them, had grown
to
quite unjustified
and at times ludicrous proportions. This led to his disastrous review of
Nabokov's edition of Pushkin's masterpiece,
Eugene Onegin.
Since 'that review occasioned one of the most sanguinary literary
polemics of recent times, one need scarcely do more than recall to read–
ers of this journal its general tenor and proportions. Nabokov's reading
of the Onegin had resulted in four tightly packed volumes containing a
long introduction, an avowedly flat, literal translaJt:ion, for which every–
thing was sacrificed, even correct English grammar, in order to convey
with a kind of painful clarity ·the exact verbal sense of the original, an
immense commentary (the best in any language), the Russian text as
Pushkin
himself · saw it through the press, and finally ·two long essays,
one an original and provocative rethinking of the entire -question of
English and Russian prosody and the other a funny, exquisitely recon–
dite attempt to trace the history of Pushkin's African forebear. Com–
pletely ignol'ing Nabokov's modest (for once) aim in making the literal
translation, Wilson spent most of his time complaining that it did not
read smoothly, contained unusual words, and was even downright wrong.
In making the latter point, Wilson committed the almost unbelievable
hubris of reading Nabokov several petulant little lessons about Russian
grammar and vocabulary, himself bllliIldering all the while. (Where were
the Russian friends to whom he constantly alludes?) He also disliked
the tone of everything, found ,the manners of his "personal friend" to be
characteristically insuppol'table, dismissed the commenrt:a.ry not so much
