Nabokov in Montreux: 1965 Interview

Robert Hughes interviews Vladimir Nabokov in September 1965 in Montreux, Switzerland.

[@grigoryborodavkin1730]

His humor was delightful. He was delightful. But you knew that too.

[@shrayerm]

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[@immaterialimmaterial5195]

What a wonderful portrait of this great man. His writing is exquisite. What an incredible life.

[@larrycarr4562]

Nice to see the man behind the writings… an intimate delight.

[@iridule]

Really can't appreciate this enough, Dr. Shrayer. So few interviews of Nabokov appear online so it's such a treat to see this extended interview. Thanky, thanky, thanky!

[@shrayerm]

Thanks so much

[@shrayerm]

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[@user-rf4fe2fy5t]

I like that interview so very much ! Thank you ! ❤❤❤😮😮😊😊

[@astrorho]

What a wonderful interview, thank you so much for sharing this!

[@MarieMarie-sv8ok]

Vladeemer .. Nabokov que je n'ai jamais cessé d'aimer depuis ma première lecture : "Lolita" en 1970. Je relis encore ses livres, jamais rassasiée ni fatiguée de le lire. Nabokov est unique au monde.

[@vicomtedevalmont1073]

This is definitely the most 'intimate' capturing of Nabokov on camera... It's nice to get a glimpse into his daily life + mannerisms LOL. Thanks for sharing this + doing the scholarly work you do on Nabokov as well. Very enlightening.

[@shrayerm]

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[@dajoker8998]

Pedo

[@edgarpontes8247]

As Mr Nabokov concerning his interviews, no words come to me as I try to express my gratitude for this video. It's a rare experience to watch this great writer speaking for himself.

[@erwinwoodedge4885]

So glad to hear him mention Salinger and Updike!

[@trevorbailey1486]

Thank you very much for posting this rewarding interview. I had the pleasure of staying in the Hotel Fairmont Le Montreux Palace in 2014. I sought it out in homage to this remarkable man. The foyer is (thankfully) unchanged. The helpful staff took me on a tour of the whole floor across which the Nabokovs lived, serving them then as an apartment. (And I can imagine what the writer, who prized peace of mind so highly, would have had to say about being woken at 2am by the nearby nightclub.)

[@shrayerm]

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[@anaklasis]

FINALLY, after so many years and I was starting to doubt did I really watch this film...again in KZbin! Sir, you have my deepest gratitude. Hats off!

[@shrayerm]

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[@beatrixvantil8623]

thank you for sharing , brilliant and kind Nabokov💟 , I can't agree more with his thoughts on Freud

[@fiorellafenati5395]

undoubtedly the greatest writer of the 20th century, Lolita, a book so complex that it would take at least 3 readings. A great wonderful writer.

[@varvarvarvarvarvar]

It would take you a lifetime to figure how it relates and expands on Pnin.

[@stratovation1474]

What a gem! Like Von Neumann, little on film of brilliant and difficult lives. Insight into life and creativity.

[@shrayerm]

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[@dennisbento7440]

This was outstanding. Thank You Maxim for finding it.

[@shrayerm]

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[@claudiamanta1943]

Delightful on so many levels. Thank you for sharing. 😊

[@sreehari_nair_rediff]

This is one of those very rare video interviews, perhaps the only one (Dmitri Nabokov alludes to this one in a documentary), that VN had given without the aid of carefully prepared notes. And if you are astute about it, you can see that the characteristic Nabokovian Pride was essentially a lightness of spirit, a love of life, transfigured by matchless verbal dexterity.

[@liammcooper]

Agreed

[@philalethes216]

Well put

[@shrayerm]

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[@ivankaedinger3631]

Great video, thank you. His wife was so beautiful. I still keep letter she sent me in 1988. Such a nice woman she was.

[@shrayerm]

Thank you so much.

[@StephenDedalus74]

Wooooooooooooooooow !!!! At last !!!! I have been looking for years for this interview !!! This is the perfect birthday present so thank you so much !!!!! :)

[@MrUndersolo]

I am so glad this is up! Never knew he was on film at this time...

[@ivanpenkov2612]

Thank you Dr. Shrayer, for giving us the chance to enjoy Nabokov's presence at our homes!!

[@dmitriy2853]

Важно было услышать голос Владимира Набокова и видеть ,чтобы почувствовать его как человека. Спасибо! Его точная эмоционально поэзия для мыслящих людей неповторима, человеческая редкость. Ей мало уделяется внимания, вывод конечно неутешительный.

[@annasper]

Thanks so much Maxim for posting this wonderful interview. So many unexpected surprises. VN sweet and vulnerable? Who would have thought ? He hides nothing. Just look at his pleasure with his cards and that Florentine pencil . Or calling his Lolita editions pretty. VN actually using the word ´pretty´? Not to forget his child like happiness in the chess game with his wife. It was especially good to hear him describe his writing process as never smooth sailing. Anna

[@thomasbell7033]

Thank you so very much for posting this. I didn't even know it existed before the algorithm translated my passion for Martin Amis'work into a similar one for VN. Upon Amis' death I went bingeing on interviews he gave. Apparently, many of us did this.

[@shrayerm]

Many thanks for subscribing.

[@jonharrison9222]

Amis’s introduction to the Everyman edition of Lolita is definitive. I think he reprinted it in The War Against Cliche.

[@claudiamanta1943]

The beginning is absolutely epic. EPIC. 😄

[@iLuvSirin]

i love him so much 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[@tryharder75]

His control of my language is the closest to music i have ever read such beauty

[@orvitusmagnus54]

This interview was very pleasant, especially in these troubled times! Very interesting a true citizen of the world! RIP Vladimir 🙏🙏🙏🙏 Where was I then in 1965, oh yes, in elementary school! I find it a very moving and profound interview!

[@shrayerm]

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[@mrvujinovicm]

What a pleasure to see the old master talk about his work and his process, to see him acting so casual. Thank you very much for this video!

[@shrayerm]

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[@hanawana]

what a gem thank you!

[@user-wt6ft2zn7k]

Thank you, Dr. Shrayer, for the opportunity and pleasure not only to read this interview but also to watch it. If you have in possession the video of interview to Mossman and can upload it as well, that would be very kind of you.

[@csaracho2009]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/i5PXp4qkq8eLiqc

[@JAI_8]

Thanks very much for posting this!

[@shrayerm]

My pleasure. Happy you subscribed.

[@haileyuki5129]

very enjoyable, thanks for posting!

[@shrayerm]

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[@dedalus1289]

thanks for posting this. Such a treat.

[@josebenito15]

Great Video. Thanks so much for uploading this. Not many interviews with Nabokov, not many documentaries either. One of the greatest writers in English language.. And English wasn't his mother tongue language 📖

[@shrayerm]

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[@josebenito15]

@@shrayerm You welcome and Greetings from Spain

[@AlikaLi357]

English was more native to him than Russian. He spoke Russian tongue-tied and with an accent since childhood. His aristocratic family spoke English and French, and he only began learning Russian as a teenager. He often formed Russian words by adding Russian suffixes to English roots. In this video you can hear that, speaking Russian, he cannot pronounce the Russian sound “r” correctly. And his own translation of “Lolita” into Russian is funny and terrible. He brought out the obsolete Russian language from emigration. For example, he translated “jeans” as “blue cowboy pants,” although in Russia “jeans” are called jeans.

[@user-qt9jw1ih9t]

You are fundamentally wrong. Nabokov spoke Russian very well, and he said that he had no native language, but thought more often in Russian. Now to " the jeans", the first jeans appeared in the USSR at the end of the 50s, in the mid-60s they became popular. He translated the book in 1967, he translated this phrase very accurately, and the key word here for the soviet reader is “cowboy”. Я по-манере письма вижу, что вы русскоязычная, поэтому продолжу на этом языке, дабы вам было более понятно. Вы описываете его со "своей колокольни", так получилось, что моя жизнь с 6 лет сплошные переезды, в итоге 3 языка, на которых я спокойно из'ясняюсь, но не стоит путать разговорную речь и лит. письменную - это раз. Во-вторых, ну не перевод это в вашем обыденном понимании, Не Перевод, человек написавший худ. произ. его не переводит, а пишет как бы заново, на другом доступном ему языке с оглядкой на оригинал.

[@nuccicaggiati5625]

Simply extraordinary! Thank you

[@bbailey17b]

I'd understood/read that he insisted on having questions submitted in advance, so as to prepare his answers and read out responses. So this surprises me.

[@anthonychase4364]

What a delight. Thanks for posting.

[@Usernamexxxxxxxx]

When Nabokov wrote Lolita nobody really knew anything about him except he was a college professor. He was invited (plus one) to a swanky NY party full of writers and journalists, who fully expected him to arrive with a teenager on his arm. But there was this old White haired lady. To make matters more astonishing, Vladimir and Vera were clearly in love. One man there looked at her and was shocked by a realization: “SHE was Lolita!” I read that story somewhere once. They are buried in what amounts to the same Grave. There’s no line demarcating their bodies from one another under the slab of marble. This is True Love. ❤️

[@dasglasperlenspiel10]

Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!

[@vangelisanna]

thank you for uploading this!

[@qamarm1831]

Well , it's so nice to watch this live interview, much delighted . I have great appreciation for his writing, he made romantic tragedy an epic by the notions he held. Thank you very much for showing it .

[@shrayerm]

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[@troygaspard6732]

This is wonderful and very intimate.

[@countfurioso7589]

Beautiful find.

[@alexastep]

Truly thankful for sharing such wonderful interview with us! 🧡

[@shrayerm]

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[@lucasventer]

Thank you very much.

[@kebabtvrtkic4299]

Уважаемый Максим Давидович - спасибо за замечательное видео (а так же, за вашу книгу "Бунин-Набоков")

[@shrayerm]

Большое спасибо. С наступающим Новым годом.

[@TheAj253]

I love that he detests humility. A truly sardonic soul with a unique zest for life.

[@stuartwray6175]

very Nietzschean

[@shrayerm]

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[@timelanguid4813]

Read once Nabokov said he had never been drunk. He was drinking wine here which obviously does not mean he was lying. He must know when to call it a night. Nice to see him playing football. I read he played football as a goalkeeper in England. Interesting man in many ways.

[@davidlean1060]

I didn't know he was so funny. There is a performance by Chris Plumber where he plays Nabokov giving a lecture and it's like stand up comedy!

[@jesuisravi]

I remember watching interviews of this sort back in the 60's on WTTW channel 11 in Chicago. I was a kid with a nose for this kind of thing.

[@hanawana]

enjoyed every second

[@nickboldewskul2136]

Nabokov is more relaxed here without index cards than he was with Trilling on the program "Close Up" discussing Lolita with index cards. There's also a dearth of televised interviews with his younger cousin, Nicolas Nabokov; a composer, cultural ambassador, and friend of Stravinsky.

[@robkeeleycomposer]

I love this man.

[@jamesnicol3831]

fascinating in subject and presentation

[@shrayerm]

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[@recoveringscot3587]

"...like a hypnotised person making love to a chair." Wonderful.

[@Chessmastercos]

Nabokov played soccer is so wholesome

[@annemcleod8505]

Such a treat, thank you!

[@tarnopol]

Huge upload!

[@User-bl5cw]

(21:30) Imagine being the kid who got to play football with Vladimir Nabokov

[@appidydafoo]

Thank you

[@jonharrison9222]

Seems to have been humbler and more genial than his writing suggests.

[@tarjeik7162]

A real LEGEND🤩💪🙏🏻😇

[@mortalclown3812]

I had no idea he learned English first: I always thought his books were even more brilliant in light of the fact that he was Russian. He's still a total genius...😂 The world is richer for his life. Amazing upload. Rest in paradise, V.

[@shrayerm]

SO glad you enjoyed, and thank you for subscribing.

[@user-gx7gl3so1t]

This, of course, is an exaggeration, or rather mythology, the first was Russian, then English, then French😊

[@AlikaLi357]

Not quite so, in his aristocratic family they spoke English and French, but he knew Russian poorly and began to study only as a teenager, spoke with an accent, confusing Russian and English words.

[@larrycarr4562]

“Cheated creation, by creating something yourself …”

[@adampowell5376]

If we did not already have Lolita I do not think that it could be published today.

[@rogerkeizerstein6147]

Funny guy!

[@gurbbyy6252]

wow

[@DerAleksan]

05:08 Набоков читает по русски!

[@hajirizayev7374]

O.f.i.g.e.t.🤦🏻‍♂️ I could never imagine I would see Nabokov speaking English.

[@seanmccarthy8879]

he talk about working on a novel about time...in which a seemingly scholarly essay on time morphs into the story. does anyone know if that was ever completed?

[@jaypaulharrison9029]

In a sense, yes. I believe 'The Texture of Time' is the name of the lecture Van Veen gives in the fourth chapter of Ada or Ardor.

[@seanmccarthy8879]

@@jaypaulharrison9029 thanks, haven't read that one in years...I'll have to give it another read

[@gautamchoudhury7622]

Ada or ardour?

[@stuartwray6175]

He 'talked'; 'talks' about ...

[@seanmccarthy8879]

@@stuartwray6175 do you really spend your time correcting typos on youtube comments? smh

[@Anicius_]

How in the f could google know i started reading Nabokov today? I havent searched for anything related to Nabokov here and i am getting recommendations both here and google homepage. Its kind of creepy. Last week youtube suggested me a video on laura melvey' visual pleasure and narrative cinema after i purchased a book which had that article in it. Wtf?

[@lohkoon]

There was a writer named V Nabokov Who wrote a tale about a little girl; A sex book - that's what you are thinking of! And into great fame did its writer hurl. The book enriched him; he lived like a prince: He'd talked about nothing else ever since.

[@shrayerm]

Genius

[@keithm257]

who was between kafka and proust? couldn't understand..!

[@Valgant]

"Петербург" Андрея Белого Petersburg by Andrey Belyi, a great russian writer

[@keithm257]

@@Valgant thank you… will see if I can’t find him in translation

[@nickwyatt9498]

Make sure you get the 1980s translation published by Penguin. It's first-rate. There was an earlier US version translated by two academics in the 70s which was rubbish, as well as leaving out great chunks of the novel. The Penguin version comes with indispensable notes at the back which explain a lot of the wordplay lost in translation. Hope you enjoy it - it really is a great novel.

[@keithm257]

@@nickwyatt9498 thanks… was pretty hard to find and unsure which edition I got but looked like 80’s cover art and is penguin so will find out soon when it arrives

[@jasonlynn1017]

Nabokov's attack on Freud instantiates the very Philistinism he condemned in one of his better writings of lthat title; worse, that a genius like Nabokov had to "take second jobs" and "eek out a living proves that Philistinery has in fact won the Kulturkampf. But Freud was as far from Medieval as Voltaire, dear master novelist, and your "dreams" are up for penalty, but if you grant hypnosis, mental cause, and the Unconscious exist, which you just did when savaging Mann, well gee you are a Freudian.

[@claudiamanta1943]

You sound like Jordan Peterson (it’s up to you to take it as a compliment or not 😄). Freud was not Medieval, he was a cave man. With an umbrella. The question is not whether he and Jung were right (oh, the terrible reality that we live in a world which reveres quantum physics as much as psychoanalysis as divinely true, hence normative! 😄), but what they have been chosen to be ‘right’ for, over other (I should say more constructive) paradigms.

[@jasonlynn1017]

@@claudiamanta1943 Magical thinking is not a more constructive paradigm, it's a regression to semi- infancy. Rhetoric like "constructive" begs the question as well, as what is being constructed is the laughable politics of ego fellation parading as science. Compliment? River Jordan? Ha. I have original theories, several, Monseigneur Peterson has not even one, not one I've heard but cannot listen to common sense values posing as truth: truth has no moral, no innate valuations. Peety, like most pop intellectuals neither understands nor can coherently explain Freud's theory. Neither can Richard Dawkins, but that's the consequence of pretending all biological causation happens at the micro level: fallacy deluxe, and a phallic narcissist territories- dispute. Siggy was not a caveman. My God. He and Sophocles discovered the greatest truth about human nature and 99% of humanity is not adult enough to know so. I suggest you read Freud from the late 1930s, and his heirs Otto Fenichel, Jeanne Lampl De Groot. Read the texts and drop the dogma. Nearly all that is said about Freud is dead wrong. Jung is not even a scientist or proper philosopher after 1914, and by his theory of THE SHADOW he had lapsed into a dissociative psychosis defined by Aggression Mania and Megalomania, his theory of The Shadow ( with apologies to Orson Welles) is literally the personification of his own mental illness, and its conversion into a "theory" which as it lacks even falsifiability, qualifies Jung as a foremost kook-mystic of the era, as was W. Reich after 1936 with the zany Orgone, the erotic cosmic energy (Fourrier and Empedocles beat him to that beat off). Too bad. Reich's was a vast and great mind and his diagnosis of Character Armor from retentive neurosis was a great discovery still not fully understood in this age of the philistine and fame-fuckery-fakery. But the early Reich of Character Analysis far surpassed in sheer genius anything by Jung. Reich from 1925-33 was one of the greatest discovers of human nature to live. Just ask Darwin. But I did take the time to reply to you given your obvious and deep intellect. But I really shouldn't blow it social media which is not very social and vile as media. Ciao, In Venerea Veritas. At least I made art of of my ideas as shown on my KZbin channel but I need to go back to writing prose and real books

[@jasonlynn1017]

@@claudiamanta1943 More simply: the difference between me and Jordan Peterson is between Diogenes and Ann Landers

[@dajoker8998]

Freud more like Fraud

[@jasonlynn1017]

@@dajoker8998 Oh boy, pun as proof. Yeah, humans are full of rational consciousness, free will and self made egos, especially for cheap as hominem from illiterates who cannot even correctly recite Freud's theories, or Darwin's for that matter. Go back to Gloria Steinem, or, The Bible and Fox news. Those are The American Choice.

[@dhoraray1310]

Окey. But there's a touch of his mother tongue. Russian feels.

[@No-0ne-is-Alone]

Didn't know he disliked Freud.

[@Diagnoc]

His French is good.

[@hanawana]

22:59

[@liammcooper]

calling updike an artist and faulkner 'corn-cobby' is peak nabokov

[@shrayerm]

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[@matts7176]

Faulkner's corncobby chronicles

[@nledaig]

Of course he wouldn't like the word or concept: humility

[@tbwatch88]

and good old Vlad, my favourite writer save Tolstoy, claimed he was never ever drunk. hahaha. and that he detested music. but not film, mates. not film.

[@shrayerm]

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[@SciMoTeAr]

Who is he?

[@SergeFernandez-wg4hp]

One of the the most significant writers of 20th century

[@abelardog6780]

No, no.

[@speakrussian6779]

He was a snob but at the end of his life he accomplished what he wanted to have: to live in a palace and to be served. 😀

[@fashion010101]

English version of Lolita is much better. I've read it in both Russian and English.

[@mrmillcake8525]

I didn't know he spoke with a burr in Russian.

[@Petrarka17]

A sign of aristocratic upbringing

[@shrayerm]

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[@jonharrison9222]

Each to his own, but if Maxim Gorky (especially My Childhood) and Thomas Mann are ‘mediocrities’ then I’m the Last King of Scotland.

[@ivan5595]

His dad was killed by Sergey Taboritsky

[@0pieamii]

So glad he understood Freud was crazy, Jung not far behind.

[@havefunbesafe]

Nabokov was in denial about his Freudian tendencies by virtue of his novel Lolita.

[@restlessdream8745]

No, he was mocking Freud in "Lolita"

[@timelanguid4813]

Buying the English Times and Telegraph newspapers.

[@vitiachao9765]

7:45 ¡Qué snob más insoportable! Mira que llamar estúpida (asinine) "La muerte en Venecia" de Thomas Mann. Pura envidia porque, a diferencia de Mann, a él no le dieron el Premio Nobel. La misma envidia él sentía de los Premios Nobel de Iván Bunin, Faulkner y Pasternak.

[@harveyrichman7742]

Faulkner was the greatest American novelist since Twain. He uniquely and brilliantly spoke about race and the South that maybe only an American born here could understand. I disagree with Nabokov’s assessment of Faulkner.

[@krishnabhatt3377]

Translating his own work in his first language? Lol.

[@OssaGhalyoun]

Why did he steal Lolita from Heinz von Lichberg.

[@sonjak8265]

He did not steal it. He got inspired by it.

[@cathylegg530]

Came across to me as a bit full of himself... particularly when reading from his own paedophilic novel

[@indiosveritas]

Pompous and unpleasant. Would move away to another table at the Café Odeon if he had come in , as would my writer friends.

[@dhoraray1310]

You know his father was a member of the Russian government before the October revolution after which the Nabokov family had to flee. In emigration his father was killed when on some political parties meeting in Germany if I can remember properly. Shot blank point by some эссер party member right into the heart. At a very close distance.

[@nickwyatt9498]

Pompous and unpleasant? My dear fellow, don't be so hard on yourself!

[@ronaldjost6316]

We read some of his work when I was undergrad at Cornell U. Pnin. I guess he was still alive at the time.

[@ecce_homo7991]

even after decades of living in the west he didn't develop an accent when he spoke russian

[@shrayerm]

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