'Provided Mind and Body Are Free'

We’ve grown accustomed to contemporary writers saying silly or repugnant things, whether endorsing dictators or championing ridiculous, self-flattering causes. Who looks to today’s writers for enlightenment or moral uplift? On Friday I happened on statements from half a century ago by two writers I grew up admiring. Neither sentiment surprised me. What I do find remarkable is how such utterly different writers could express such similar sentiments – sentiments that would be judged heretical in many quarters if voiced by writers today. First, Eric Hoffer, writing in an op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times in 1968:     

“The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us.”

A year and a half later, Vladimir Nabokov was interviewed by Nurit Beretzky for the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv of Tel Aviv. She asked him about “the situation in the Middle East” and he replied:

“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, word-play, novels, insomnia, and immortality. But among those 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.”

Nabokov’s support for Israel shouldn’t surprise us. His wife, Véra Slonim, was Jewish. His grandfather, Dmitri Nikolaevich Nabokov, was minister of justice under Czar Alexander II, and supported Jewish rights. The novelist’s father, a liberal statesman and champion of Jewish legal equality, was Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov. He condemned publication of the anti-Semitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the pogrom in Kishinev in 1903, in which dozens of Jews were murdered.

In the interview quoted above, Nabokov also said: “I am ready to accept any regime – Socialistic, Royalistic, Janitorial, – provided mind and body are free.”

[The Nabokov interview is collected in Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor (ed. Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Knopf, 2019).]