" ...Let me define this admirable reader. he does not belong to any specific nation or class. No director of conscience and no book club can manage his soul...The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book....
The Russian reader in old cultured Russia was certainly proud of Pushkin and of Gogol, but he was just as proud of Shakespeare or Dante, of Baudelaire or of Edgar Allan Poe, of Flaubert or of Homer, and this was the Russian reader's strength. I have a certain personal interest in the question, for if my fathers had not been good readers, I would hardly be here today, speaking of these matters in this tongue. I am aware of many things being quite as important as good writing and good reading; but in all things it is wiser to go directly to the quiddity, to the text, to the source, to the essence -- and only then evolve whatever theories may tempt the philosopher, or the historian, or merely please the spirit of the day. Readers are born free; and the following little poem by Pushkin, with which I shall close my talk, applies not only to poets, but also to those who love the poets."
- Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Russian Literature)
I value little those much vaunted rights
that have for some the lure of dizzy heights;
I do not fret because the gods refuse
to let me wrangle over revenues,
or thwart the wars of kings; and 'tis to me
of no concern whether the press be free
to dupe poor oafs or whether censors cramp
the current fancies of some scribbling scamp.
These things are words, words, words. My spirit fights
for deeper Liberty, for better rights.
Whom shall we serve -- the people or the State?
The poet does not care -- so let them wait.
To give account to none, to be one's own
vassal and lord, to please oneself alone,
to bend neither one's neck, nor inner schemes,
nor conscience to obtain some thing that seems
power but is flunkey's coat; to stroll
in one's own wake, admiring the divine
beauties of Nature and to feel one's soul
melt in the glow of man's inspired design
-- that is the blessing, those are the rights!
-- Alexander Pushkin (From Pindemonte) - translated by Vladimir Nabokov