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One of the great deficiencies of the dead is that they never change their minds. One of their advantages is that there’s very little they can do about it when someone changes it for them. Indeed, they can even be enlisted to back up their own overruling.
When Dmitri Nabokov announced the other day that he planned to publish his father’s final manuscript, in direct contravention of his father’s request that it should be burned, he told the German magazine Der Spiegel: “I’m a loyal son and thought long and seriously about it. Then my father appeared before me and said with an ironic grin: ‘You’re stuck in a right old mess. Just go ahead and publish’”. So, after 30 years of tantalising seclusion in a Swiss bank vault, the extant fragments of The Original of Laura will finally be made public. Mr Nabokov Sr. wasn’t available to confirm the accuracy of his son’s account.
There are Nabokov loyalists who profess to be appalled by this – though I have a suspicion that they will master their affront sufficiently to read the book when it comes out. Personally I think Dmitri has done the right thing – and even if Nabokov’s rough draft would have been a smaller loss than two notorious victims of successful literary incineration – Jane Austen’s letters and Byron’s memoirs – it is better to have it than not. Dmitri’s argument – that his father would probably have thought otherwise had he had enough time to cheer up – might be specious but it will do in the absence of anything better. But all this is too flippant, some will say. If we disregard the wishes of our predecessors then we have no right to expect that our own requests will be honoured. And when it comes to property there’s obviously some weight to that argument. Last wills and testaments matter because their absence would create a wilderness of competing claims.

independent.co.uk