Windolf: It surprises me that you began as a Dostoevskian. I would think that, as translators and poets, you would be more inclined to favor a novelist who is less wild and less of a mess than Dostoevsky. Why did his work grab you?

Pevear: There is nothing wild or messy about Dostoevsky's work. One of the reasons we wanted to retranslate him was to dispel that common but false impression. What interested us especially in his work was his humor, which had largely been omitted by translators who shared the erroneous view that he is, maybe a bit wild and messy, but always dark and serious. His work is essentially comic, in the sense in which Dante called his great poem a "comedy"—that is, it represents an ascent towards the light. Verbal humor is only a part of it, but in his case an important part. It transforms the dark "seriousness" people try to see in him and raises it to a new height. Dostoevsky is deeply rooted in the whole of European culture, which he summed up and carried forward, even into the twenty-first century. What I've always admired in his work is its poetic richness and constant formal inventiveness.

Have you found that readers tend to split into Dostoevskians and Tolstoyans?

There is a tendency among some readers of Russian literature to define themselves as either Tolstoyan or Dostoevskian. That may be why George Steiner entitled his book Tolstoy or Dostoevsky (though people often refer to it mistakenly as Tolstoy AND Dostoevsky). Some may think that they prefer Tolstoy's clarity ("sunlight" as Nabokov used to tell his students) to Dostoevsky's mephitic atmosphere. Or that they prefer the dark religious existentialism of Dostoevsky to the upper-class order and rationalism of Tolstoy. There is also a widespread notion that Tolstoy was a consummate artist and Dostoevsky a clumsy hack who had interesting ideas. Actually, as my previous response suggests, these are all oversimplifications and could easily be reversed. Tolstoy was often a rather wild thinker, a village explainer, an obtuse casuist; he filled his artistic works with his own woolly-minded theorizing. Nabokov told his students that it would do no harm to skip the boring parts in Anna Karenina where Levin talks about farming; he might have said the same about the historical harangues in War and Peace. Whereas there is no "discourse" in Dostoevsky (think of "The Grand Inquisitor" or Ippolit's confession in The Idiot) that could be left out without severely harming the composition; there is no voice that is openly Dostoevsky's and not dramatically embodied in one of his characters. Dostoevsky was in fact a consummate artist, and Tolstoy, at times, a clumsy hack. Yet I became convinced while translating War and Peace that he is indeed a very great writer, even when he tries hardest not to be. I find it difficult to explain why that is so, but my preface is an attempt to say something about it. And Nabokov was wrong about skipping the boring parts; they are essential to the composition. Otherwise what kind of art is it?

What do you make of Nabokov's distaste for Dostoevsky and love for Tolstoy? He said of Dostoevsky: "He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian…. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader, anyway."

Why did he despise Dostoevsky? Why was he so blind to the real nature of his work? Why did he allow himself such superficial judgments? There is infinitely more to Dostoevsky than "sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes"—and in any case Raskolnikov is hardly sensitive and Sonya hardly a prostitute. As for claptrap, there is far more of it in Tolstoy than in Dostoevsky. What was behind Nabokov's light-minded dismissal of Dostoevsky? It may have something to do with the spirit of the Petersburg high aristocracy, especially in the liberal and enlightened circle of men like his father. Nabokov was fiercely loyal to his caste, which was not Dostoevsky's milieu at all. Nabokov was also emotionally reticent and probably scorned what he saw as the vulgar outpourings of Dostoevsky's characters. (Though he obviously did appreciate his comic genius.) Oddly enough, however, as an artist Nabokov is much closer to Dostoevsky than to Tolstoy—think of Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, Pnin, Ada, Dark Laughter, not to mention Lolita. So the puzzle remains Nabokov's secret.