The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction

On the Death of an Artist:

p. 9-10

It is one of the mysteries of death that it should seem, in the case of an artist or anyone with a public face, to make so little difference to all but those close to the person.  What has changed?  There will be no more books, tunes, paintings, films, acts from that source.  But what if there weren't many, or any, such performances still to come, what if the  epilogue or aftermath had already started?  What if the work we have is already rich and deep, enough for a lifetime?  What more do we want? We shall not be able to meet the person we probably should not have met anyway; we shall not write the letters he/she might not have answered. Such deaths are like the deaths of acquaintances we have not seen for ages, would never have seen again.  A scarcely perceptible shift in what was already an absence.


But the deaths of these figures whose work we care about do diminish us, take away a piece of our world, even if we can't quite say how our world is poorer.  These persons were not persons for us, but they were not mere reputations either.  They were habits of affection, ways of looking and thinking...they altered the color of our mind.




The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction by Michael Wood