The writer's female companion

At Nabokov's house, Aunt Vira helped him deal with publishers, prepare for classes at Cornell, sat in the front row during his lectures, and was so highly regarded that Cornell students joked that "it was better to hire Mrs. Nabokov than Mr. Nabokov." She carried heart medication with her in case Nabokov became too excited by seeing a beautiful butterfly and fainted, and she carried a gun in case she ever encountered Trotsky to shoot him. On the other hand, Zelda Fitzgerald received criticism for being one of the female sinners in literary history because she drained her husband's inspiration by living a life of luxury, leading him to work day and night to support her until his creativity dried up and he died.

Regarding Jorge Luis Borges, there is not much eroticism in his works. His pursuit was the noble erotic encounter that Dante had with Beatrice. Borges did not marry Estela partially because his mother did not like her. In his old age, as his eyesight weakened, he needed someone to be his secretary, read to him, and write for him. His mother did all of this. When Borges got married at the age of 68, many of his friends thought that his mother, who was in her nineties, needed someone to take care of her blind son because she felt her end was near. His marriage was short-lived, and he returned to his mother's side after the divorce until his mother died at the age of 99, while Zellda was 16 years old when she became a ball queen. There is a statement in her high school graduation photo that illustrates her personality: "Why should all life be work when we can borrow? Let's think only of today and not worry about tomorrow." She married a wealthy man at the age of 20 and was living a life of luxury. When they went to Paris when she was 23 years old, Hemingway mentioned two things: first, when her husband wanted to write, she would take him out to have fun and not let him work. Second, she lied to her husband about his size and cheated on him with other men. Hemingway summed up her personality as "a vulture unwilling to share." But her strange behavior did not stop there. When her husband wrote "The Great Gatsby," Zelda was swimming at the beach or partying and, after meeting a man, returned to her husband to ask for a divorce. Even the man himself did not know that Zelda was going to divorce her husband for him. Fitzgerald later concluded that this woman had a dramatic need, and she was a victim of her own strange dreams. Her life was like a drama, and she was truly caught up in it.

Two small details.

The famous epigraph at the beginning of The Great Gatsby: "Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her. If you can bounce high, bounce for her too. Till she cry 'Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!' Shortly after the divorce between Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald was resolved, The Great Gatsby was completed. F. Scott Fitzgerald had originally considered several titles, including "Trimalchio in West Egg," "The High Bouncing Lover," and "Under the Red, White, and Blue," but Zelda ultimately decided on "The Great Gatsby."

By normal standards, the relationships between Borges and his mother, and between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, were somewhat strange. Zelda's exploitation of F. Scott Fitzgerald was particularly frightening, and his early death was definitely related to her. However, if you look at it from a different perspective...

Borges' ancestors participated in the Argentine Civil War, so it's no surprise that he loved to write about it. Compared to more grounded novelists like Marquez and Llull, his erudition, structure, poetry, and intellect all seem more precious and more like a small garden path. These evaluations are not necessarily positive or negative, but simply indicate a different style. If his mother had not had this background and had not had such a personality, what kind of poet, essayist, or novelist would Borges have become?

We've previously discussed Zelda's influence on F. Scott Fitzgerald. The South in his novels is hot, gentle, tender, lazy, and intoxicating. "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" and "The Last of the Belles" are both like this - and Zelda was a southern girl.

Matching the South is his love for brilliant and glamorous, semi-dreamlike stories. Let's not mention The Great Gatsby; "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" is such a story - and Zelda likes dazzling and dreamy theatricality.

There must be a female protagonist who cannot be controlled and is independent - this is true in all four of the above-mentioned works. If F. Scott Fitzgerald had not met Zelda, he might have lived a healthy and long life, but what he wrote would certainly not have been The Great Gatsby or Tender Is the Night as we know them today.

There are many similar examples. For example, Sartre had a "lover-like love" for his mother who died early. Later, he entered social circles and wanted to hook up with girls, but although he could come up with good words, he couldn't express them orally. He was also short and fat, so his love life didn't go well. Maugham believed that his pursuit of women was usually not for sexual desire but for the satisfaction of his vanity. For a long time, people suspected he was sexually frigid, until they discovered the beautiful and erotic letters he wrote to his mistresses. If he were not a great novelist, he could easily have been classified as a perverted man. But once you put all of this together, many details become easy to understand. For example, in The Red and the Black, Julien's first lover, Madame de Rênal, was older than him, and he was almost irresistible to women. He could have easily sought a life of wealth and glory through his talent and appearance...