ABSTRACT
The Congress sponsored in 1952 a comprehensive exposition of music, painting, sculpture, and literature. The festival was the brainchild of Nabokov, who played the leading role in it. The key role of the AIF nucleus at the outset may have produced a sense of a special right to intervene (and perhaps a corresponding nagging feeling of obligation on the part of Paris). Furthermore, the American Committee was comprised of Americans. Nabokov himself may reasonably be seen as someone who crossed the boundary between the worlds of the literary and civic intellectuals, between the smoke-filled room and the salon. His political engagement must be considered sincere: the evidence of his disillusionment with Allied policy in Berlin, the polemics in Politics and Partisan Review, the involvement with the Dwight Macdonalds Europe-America Groups and the Waldorf-Astoria action with Americans for Intellectual Freedom (AIF)–all these pre-dated the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) and any real possibility of self-advancement.
