Vladimir Nabokov on laughter that cured hatred and on writings against future tyrants

..Laughter, strictly speaking, is what saved me. Having passed through every stage of hatred and despair, I reached that height from which the ridiculous is visible as on the palm of one's hand. Having burst out laughing, I was cured, like that anecdotal fellow whose "abscess burst in his throat at the sight of a poodle's comical tricks". Rereading my notes, I see that in trying to portray him as terrifying I merely made him funny, and executed him by precisely that old, tried and tested method. However modest I am in my own assessment of this chaotic work of mine, something tells me that it was written by no ordinary pen. Far removed from literary contrivances, but full of words that were forged over the years in my furious silence, I prevailed by sincerity and intensity of feeling where another would have prevailed by craftsmanship and invention. This is an incantation, a charm, so that from now on anyone may charm slavery away. I believe in miracles. I believe that in some way unknown to me these notes will reach people, not today and not tomorrow, but at some remote time when the world has a day's leisure to undertake excavations, on the eve of new troubles, no less amusing than the present ones. And so, who knows... I allow the thought that my chance labour may prove immortal and accompany the centuries, now persecuted, now extolled, often dangerous and always useful. As for me, a "shade without bones", I shall be glad if the fruit of my forgotten sleepless nights serves for long ages as a kind of secret remedy against future tyrants, tigroids, and half-witted tormentors of man.

Vladimir Nabokov. Berlin, 1936