Nabokov on Sentimentality

In a 1981 New York Times article, the famous author and Russian expatriate Vladimir Nabokov [shared] some quite reasonable criticism of Dostoevsky's literary output. The article is worth reading in its entirety, and can be found here, or here without a paywall. In this brief post I'd like to examine a particular idea from the article:

We must distinguish between "sentimental" and "sensitive." A sentimentalist may be a perfect brute in his free time. A sensitive person is never a cruel person. Sentimental Rousseau, who could weep over a progressive idea, distributed his many natural children through various poorhouses and workhouses and never gave a hoot for them. A sentimental old maid may pamper her parrot and poison her niece. The sentimental politician may remember Mother's Day and ruthlessly destroy a rival. Stalin loved babies. Lenin sobbed at the opera, especially at a performance of "Traviata." A whole century of authors praised the simple life of the poor, and so on. Remember that when we speak of sentimentalists, among them Richardson, Rousseau, Dostoyevsky, we mean the nonartistic exaggeration of familiar emotions meant to provoke automatically traditional compassion in the reader.

It may seem unusual that Nabokov holds sentimentality in such low esteem. Sure, it's not a desirable trait, and the word has mildly negative connotations: but to associate it with the likes of Rousseau and Stalin? In Nabokov's defense, sentimentality is one of those states of mind that one can wallow in forever, like self-pity, and it usually leads to a form of cowardice. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly with Nabokov's claim, and I believe the distinction between sentimentality and sensitivity has its place in a nuanced system of values, something of great importance in our ethically unsophisticated culture.