The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov's Fiction
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Tartu Semiotics Library 5 2 THE MODELS OF SPACE, TIME AND VISION Tartu Semiootika Raamatukogu 5 Тартуская библиотека семиотики 5 Ruumi, aja ja vaate mudelid V. Nabokovi proosas: Narratiivistrateegiad ja kultuurifreimid Marina Grišakova Mодели пространства, времени и зрения в прозе В. Набокова: Нарративные стратегии и культурные фреймы Марина Гришакова University of Tartu The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov’s Fiction: Narrative Strategies and Cultural Frames Marina Grishakova Tartu 2012 4 THE MODELS OF SPACE, TIME AND VISION Edited by Silvi Salupere Series editors: Peeter Torop, Kalevi Kull, Silvi Salupere Address of the editorial office: Department of Semiotics University of Tartu Jakobi St. 2 Tartu 51014, Estonia http://www.ut.ee/SOSE/tsl.htm This publication has been supported by Cultural Endowment of Estonia Department of Literature and the Arts, University of Tampere Cover design: Inna Grishakova Aleksei Gornõi Rauno Thomas Moss Copyright University of Tartu, 2006 ISSN 2228-2149 (online) ISBN 978-9949-32-068-4 (online) Second revised edition available online only. ISSN 1406-4278 (print) ISBN 978–9949–11–306–4 (2006 print edition) Tartu University Press www.tyk.ee In memory of Yuri Lotman, the teacher 6 THE MODELS OF SPACE, TIME AND VISION Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................... 9 Introduction ............................................................................... 11 I. Models and Metaphors........................................................... 20 Possible worlds and modeling systems ................................ 28 Time, space, and point of view as constitutive elements of the textual world .............................................................. 40 Nabokov as a writer and a scientist: “natural” and “artificial” patterns ................................................................................. 50 II. The Models of Time ............................................................. 72 The specious present: time as a “hollow” ............................ 76 The spiral or the circle: Mary............................................... 80 1. Involution and metamorphosis.................................... 95 2. The triple dream.......................................................... 98 3. Nietzsche’s circle of the eternal return........................ 100 4. Time and double vision in Proust and Nabokov ......... 104 5. Bergson’s spiral of memory........................................ 107 Tempus reversus................................................................... 111 Time and eternity: aevum..................................................... 126 III. The Model of the Observer ................................................. 134 The observer, focalization and point of view....................... 141 Vision and word: the seat of a semiotic conflict .................. 155 1. H. James: The Turn of the Screw ................................ 163 2. V. Nabokov: The Eye.................................................. 169 3. A. Hitchcock: Rear Window ...................................... 173 Frame, motion and the observer........................................... 176 IV. The Models of Vision.......................................................... 186 Automatism and disturbed vision ........................................ 186 Inhibition and artistic failure................................................ 197 Camera obscura.................................................................... 203 Nabokov’s visual devices..................................................... 208 8 THE MODELS OF SPACE, TIME AND VISION V. The Doubles and Mirrors...................................................... 218 VI. Multidimensional Worlds.................................................... 230 The outside and the inside.................................................... 230 Bend Sinister as a multilayer dream..................................... 249 The worlds of seduction: Lolita ........................................... 271 Conclusion ................................................................................ 280 Bibliography.............................................................................. 285 Index.......................................................................................... 314 Acknowledgements Nabokov’s dictum on the merging of “the precision of poetry and the excitement of pure science” in a work of art has been often cited. Somehow it’s always seemed familiar to me: I was lucky enough to learn from people who appreciated the precision of poetry and the aesthetical bliss of scientific adventure. I’m speaking of an informal circle of scholars later called the Tartu–Moscow semiotic school: Yuri Lotman, Boris Uspensky, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Eleazar Meletinsky, Aleksandr Pyatigorsky, and others. The importance of their work and their presence in Tartu is hard to overestimate. I would like to express my love and gratitude to them, particularly to Yuri Lotman whose bright personality, professional integrity and inspiring ideas have had a deep impact on my work. I am most grateful to my colleagues and friends who helped, supported or influenced me on my long way to this book: Vadim Besprozvannyi, Arkadi Blyumbaum, Annelore En- gel-Braunschmidt, Boris Gasparov, Jelena Grachyova, Erika Greber, Pekka Pesonen, Renate Lachmann, Markku Lehtimäki, Brian McHale, Päivi Mehtonen, Irina Paperno, Evgeni Permyakov, Irina Reyfman, Silvi Salupere, Richard Sieburth, Irina Shevelenko, Olga Skonech- naya, Igor Smirnov, Leona Toker, Mikhail Yampolsky, Aleksei Vost- rikov. I would like to thank Marie-Laure Ryan for her kind interest in my work and Jerome Bruner, the linguist and psychologist, whose love of literature inspired me during the writing of this book. The publication of this book would hardly have been possible without Pekka Tammi’s constant and continuing support. My deepest thanks to Leona Toker and Kai Mikkonen, whose friendly critique and advice considerably improved the content and form of the work at the final stage. I am grateful to Irina Külmoja and Jüri Talvet for their friendly support. I would also like to express my appreciation to Diana Burn- ham and Stephen Crook (New York Public Library, Berg Collection), Maria Lushchik and Olga Sharova (Tartu University Library), Irina Lukka (Helsinki University Library) and Ekaterina Shraga (Columbia University Library, New York) for their help and assistance. I am grateful to Toomas Raudam and Indrek Grigor, whose unselfish 10 THE MODELS OF SPACE, TIME AND VISION interest in Nabokov’s work was most inspiring. I would also like to thank my friends from the Ravenna theatrical company Fanny & Alexander Chiara Lagani, Matteo Ramon Arevalos, Sergio Carioli, Luigi de Angelis and Marco Molduzzi for their work on Ada and meditations on time and memory. Last but not least, I owe the warmest gratitude to my family, especially to my parents and son Aleksei — for being there for me. Parts of the work have been published in The Nabokovian 43 (1999); Sign Systems Studies 28 (2000) and 30.2 (2002); Interlittera- ria 8 (2003); M. Grishakova and M. Lehtimäki (eds.), Intertextuality and Intersemiosis (Tartu, 2004); The Lotman Collection 3 (Moscow, 2005); Acta Semiotica Estica 2 (Tartu, 2005). Introduction The aim of this book is to describe certain types of time, space and point-of-view construction in Vladimir Nabokov’s fiction and to explore their modeling role in the artistic, philosophical and scien- tific discourses of the modernist and early postmodernist age. There exists a semio-narratological tradition of a single author or a single work research — Todorov’s The Grammar of the Decameron, Greimas’ Maupassant, Genette’s Narrative Discourse, Barthes’ S/Z, — where the work of fiction serves as a test case for a theory or method. These studies aim at the elaboration of the taxonomies or models of more or less universal applicability. Although Genette’s specific focus of interest is Proust, he appro- aches Proust via the classical narrative tradition from the Odyssey to Stendhal. Proustian techniques often prove to be “anomalous” with respect to that tradition. The present study treats Nabokov’s fiction in the vein of postclassical narratology — as both an object and a tool of research. As David Herman argues, (post)modern narratives are “in a sense theoretically richer than some of the narratological frame- works that have been used to study them” (Herman 1995: 32). The study of the specific textual forms and strategies may expand currently established models or lead to their revision. Pekka Tammi’s Problems of Nabokov’s Poetics remains the unsurpassed example of the narratological analysis of Nabokov’s fiction. Although written in the age of general model-building, Tammi’s research is sensitive to the “idiosyncrasies” of Nabokov’s poetics and considers them as a potential challenge for general models (see Tammi 1985: 3). Here I pursue a similar line of argumentation, while examining the more specific and narrow problems of time, space and point-of-view construction in a broader semiotic pers- pective. The new narratological developments of the 1990s were stimulated by the growing disappointment with a purely immanent 12 THE MODELS OF SPACE, TIME AND VISION analysis of narrative. Meir Sternberg justly criticized “the estab- lished premises, prejudices, practices — all formalist in the sense of reifying and ranking narrative sequences without regard to com- municative