D. BARTON JOHNSON the Key to Nabokov's Gift

D. BARTON JOHNSON

The Key to Nabokov's Gift

Nabokov's Dar (The Gift) is reckoned by its author and by many of his readers as his finest Russian novel.1 It is by far the longest and most complex of his Russian works and, at least on the surface, his nearest approach to the tradition of the classical nineteenth-century Russian novel.2 It is, as its pro- tagonist Fedor says of the book he himself plans to write, a "novel with 'types', love, fate, conversations ... and with descriptions of nature" (E361/ R392). The Gift is all this and a great deal more for it is a study of the creative process enveloped in a brilliant display of Nabokovian structural and stylistic pyrotechnics. The novel's theme is elaborated in the unfolding of two major plot lines. The more obvious is the gradual coming together of Fedor and his beloved, Zina Mertz, in a protracted pattern of approaches and with- drawals ending in their final union. The second and more fundamental line

1. Nabokov's evaluation may be found in his collection of interviews and essays Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 13. Simon Karlinsky observes that even on the basis of the incomplete serialized version published in the thirties Nabokov admirers felt that "Dar was perhaps the most original, unusual and interesting piece of prose writing in the entire emigre literature between the wars." Simon Karlinsky, "Vladi- mir Nabokov's Novel Dar as a Work of Literary Criticism: A Structural Analysis" Slavic and East European Journal, 7, No. 3 (1963), 285. Andrew Field in his Nabokov: His Life In Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967) unhesitatingly calls The Gift "the greatest novel Russian literature has yet produced in this century" (p. 249). The publishing his- tory of the novel is curious. Its initial appearance in the Parisian emigre journal Sovre- mennye zapiski in 1937-38 was marred by the suppression (with the author's consent) of the hundred page chapter containing the derisive biographical sketch of N. G. Cherny- shevskii, the martyred nineteenth-century radical literary and social critic who was (and is) a particularly sacred cow of the Russian intelligentsia. The full text of the novel appeared only after the war: in Russian as Dar (New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1952) and in English as The Gift (New York: Putnam, 1963). Throughout the article page citations are given for both the Russian and English versions as follows: R392/ E361, etc. 2. Although the book is in part Nabokov's tribute to the classical Russian novel, it is also a parody of that genre. Note, for example, the opening sentence: "One cloudy but luminous day, towards four in the afternoon on April the first, 192- (a foreign critic once remarked that while many novels, most German ones for example, begin with a date, it is only Russian authors who, in keeping with the honesty peculiar to our literature, omit the final digit) a moving van ... pulled up in front of Number Seven Tannen- berg Street, in the west part of Berlin." The mockery of the honest Russian tradition is even more pronounced than the parenthetic insert suggests for internal evidence esta- blishes the year as 1926. Nabokov acknowledges this in an editorial note in A Russian Beauty and Other Stories (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973) where he notes the exact dates of the action of The Gift (p. 254). of development is the maturation of Fedor's artistic talent-one of the gifts of the novel's title. At the opening of the story Fedor is basking in the aura of an imaginary review of his first book of poems which has just appeared. A few months later, responding to stirrings of "something new, something still unknown, genuine, corresponding fully to the gift which he felt like a burden inside himself, (E106/R108), he undertakes, but does not complete, a biography of his late father, a noted explorer and lepidopterist. Still later, prompted by an unlikely set of circumstances, Fedor writes a biography of Nikolai Cherny- shevskii, the utilitarian literary and social critic whom the young writer sees as the bad seed in Russia's aesthetic (and political) development. As the novel draws to a close and all of its themes are resolved or nearing resolution Fedor senses the "maturing of his gift, a premonition of new labors," (E339/R367). The new labor is, of course, The Gift. The theme of Fedor's gift must be un- derstood in a wider sense than just that of his writing. It also includes his per- ceptiveness. and sensibility. In his day-to-day life throughout the novel Fedor is almost subliminally storing precious visual details which will enter into his art. He reflects "Where shall I put all these gifts with which the summer morning rewards me-and only me? Save them up for future books? ... one wants to offer thanks but there is no one to thank. The list of donations al- ready made: 10,000 days-from Person Unknown" (E340/R368). The figure 10,000 is not chosen by chance for it is the approximate duration of Fedor's conscious existence-twenty seven years. A further aspect of Fedor's gift is his audition coloree. When questioned about the dawn of his vocation, Fedor replies "When my eyes opened to the alphabet.... since childhood I have been afflicted with the most intense and elaborate audition coloree" (E86/ R85). As I have shown elsewhere, colored hearing serves as one of Nabokov's metaphors for the creative process.3 Finally, even Fedor's name means "gift of God." The gift theme is not restricted to Fedor's own talent and sensibilities but also refers to Russian literature as a whole. Russian literature is as much a hero of The Gift as is Fedor himself for the novel is Nabokov's homage to his native literary heritage. Fedor sees himself as heir to that tradition and two of his own works are in some measure inspired by Pushkin and Gogol', the semi- nal figures of modern Russian literature. Fedor's abortive biography of his explorer father is in part suggested to him by his reading of Pushkin's Joumey to Arzrum (E106-08/R108-10) and, beyond this, Pushkin's spirit presides

3. Nabokov develops this metaphor for his own gift in Speak, Memory (New York: Putnam, 1966). See my article "Synesthesia, Polychromatism and Nabokov," in A Book of Things about Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Carl Proffer (Ann Arbor: Ardis Press, 1974).