DEATH AND POSTERITY AS A MATTER OF STYLE
A Thesis submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University A5 In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree
•CM-3 Master of Arts
In
English: Literature
by
Edward Joseph Charlberg
San Francisco, California
May 2016 Copyright by Edward Joseph Charlberg 2016 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read Death and Posterity as a Matter of Style by Edward Joseph
Charlberg, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in
English: Literature at San Francisco State University.
Professor
Wai-Leung Kwok, Ph.D. Associate Professor DEATH AND POSTERITY AS A MATTER OF STYLE
Edward Joseph Charlberg San Francisco, California 2016
Vladimir Vladimirovish Nabokov sought to distance himself from his works by first utilizing the pseudonym Vladimir Sirin and ultimately through a hall of mirrors created by three personae: (1) a Historical Nabokov, (2) an Authorial Nabokov, and (3) Nabokov the Reader. Through close readings of Nabokov’s final three novels (Transparent Things, Look at the Harlequins!, and The Original o f Laura) we find the Authorial Nabokov’s pronouncements to be illusions designed to conceal the Authorial Nabokov’s creation of fantasies in order to explore the concerns of the Historical Nabokov, intended to be interpreted by Nabokov the Reader. This reveals that while the fictions may be intended for Nabokov the Reader, the human concerns that shine through allow us to see more of the Historical Nabokov in the fictions of the Authorial Nabokov than either would have ever liked to admit. The results of this are that Nabokov’s fictions are more open to interpretation than the public, Authorial Nabokov ever authorized.
I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis. PREFACE AND/OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my parents, grandparents, Abigail, Gloria, Kim, Bob, Daniel, and Scott.
Also very special thanks to Geoffrey Green and Wai-Leung Kwok for their guidance and encouragement. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction...... 1
Chapter One - “This is, I believe, i f ...... 16
Chapter Two - A “mucking biograffitist”...... 36
Chapter Three - “Some Cards Named Laura”...... 56
Conclusion...... 79
Bibliography...... 89 1
Introduction
Vladimir Nabokov once said in an interview that “[t]he best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story o f his style [my italics]”
(iStrong Opinions 155). Nabokov's style was one of multiplicate identity, obfuscation, inversion, parody, and in his last works (which are the primary concern of this essay) reflections upon death and posterity. Through an analysis of the multiplicate identities of
Nabokov, with specific focus upon Transparent Things, Look at the Harlequins!, and The
Original o f Laura, I aim to show that his use of obfuscation, inversion, and parody (very specifically self-parody) reveals a Nabokov that displays a very human concern with regards to his own imminent demise and his literary posterity. This Nabokov stands in contrasting light to the constructed, self-assured, apparently arrogant Nabokov presented in interviews and forewords, and the incredible creative artist who penned works that can easily be considered unrivaled in their complexity, artistry, wit, and creativity. My goal is to utilize historical details in the life of Nabokov in concert with an elucidation of the multiplicate identities of Nabokov to interrogate the aforementioned final works in a subtle manner concerned less with direct identification of autobiographical elements in the fictions and more with the implications of the ways in which Nabokov played with his own personal experiences and how that demonstrates his concerns with his own life, mortality, and posterity. While Nabokov may at first appear aloof and unconcerned with his own mortality and his literary posterity, I believe that there is plenty of evidence to 2
reveal hidden concerns that are masked by his self-assured personae which create a kind of hall of mirrors that seeks to conceal more human, everyday concerns.
Multiplicate Identity
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was, and remains in many respects, a singular author of multiple minds. Initially writing in Russian under the pseudonym Vladimir
Sirin, a constructed personality meant to at once avoid confusion with his father Vladimir
Dmitrievich Nabokov and at the same time create a personality that reflected the bombast of his works in that language. When Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov resigned himself to writing in English he needed a new name that would be acceptable to a new readership. That name and concomitant persona was, and is, Vladimir Nabokov. I present the issue in such a way as to emphasize the consistently constructed nature of Nabokov's personality with relation to his fictions.
It is of great importance to understand that the historical Vladimir Nabokov (the man who paid his American taxes despite living in Montreux) is markedly separate from the Authorial Vladimir Nabokov (the Author with a capital “A”). The former is an individual that was bom in Russia, emigrated to continental Europe, moved to America
(where he became a noted author), and spent his final years living in Switzerland. The latter is a construct that served as a buffer between work and historical persona, the author of Lolita, Ada, Bend Sinister, and numerous other works composed originally in
English or translated into English from Russian. By way of this buffer Nabokov was able 3
to steer critical focus away from his personal life and attempt to ensure that his works would be allowed to speak for themselves.
Geoffrey Green, in his “Visions of a 'Perfect Past': Nabokov, Autobiography,
Biography, and Fiction,” discusses Nabokov's writing as a form of “creative apperception of individual details” (specifically in reference to Nabokov's affair with Irina Guadanini and his artistic treatment of said affair), an act that “constitutes the means by which
Nabokov differentiated 'true reality' from 'average reality'” (Green 1). Nabokov's notion of the difference between “average reality” and “true reality” is summed up in an interview of 1968 (quoted earlier in Green's essay and repeated here):
“[T]o be sure, there is an average reality, perceived by all of us, but that is
not true reality: it is only the reality of general ideas, conventional forms
of humdrummery, current editorials... Paradoxically, the only real,
authentic worlds are, of course, those that seem unusual. When my fancies
will have been sufficiently imitated, they, too, will enter the common
domain of average reality, which will be false, too, but with a new context
which we cannot yet guess. Average reality begins to rot and stink as soon
as the act of individual creation ceases to animate a subjectively perceived
texture.” (SO 118, quoted in Green 1)
Green's notion of Nabokov's writing as “creative apperception” and its connection to
“true reality” and “average reality” suggests the importance of the buffer between the 4
Historical and Authorial Nabokovs. The Historical Nabokov exists in the realm of
“average reality,” a world that “rot[s] and stink[s] as soon as the act o f’ artistry ceases to
“animate” it and bring it into the transcendent realm of Art, an act that is performed by the Authorial Nabokov in which the dross of “average reality” is refined into the “true reality” of the “unusual” and Nabokov's “fancies.” “Creative apperception” perfectly implies this connection, identifying the writings of the Authorial Nabokov as the place in which the elements of the life of the Historical Nabokov are worked through and consolidated in the much more “real” or “true” (at least to Nabokov) realm of art and the persona of the Authorial Nabokov. Through Nabokov's figuration of reality and his construction of the Authorial figure as supreme in this figuration, Nabokov created a set of conditions in which his artistic productions usurped the position of most commonly held ideas of reality. Thus the Authorial Nabokov acts as a gatekeeper to and replacement for the Historical Nabokov. This authorial construct is the persona we encounter in
Strong Opinions and in the introductions to the novels. I further posit that through a back- and-forth interrogation utilizing the two against and in concert with one another a third
Vladimir Nabokov emerges.
Through this third Nabokov I hope to show a way of reconciling the disparate veins of Nabokov criticism through a study of the accessible, human qualities of Vladimir
Vladimirovich Nabokov that are reflected through his writings, with particular attention to Transparent Things, Look at the Harlequins!, and The Original o f Laura. Nabokov criticism has in the past been hampered by the author's insistence upon reception of his 5
works as purely aesthetic objects with no inherent meaning, however it has become clear that this was merely a dupe. The results of accepting this feint as a legitimate jab is that a large amount of scholarship focuses upon the complex webs of intertextual gamesmanship woven by Nabokov to the detriment of a study of the complex personae constructed by Nabokov and their relationship to his works. By focusing upon Nabokov's treatment of very human concerns such as posterity and the inevitability of death within these final novels we may discover threads that can lead us to a Nabokov that shows a human vulnerability and deep concern for his readers as well as his literary legacy.
Impersonating the Self
By separating out these different Nabokovs it has become apparent to me that despite the incredible amount of pedantic detail and effort that went into Nabokov's
“stuff,” the resulting aura of unassailable perfection and artistry is “an illusion” on
Nabokov's part that plays into and off his stated goal of “construct[ing] in the presence of
[his] audience the semblance of what [he] hope[s] is a plausible and not altogether displeasing personality” (34; 158). It would seem relevant that the solidification of the constructed, “Authorial” Vladimir Nabokov appears to come with the success of Lolita and the resulting onslaught of publicity and fame. However this sort of an act or use of a mask is not particularly new or foreign to Nabokov as an author and individual.
We must also recall that Nabokov wrote in Russian under the nom de plume of
Vladimir Sirin. This name and persona at once eliminated confusion between Nabokov 6
and his father (also Vladimir Nabokov), and also showed a certain kind of hubris or
confidence with regards to his literary talents1. Despite this self-assured, self-appointed title, connoting a spectacular talent that occurs only rarely, there is evidence of a certain
element of uncertainty and insecurity. For one, Nabokov could have possibly
differentiated himself from his father by way of patronymic: his father was Vladimir
Dmitrievich Nabokov, he Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov. So in a sense Nabokov's
self-appellation of Sirin can be read as at once a boast and a buffer between himself and
his productions, although a thin veil at best given that it was not uncommon knowledge that Sirin was indeed Nabokov.
Taken with the earlier Sirin persona, the later Vladimir Nabokov persona would
seem as an improvement in some ways, allowing for greater transparency by the use of
his actual name and yet separated by the prepared and self-conscious nature of the
construct's presentation in carefully worded interviews and introductions. If we take this
construction, illusion, and Nabokov's consistent references to his productions as simply
“stuff” alongside his remarks in a 1964 Playboy interview about his legacy we can find a
very definite concern with his posterity:
I don't have a 3 5-year plan or program, but I have a fair inkling of my
literary afterlife. I have sensed certain hints, I have felt the breeze of
1 The sirin has a large number o f different representations and descriptions, but an important commonality is that it is a supernatural being imbued with extraordinary beauty and power. It is variously a force of doom or destruction, or a harbinger o f joy. 7
certain promises. No doubt there will be ups and downs, long periods of
slump. With the Devil's connivance, I open a newspaper of 2063 and in
some article on the books page I find: “Nobody reads Nabokov or
Fulmerford today.” Awful question: Who is this unfortunate Fulmerford?
(34)
Herein Nabokov shows humility and an understanding of his talent as evaluated and appreciated by individuals other than himself. Yet, this sentiment stands in stark contrast to comments in other interviews where Nabokov touts the primacy of writing for one's self (“I don't think that an artist should bother about his audience. His best audience is the person he sees in his shaving mirror every morning,” “I write for myself in multiplicate”) and jokes about his own high position in “the world of letters” (“Jolly good view from up here”) (18; 114; 181). In the block-quote above, Nabokov shows very human sympathy with this fictional “Fulmerford,” and instead of directly lamenting his own fall from wide readership wonders about the “unfortunate” author sharing his fate. These sorts of maneuverings point directly to a very human tendency of pivoting between confidence and self-conscious concern that reach very significant development in TT, LATH!, and
TOOL as well as showing his consistent concern with his literary posterity and reception.
From the beginning of his career he was at once very proud and bombastic with regards to his productions in addition to showing a guarded concern around his own personae. It appears that through his obsession with guarding his private life, his insistent 8
dismissal of autobiographical readings of his works, and his vehemence with regards to
Freud, Nabokov is actually revealing quite a bit about himself through the spectrum of statements, responses, and works that he produced under the guise of the constructed,
Authorial Vladimir Nabokov. As a result of his dismissals, his retrospective alterations2, and his vacillations in interviews he appears to be a very vulnerable and sensitive individual beneath the tough, uncompromising, judgmental, and aloof persona that he constructed. Upon consideration of the differences between these extremes in the constructed, Authorial Nabokov it becomes apparent that despite his best efforts he could not have been entirely capable of eliminating his private, personal concerns from his works and even from the persona that he presented to the public.
Given the amount of turmoil and uncertainty in his life it would make much sense for him to have been controlling over aspects of his life. Considering the loss of his country, his childhood homes, his sources for so many precious memories, his language, his father, and his lack of a stable home after the emigration until his installation in
Montreux, any number of these losses could justify a need to maintain some kind of control over one's own personal sphere. This need for control would have to be further magnified given the scrutiny that he was exposed to after the success of Lolita. Here it seems important to consider the subject matter of his works in relation to the construction of his public persona.
2 One oft-quoted example can be found in SO on p. 183 wherein Nabokov attempts to alter a statement given in an earlier interview. Other examples can be found in changes made to works that he translated into English. Further discussion of this can be found below. 9
Unfortunately much of the public believes that a writer's work is a direct reflection of his or her own concerns, desires, life, and worldview. At the time of Lolita's success, this would not have been avoided by the prevalence of Freudian generalizations floating around, combined with the apparently off-color tone of much of Nabokov's works. Thus it would seem necessary to build a wall between one's self and one's works when you have written a novel wherein the immediate focus of the public is upon questionably prurient elements within. There were certainly many individuals who assumed that Nabokov was some kind of pervert with a penchant for little girls who was trying to defend these types of desires, and despite widespread recognition of his importance as an author one still encounters those who think of Nabokov as “that writer that liked little girls.”
To take a step back and to consider the historical individual behind the homonymous persona, let us remember that Nabokov was very aware of this possibility and that he came close to burning the manuscript of Lolita, as well as briefly considering anonymous publication of the novel. This kind of action does not appear consistent with the very staunch, self-assured, at times arrogant persona presented through his forewords and interviews. Yet perhaps this sensitivity is reflected in his works through the vilification of crass sexual depictions, through his concerns with how he was viewed by the public, through his insistence upon writing only for himself in order to ensure that any reading that reflected other than what he desired could be negated, and, within his final 10
three novels, a very real and human concern with his own death and posterity. But what of the implications of Nabokov's splitting of himself in relation to his fiction?
Author, Reader, and Life
A standard view of the relationship between Life and Art is a circular figuration with Life informing and being informed by Art, however this type of a figuration leaves out an important element of Art: that of consumption. Nabokov seems to realize this and as a result, through his constructed persona(e), points towards a third element that alters the circular figuration of Life and Art into a triangular one that includes a consumer, or
Reader. This can be seen in Nabokov's 1971 interview for Swiss Broadcast, referenced in an above footnote, wherein he alters an earlier statement to include the Reader. Within an earlier work Nabokov was quoted as stating “that in a first-rate work of fiction, the real clash isn't between the characters, but between the author and the world” (183). He however retrospectively revises this statement and builds upon it:
“I believe I said 'between the author and the reader,' not 'the world,' which
would be a meaningless formula, since a creative artist makes his own
world or worlds. He clashes with readerdom because he is his own ideal
reader and those other readers are so very often mere lip-moving ghosts
and amnesiacs. On the other hand, a good reader is bound to make fierce
efforts when wrestling with a difficult author, but those efforts can be most
rewarding after the bright dust has settled.” (183) 11
In unpacking this statement we find that in the initial, unaltered quotation Nabokov outlines very clearly the simple dyadic figuration of the relationship between Life and
Art. But he then alters it because it would appear to him as redundant given that the
“creative artist makes his own world or worlds” and turns it into a clash with
“readerdom” because of his notion of an artist creating for one's self and the apparent
inefficacy of the public consumers of Art. Through this shift Nabokov appears to be altering the standard terms in the relationship of Life and Art by subtly subsuming Life
into Art, thereby suggesting that “the world” is created by the “creative artist,” and through this alteration and envelopment he conceals or eliminates any kind of separation of the “creative artist” from Life.
But as we can observe through a study of the constructed persona of the Authorial
Vladimir Nabokov, Nabokov very clearly did not agree with this implication. He felt very
strongly that there was a separation between the Authorial Nabokov and the Historical
Nabokov, as evidenced in a 1969 interview in Vogue: “I can quite understand people
wanting to know my writings, but I cannot sympathize with anybody wanting to know
me. As a human specimen, I present no particular fascination” (157). Within the clash
between the multiple sentiments expressed, altered, and destroyed above we can observe
real concern and thought with regards to the interplay among Life, Art, and the Reader.
All three play some importance with relation to the production of Art in Nabokov's mind,
yet there is of course some dissonance at play that marks uncertainty and very human
concern with self-image and, perhaps, his posterity. He desires very much to clarify his 12
quote from an earlier work because the formulation as he had stated it before did not ring true when coming back to him. He then alters the quotation into a different one, replacing
“the world” with “readerdom” and then denigrating the notion of the “average” reader.
However he then even qualifies that dismissal by way of recognition of the “good reader” whose efforts “can be most rewarding,” thereby taking a very simple quote from an earlier work and twisting it and complicating it in order to present multiple possible interpretations, as well as once again establishing his constructed, Authorial persona as the ultimate arbiter of interpreting his works. Yet within this complex maneuvering it would seem very pertinent and profitable to directly acknowledge the separation present in this quote of Author (or Art) from Reader and from Historical Persona (or Life to keep with the above language and formulation).
The quote in question is from Nabokov's Speak, Memory, subtitled “An
Autobiography Revisited,” which stands as a fitting example of two aspects of the multiple Nabokovs: The Authorial and the Historical. Given that it is an autobiography
we assume we are getting some depictions of the Historical Nabokov, and yet it is also a production of the Authorial Nabokov that created the persona of the Nabokov in
interviews. It would seem that given the alterations performed upon the quote by the
constructed, Authorial Nabokov in interview there is indeed a clash between Author and
Reader. Nabokov, as “his own ideal reader,” is clashing with himself by arguing against
and altering his own words, providing an excellent illustration of the kind of human tendencies that seem to be concealed by his carefully constructed, public persona 13
designed to be “plausible and not altogether displeasing.” All this interplay between the
Authorial Nabokov and “the ideal reader” Nabokov serves as a distraction from the
Historical Nabokov. Even when the multiple Nabokovs are not clashing with one another in an interview he still conceals the Historical Nabokov, as in another quote from the above-referenced Vogue interview: “I devoted a chapter of my Speak, Memory to
[childhood romance], this time adhering faithfully to the actual past. As to flashes of it in my fiction, I alone can judge if details that look like bits of my 'real' self in this or that novel of mine are as authentic as Adam's rib in the most famous of garden scenes” (154).
Herein Nabokov again brings together all three Nabokovs, The Authorial Nabokov (“I devoted a chapter”), the Historical Nabokov (“adhering faithfully to the actual past”), and
Nabokov the Reader (“I alone can judge”), unifying all three and yet shutting us all out, defending himself from outside intrusions, interpretations, and ideas.
Death and Posterity, or “the story of his style”
According to Brian Boyd's Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, before writing Transparent Things Nabokov was recovering from the long ordeal of Ada, seeing the positive reviews of Ada give way to negative reviews, encountering unfavorable comparisons of himself and his wife to Van and Ada, sorting through a massive collection of papers that were left in storage in America, and facing down the debilitating effects of advancing age (562-8). It seems very much fitting that Nabokov's next novel would deal very deliberately with an author who shares some characteristics with 14
Nabokov and a view of posterity that roams across time and standard ideas of consciousness. Given these elements it seems clear that Nabokov was looking ahead to his own demise and at once pondering the experience as well as his own lasting mark on the world. At this same time he was working with his biographer, Andrew Field, on a biography that would ultimately push Nabokov into writing yet another novel, Look at the Harlequins!, that would serve as a rebuke to Andrew Field's attempt at biography.
LATH! reads in many ways as an autobiography of an overly egotistical hack writer whose works and life share some facile similarities to that of Vladimir Nabokov.
In this work Nabokov appears to be chiding Field by showing him how a sensationalist fictionalized biography can be constructed with more artistry than Field's attempt at a biography. Nabokov plays with his own past through what appears to be a type of parodic inversion wherein the works are of less concern in the autobiography than the romantic ups and downs and obsession with personal aberration (Vadim's inability to temporally turn around).
Though incomplete, The Original o f Laura stands in a position of importance owing to the fact that it is his final work, but also because of Philip Wild's attempts at auto-dissolution. These passages and many fragmentary pieces dealing with neurology and metaphysics are integral, in my opinion, to considering that which was preoccupying
Nabokov at the end of his life and seem to point to a pinnacle of the sentiment expressed at the beginning of Chapter Five of Speak, Memory: 15
I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my
novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial
world where I had so abruptly placed it. Although it lingered on in my
mind, its personal warmth, its retrospective appeal had gone and,
presently, it became more closely identified with my novel than with my
former self, where it had seemed to be so safe from the intrusion of the
artist. {Speak, Memory 95)
It would seem that perhaps the auto-dissolution of Wild could be a fitting metaphor for
Nabokov's own shedding of himself through his fictions and perhaps this ultimate
shedding represents his acknowledgment of his imminent demise and a final act of
creative imbuement in the face of death. 16
Chapter One - “This is, I believe, if ’
Transparent Things has been described as “a compact, intricately plotted book... an X-ray of a novel” and “an opportunity for [readers] to display and perfect [their] skill[s] as competent readers” (Patteson 102; Rosenblum 222). Upon publication it was met with mixed reviews, receiving praise, creating confusion, and resulting in an entry in
Nabokov's diary: “Reviews oscillating between hopeless adoration and helpless hatred.
Very amusing” (VN: A Y 608). Nabokov had become such a name in fiction that his works were evaluated in a highly divisive manner. Like any author lucky enough to establish themself in the heights of literary relevancy, Nabokov was not immune to prying reviewers looking for weaknesses in the productions of an aging author3. It seems fitting, then, that this novel itself deals significantly with the posterity of a deceased author (Mr. R.) and his attempts to interact with one of his readers, Hugh Person
(playfully rendered in one's mind as “You” Person and mispronounced the same by
Person's wife).
3 It seems a rather unfounded and bizarre phenomenon that so many aging authors (and artists) are exposed to such scrutinous investigation into their capabilities of later life. Excepting in cases of dementia (and perhaps other debilitating developments of old age) why would a creator's ability to create lasting works o f value debilitate, rather than improve. Obviously there must be some cases where sub-par work is released out o f monetary necessity (or perhaps familial greed), but why must age itself raise an automatic alarm with regards to quality or value of artistic output? My own opinion, in the case of Nabokov, is that his works tend to trend upwards. I won't argue against the view that he shows a marked change in style with Transparent Things, but I see no problem with a change in style between works. If Nabokov wrote the same kind of works every time I would think that reviewers would chide him for repetition. Recent examples that come to mind are the cases of Toni Morrison's last two novels. In reviews of both works, Morrison's ability to write great works was consistently questioned and age was cited as a reason for her apparent decline in quality. Having read Home I can say that I disagreed with many o f the reviews I read. As for her newest, I must abstain from comment as I have not yet read the work. 17
During and after the composition of the novel Nabokov was tying up loose ends with relation to literary matters and it has been widely acknowledged that he felt this would be his final novel. He was finishing up a contract with his publisher and had authorized and was meeting with his selected biographer. The time would have appeared to be right to begin considering his literary legacy and his lasting mark on the world of letters. Given these circumstances Nabokov's choice of subject matter seems very pregnant with significance.
Finding the Art in Life, or Patterns in the Human Mind
In “Finding What the Sailor Has Hidden: Narrative as Pattemmaking in
Transparent Things’’ Michael Rosenblum identifies the importance of interconnected
“patterns” within the novel. These “patterns” are very much like the kinds of interconnected reminiscences that we find in Speak, Memory, Nabokov's “new type of autobiography - a scientific attempt to unravel and trace back all the tangled threads of one's personality” (VN: AY Ml). Whereas in Speak, Memory Nabokov is going over the past and collating seeming coincidence (the events that make up life, collectively and individually) in order to bring attention to an orderliness that might otherwise escape notice and thereby showing an artfulness in one's own experience of life, Transparent
Things can be read in a similar manner as a kind of spiritual sequel wherein the threads
from a fictional character's life (Hugh Person's) are followed to death and beyond.
According to Robert Alter, as quoted in Rosenblum, “the key to any sense of reality, 18
certainly for Nabokov and probably for all of us, is the perception of pattern,” on which
Rosenblum elaborates:
Art and the faculties that Nabokov associates with art, such as memory are
the ways that we have of being unnatural, of acting upon the world rather
than merely passively experiencing it. Our life in time is gradual and
successive, made up of the infinite degrees by which one moment passes
into another. The natural life is diffuse, opaque, and flows all too smoothly
from “A to Z,” whereas the active shaping of art aspires to concentration,
to transparency; art attempts to break up the smooth and deadly one-
directional flow with boundaries, anniversaries, the first and the last of a
series, recurrences, coincidences, back-and-forth echoes and premonitions
- all those markers which help us not flow from A to Z. (230)
Transparent Things brings our attention to the greater significance of everyday events.
We are presented with a different way of viewing the world around us and invited to ponder time in a mode that excludes the future, instead remaining in the past and the present (“the future is but a figure of speech, a specter of thought”) (1). The future is an illusion, a mental construct that conceals the fact that there is really only past events and a present that is constantly becoming the past. Reading the novel we are pulled back and forth in time between pasts and an apparent present that merely terminates with the conclusion of the novel and Hugh's passage into an afterlife. The passage of time in the 19
novel is not “gradual and successive,” we are thrust about from one period of time to another. In Chapter Three Hugh Person discovers a pencil that is preventing a drawer from closing completely and “briefly consider[s]” it “before putting it back”
{Transparent Things 6). Next we are conveyed backwards in time to when the “plain, round technically faceless old pencil” is left behind by a workman who was fixing the desk, then further back in time to witness highlights in the life of the pencil from the felling of the tree to the formation of the graphite (6-7). Whereas for Hugh Person this pencil is a trifling obstacle to a closed drawer (which he apparently “put[s] back,” suggesting that he does not even bother to remedy the pencil/drawer problem), our narrator shows us that, in fact, the secret life of the pencil is the most interesting part of
Hugh's pencil/drawer conundrum.
Within this chapter Hugh is marginalized, eclipsed by the minute details of the pencil's journey through life to abandonment in the back of a drawer. Hugh misses out on
“the entire little drama,” as the pencil is created “from crystallized carbon and felled pine” in a history that “unfolds in a twinkle” (8). If we merely consider things “briefly”
(like Hugh Person), as Nabokov/Mr. R. seem to be suggesting, there are entire obscured and possibly fascinating elements in our lives that we miss out on entirely by engaging in life as a “deadly one-directional flow” when life is more enthralling, complex, and full when we consider something like this pencil, “this transparent thing,” an object “through which the past shines” (8; 1). Hugh is only interested in his own past; he has returned to
Switzerland for his fourth time with the apparent goal of reconnecting to this past, trying 20
to retrace his steps upon his release from custody (9). His attempt to reclaim the past is disconnecting him from his present, instead of viewing the past and recognizing patterns in the present Hugh is merely retracing his steps “from A to Z,” circling back in his
“deadly one-directional flow” despite Mr. R.'s attempts at warning him off this path (98-
99).
This “deadly one-directional flow” stands in marked difference to Nabokov's own conception of time and existence, as discussed at the opening of Speak, Memory.
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our
existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal
abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five
hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac
who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at
homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He
saw a world that was practically unchanged—the same house, the same
people—and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody
mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an
upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were
some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the
sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the 21
smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the
reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated. (20)
Nabokov clearly did not see human existence as a one-way trip from cradle to grave in the commonly held view of life. Instead he views the voids beyond our common perception as identical spaces that merely separate one stretch of existence from another.
Nabokov shows their interchangeable nature through the anecdote regarding the
“chronophob[e],” wherein the realization of one's previous lack of existence is every bit as terrifying as one's own death; the empty carriage a portent of the same terror as witnessing one's own filled grave. Our view of life as a “deadly one-directional flow” with little anxiety placed upon the period of non-existence before birth is an oversight for
Nabokov, non-existence itself should inspire terror especially in a model where existence is a merely finite trip from womb to tomb4. Further expounding upon his view of time and existence Nabokov speaks of the circle and the spiral: “The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, unwound, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free” (SM 275)5. Nabokov goes on to describe a Hegelian relationship among segments that are near one-another within the spiral. All time is inter-related and
4 This anxiety of non-existence would also appear to have some relation to Nabokov's insomnia and contentious relationship with sleep, a loss of control and consciousness, “unspeakably repulsive” to Nabokov {Speak, Memory 109). Further, he equates napping to a “senile rake... totter[ing] to the nearest euthanasium,” decries “the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius,” and compares sleep to “the approach o f a far more thorough and still more risible disintegration,” clearly connecting the loss of consciousness to biological (or “physical”) death (108). 5 It seems quite worthy of note and brief discussion that within the index for Speak, Memory there are no entries for time, existence, or consciousness, but a very discrete entry for spirals pointing to page 275. The spiral seems to encapsulate time, existence, and consciousness for Nabokov, a fitting image for his conception of a plane of existence where all is accessible and nothing is lost. 22
connected by way of its proximity to a nearby segment of the continuous spiral of time, a model that decisively thwarts a cyclical view of time or a view of time as a“deadly one- directional flow.” Through the narration of Mr. R. and the structuring of the novel
Nabokov provides us with a functional model of his view of the world and its planes of existence. For Mr. R. (and Nabokov) the past is not isolated.
Through the novel we are shown an analysis of Hugh Person's life through the lens of an apparently deceased narrator. Given Nabokov's life circumstances at the time of composition and his eye toward posterity it would seem fitting to consider the possible significance of the novel with relation to Nabokov's own life, his concerns regarding his literary posterity, and his knowledge of his approaching demise. Through the lives of
Hugh Person and Mr. R. Nabokov is perhaps evaluating his own life as well as his thoughts on death and posterity, and the possibility of another kind of existence beyond that which we know. We will have occasion to discuss this in greater detail after a brief discussion of a different, yet relevant discussion that will help to inform a more robust consideration of Nabokov's conception of existence.
Self-Inscription and Fantasy: Playful Inversion
Brian Boyd notes that an inversion of Dmitri Nabokov provided Nabokov with his character Hugh Person and it seems that this novel can be read as a playful inversion and exploration of Nabokov's own life and circumstances (VN: AY 588). Within this purposeful manipulation of his life Nabokov appears to play with many of his concerns 23
regarding his own posterity, his notions of another plane of existence, and his relationship with the readers of his fiction. Within these elements of the novel we begin to find evidence of the concern that Nabokov alternately revealed and concealed within the public guise of his interviews as the Authorial, constructed Nabokov, the concern that appears to elucidate elements of the Historical Nabokov that was concealed by the
Authorial Nabokov.
The Authorial Nabokov sought in interviews to, as discussed in the Introduction, supplant the Historical Nabokov in the world outside of himself. Through the Authorial
Nabokov it was possible to keep hidden the Historical Nabokov in all but the broadest strokes (age, date of birth, American employment, family, etc.) effectively allowing
Nabokov to engage in precisely the kind of closed-off, triangular formulation of Author,
Reader, and Historical personae with regards to the creation of a world of his own in his fiction. This enclosed environment (which of course is not entirely closed) finds a double in Freud's “The Creative Writer and Daydreaming,” wherein Freud states:
[T]he creative writer acts no differently from the child at play: he creates a
fantasy world, which he takes very seriously; that is to say, he invests
large amounts of emotion in it, while marking it off sharply from reality.
Moreover, the language itself captures the relation between children's
games and literary creation by applying the word play to those of the
writer's inventions that need to be linked to tangible objects - that can be 24
performed or acted - and the word player to the person who performs or
acts in them. However, the unreality of the writer's world has important
consequences for artistic technique: there are many things that could
afford no enjoyment in reality, but can do so in the play of fantasy, and
many excitations that are in themselves painful, but can give pleasure to
the writer's audience. (Freud 26)6
Nabokov's fictions are, in my reading of things, the fantasies of the Historical Nabokov
(“fantasy world, which he takes very seriously”) which are transmuted by the Authorial
Nabokov (“marking it off sharply from reality”) into fictional explorations designed to be read by Nabokov the Reader (“many excitations that are in themselves painful... can give pleasure to the writer's audience”). Additionally, Freud's comments on “play” and
“player” bring to mind the playful intrusions of Nabokov into his works of fiction wherein the text, or the “writer's inventions,” and the player are linked through the figures of Historical figure and Authorial figure. In other words within the Authorial intrusions into the play/text/“inventions” (which in the fantasies of the Historical
Nabokov would “need to be linked to tangible objects”) the player is Nabokov making a
6 This is most certainly not the only consonance with Freud, rather thoroughly illustrated by Geoffrey Green’s aptly-named meditation upon the connections between Freud and Nabokov, Freud and Nabokov (U. of Nebraska Press, 1988). Green very subtly, and with little-to-no applied pressure, shows repeated overlaps in the enterprises of both authors thereby persuasively enriching the connections between the two and suggesting (to myself, at least) that Nabokov's walls decorated with anti-Freudian graffiti and signage are not as unassailable as Nabokov repeatedly claimed. The numerous similarities between the two authors, evidence that Nabokov had indeed read Freud, and Nabokov's very public anti-Freudian stance could be viewed as a defensive action on the part of the Authorial Nabokov, an insurance policy meant to keep Nabokov a unique, singular author and (perhaps simultaneously) an indication of Nabokov’s reductive conception of the enterprise of Freudian Psychoanalysis. 25
cameo in his own fantasy world. By writing himself into his fictions as a character,
directly or through cypher, it would appear that Nabokov has created a very explicit set
of conditions wherein we are able to utilize the productions of the Authorial Nabokov
(the interviews and fictions) to view in some manner the concerns of the Historical
Nabokov. Despite the Authorial Nabokov's very self-enclosed system set forth in
interviews, it becomes apparent that while the system is enclosed within a figuration of
three Nabokovs, it is the interplay between these Nabokovs that allows us to interrogate
the fictions for the refracted concerns of the Historical Nabokov. To further illustrate the
aforementioned, let us return to Transparent Things and begin to show how the
correspondences between Nabokov's triangular enclosure and Freud's remarks provide us
with a relevant opening into said enclosure.
Taking Stock: Looking Forwards and Backwards in Time
As stated above, the Historical Nabokov was looking forward to his literary
position in the future. He was tying up loose ends in his publishing contract and had
selected a biographer in the hopes that “it would be safer to allow a biography while he
was still there to minimize errors” (VN.AY611)7. In this way it seems rather fitting and
7 Which proved to be less than true in Nabokov's opinion. He found Field's biography to be lacking, error-prone, and strangely obsessed with rumors o f familial connections to the Tzar. I myself found the latter to be rather perplexing as much o f this family tree research appeared to come at a heavy cost to a discussion o f the fictions and life of Nabokov. However, it is important to note that Field is the only biographer who was fed tidbits by the master himself and that we must therefor not be so widely dismissive of Field's work. Also o f importance is our recognition of Nabokov's limited ideas of what were germane to a biography of himself, as well as his intense desire for personal privacy. While Field's biography may not be as extensive and inclusive as Boyd's, we must keep in mind the unique 26
germane to this essay to recognize the basic structure of the novel and how it relates to
Nabokov's view of the world, his attempts to peek beyond this world, and his apparent knowledge that only death would bring him some answers.
The novel begins with a narrator (later determined to be Mr. R.) attempting to
speak to an individual, “Here's the person I want. Hullo, person! Doesn't hear me” (7 T 1).
This person is revealed to be an individual named Hugh Person (remarkably similar to
“you”) and we are provided a tour of Hugh Person's life (assumedly by Mr. R.) and a number of threads that lead to his demise in a hotel fire. After his demise Mr. R. is waiting to help Person after “physical death” through “the incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass from one state of being to another” (TT 104).
To return to the Freud quote above, and combining it with the novel's overarching theme as well as the state of the Historical Nabokov we can read the novel in part as a fantasy of the Historical Nabokov's guarded concerns about his literary legacy and personal death
that is transformed into fiction by the Authorial Nabokov, said fiction being a narrative
that allows Nabokov the Reader to privately evaluate his personal concerns in an arena that he has “markfed] off’ from “average reality.”
To elaborate this more we can view both Mr. R. and Hugh Person as being
identified with the Historical Nabokov. Yet, Mr. R. also represents the Authorial
Nabokov, the creator of fictions and public guise for the Historical Nabokov. Taken in
importance of Field's work. 27
this manner Mr. R.'s role in the fantasy/fiction is as an exploration of the literary legacy of Nabokov, the novel illustrating Mr. R.'s own attempts at communicating posthumously with one of his readers, Hugh Person. Owing to the Authorial Nabokov's insistence upon writing for one's self, Nabokov the Reader is the intended interpreter of this fantasy/fiction, and thereby also occupies the position of Hugh Person (that of an individual headed for death) within the fantasy/fiction. Thus through these two important characters within the novel we can see the Historical Nabokov playing with ideas of his own demise.
Further when we look at Mr. R.'s place in the novel and his attempts to communicate beyond the grave in a more symbolic manner, we can view Mr. R.'s concerns with Hugh Person (or “you” Person, perhaps meaning readers other than
Nabokov?) in line with Nabokov's Fulmerford statement (quoted in my Introduction) that
stands in contrast to the often, self-assured comments of the Authorial Nabokov in
interviews. As was illustrated in my Introduction, it is quite clear that the Authorial,
constructed Nabokov is a mask designed to shield the Historical Nabokov in a multitude
of ways, including his own insecurities about his lasting place in the literary world. This
doubling of Nabokov within the novel, combined with an evaluation of the biographical
circumstances surrounding the Historical Nabokov hidden behind multiple masks would
appear to offer a glimpse behind the masks and show an individual who can see the end
coming to an extent that even in fantasy “mark[ed] off’ from “average reality,” “average
reality” was beginning to seep in with the knowledge (or perhaps assumption) of 28
imminent death and the “rot and stink” which comes “as soon as the act of individual creation ceases to animate.”
An apparent result of Nabokov's mortal knowledge is a depiction of Nabokov's view of existence and an exploration of his conception of time and multiple planes of existence. Earlier I discussed an overview of Nabokov's thoughts on the subject, a void at either end of our lives, “two eternities of darkness” with “brief crack of light” in between.
He further states that
[o]ver and over again, my mind has made colossal efforts to distinguish
the faintest of personal glimmers in the impersonal darkness on both sides
of my life. That this darkness is caused merely by the walls of time
separating me and my bruised fists from the free world of timelessness is a
belief I gladly share with the most gaudily painted savage. I have
journeyed back in thought—with thought hopelessly tapering off as I
went—to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to
discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits. Short of
suicide, I have tried everything. I have doffed my identity in order to pass
for a conventional spook and steal into realms that existed before I was
conceived. I have mentally endured the degrading company of Victorian
lady novelists and retired colonels who remembered having, in former
lives, been slave messengers on a Roman road or sages under the willows 29
of Lhasa. I have ransacked my oldest dreams for keys and clues—and let
me say at once that I reject completely the vulgar, shabby, fundamentally
medieval world of Freud, with its crankish quest for sexual symbols
(something like searching for Baconian acrostics in Shakespeare's works)
and its bitter little embryos spying, from their natural nooks, upon the love
of their parents. (SM 20)
Within the cosmos of Transparent Things we find a world where “the future is but a figure of speech, a specter of thought,” that does not exist “concretely and individually”
(TT 1). Time is important, as in the above quote, and it is lamented that the future is not so concrete as to form a balance with the past. Nabokov states above that he has tried to probe both ends of his life, the time before his birth and the time after his death, in order to find “the faintest of personal glimmers in the impersonal darkness” which results in his feeling that “the walls of time” are what keep him from exploring freely. Ultimately time is a “spherical” prison that cannot be escaped in our lifetime. However we must wonder
about Nabokov's “doff[ing]” of identity in order to “steal into realms” before his
existence. If time is inescapable at our level of existence then such explorations could be
effectively carried out in one's mind, one's fantasies, and one's fictions. In this way the
cosmos of Transparent Things can be read as Nabokov's attempt through fiction to break
through and explore an existence beyond the “spherical” prison of time. Mr. R. (perhaps
as a mouthpiece for Nabokov) tells us that an individual's life is not “a chain of
predeterminate links,” wherein some things are more likely to occur and yet “always a 30
hit-and-miss affair” (92)8. So how do these notions connect to Hugh Person (after all, it is he that we are following along)?
We earlier discussed Hugh's continual trek through the past, circling back on the
“deadly one-directional flow” of life towards death. Whereas Hugh Person is so fixated on the past he fails to see his future, moving consistently in a straight line towards his demise in the process, Mr. R. (through his narration) and Nabokov (through the novel's back-and-forth structuring) encourage us to strike a balance between future, past, and present. Mr. R. ponders whether or not a concrete future would balance out the seduction of the past and allow one to “straddle the middle stretch of the seesaw when considering this or that object” (1). To do so “might be fun,” a very marked contrast to what Hugh
Person's “seductive” relationship to the past results in: immolation (1). Hugh Person stands as a kind of anti-example for a whole host of things. Hugh is unlucky in love, lusting after pretty objects of little substance and ideals that belong to another person. He seems incapable of realizing the unsuitability of the foreign desires that he tries to hold onto, perhaps resulting in (on some level) the somnambulist strangling of his wife. It would seem that Hugh desires to live the life of another individual, that he wishes to escape his own personality. He is able to construct some semblance of this life and marry
8 I find the use of “hit-and-miss” a very intriguing choice. It immediately brings forth the more common formulation o f “hit-or-miss” and can be easily glossed over with that meaning, or be read as one o f Mr. R.'s remarks that garble English phrases, or be a sly insertion that speaks to an absolute uncertainty as to a future outcome. If we “hit” and “miss” then we find ourselves in some kind of conundrum of determinacy that raises a whole host o f phenomenological questions and hearkens my mind to the dilemma o f Schrodinger's cat. While I do not follow up on this statement that points towards absolute indeterminacy, it should be noted as a possible aspect of the novel and Nabokov's works in general, most specifically to my mind Pale Fire, The Real Life o f Sebastian Knight, and “Signs and Symbols.” 31
his cold, hard, distant, and yet pretty object. However this never quite suits Hugh and even after he loses this life (having it replaced with a shuffle between psych ward and prison), Hugh is unable to relinquish a desire for the life and identity of another.
Ultimately he follows back on this trail of his-own-and-yet-not-his-own only to have it lead to an apparently premature demise.
It seems that through the character of Hugh, Nabokov is reminding us of the importance of balanced focus in life and the avoidance of the seductions of the banal.
Much as an inversion of Dmitri provided a possible model for Hugh Person in many ways, an inversion of Nabokov is as present. Whereas the Historical Nabokov chose transcendent, familial love over lust with regards to his affair with Irina Guadanini, Hugh
Person seems incapable of discerning between the two. Both Nabokov and Hugh lose their father at the age of twenty-two; Nabokov begins to increase his literary output and becomes firmly Vladimir Sirin, Hugh takes the money from his father's wallet and buys a prostitute to keep him company. By way of travestying his own biography Nabokov appears to illuminate and reinforce his own take on the world, playing with the principles and ideas he held of the world in fiction in order to “act upon the world rather than merely passively experiencing it.” Where the Historical Nabokov is locked into the
“prison of time,” the Authorial Nabokov is free to transmute the trapped life of the
Historical into fictions that allow Nabokov the Reader to encounter an escape from the bonds of time and search existence for some kind of underlying order that escapes human understanding. Hugh merely experiences life and is “harrowed by coincident symbols,” 32
yet Nabokov interrogates apparent coincidence and through his works attempts to connect these coincidences by way of threads strung across time and space, illuminating the ways in which what appears as coincidence can become slow-moving, deliberate design (13).
A meditation upon the transcendent in relation to the banal is what makes this novel such a triumph and fascinating piece of literature. In this masterpiece in miniature,
Nabokov challenges us to piece together a narrative on his terms, in his mode of composition. Much like in miniature paintings, Nabokov's compositional framing is at once expansive and yet highly selective. Transparent Things could possibly have been, by nature of its theme, a more expansive work wherein many more threads were followed back in time, but Nabokov seems to be keeping in mind the thought that “in the dimensional scale of the world [there is] a kind of delicate meeting place between imagination and knowledge, a point arrived at by diminishing large things and enlarging small ones” (167). In line with this quotation the novel is an interrogation of the smaller, easy-to-miss elements of Hugh Person's existence in the world such as the previously mentioned pencil and the refuse of construction workers at the end of Chapter Eleven and the beginning of Chapter Twelve (7T 36-37). Whereas a larger painting may include a
more expansive scene, a work on a smaller scale can be more easily captured as a whole by the beholder. In this same way, a smaller, more tightly focused novel allows us to
bring together and appreciate the expansiveness in concision, the opacity of transparency,
and the transcendency within apparent banality. By focusing upon the importance of 33
balancing periods of time and modes of existence Nabokov also reminds us of the subtle strategies in reading his novels: the importance of bringing together distant passages, the subtle repetition of theme or description, the indispensability of close re-re-reading, and a focus upon universal aspects of the human experience.
Time, Timelessness, and Identity
Through the characters of Hugh Person and Mr. R., Nabokov at once unifies common existence with another, perhaps more inclusive form of existence. Within these two characters we also find resonances with the multiple Nabokovs. Mr. R. is indicative of the Authorial Nabokov, ensconced in the Ivory Tower of literary success and living on in an afterlife of fiction. Hugh Person is an inversion of both Dmitri and Vladimir
Vladimirovich: rather plain, unathletic, fixated upon young women9, more of a victim of existence than an explorer of life, a marked alteration of the Historical Nabokov(s)10. But what of all this? Given the Historical Nabokov's aforementioned circumstances and
9 Although this could be debated based on many studies of Nabokov’s works that explore the recurrence of the “nymphet” character within Nabokov's works (such as Michael Maar’s Speak, Nabokov). Also Stacy Schiffs wonderful Vera which suggests that Nabokov may have had some less-than-eamest interactions and desires while teaching at Wellesley. As well it seems intriguing to consider Dmitri’s own sexual orientation with regards to an inversion of Hugh Person. An unanswerable question might be: “How aware of Dmitri's sexuality was Nabokov?” (See Lev Grossman's “The gay Nabokov,” http://www.salon.com/2000/05/17/nabokov_5/) 10 While I use the term “inversion” it seems fitting to consider it more in line with a mirroring of sorts akin to the waxwing of Pale Fire. Whereas the waxwing is “slain” by the seduction of the window's reflection, travel through the reflection into a fictional realm like Zembla provides us with a semblance of the type of inversion I speak of, one of reversals and antitheses (or oppositions), not one of juedgment or pej oration. Typically mirroring would speak to a reflection or visual representation, a copy, but in my usage and intent I speak to more of the effect on text reflected in a mirror. The letters are reversed, their sense is distorted without translation, and what was forwards is now backwards (“A- Z” becomes “Z-A”) and as a result we are presented with a familiar, yet revealingly unfamiliar, perception of things. 34
mindset at the time of this novel's creation, as well as my above elucidation of connections within the novel to said Nabokov's own concerns and ideas, I feel quite comfortable in asserting that the Historical Nabokov, ever guarded by the posturings of the Authorial Nabokov, was attempting to put forth a final testament to his methods of literary composition, structure, and, as a result of his sights set on posterity, a distillation of his take on the world and existence. Being at the end of his life the Historical
Nabokov, being unable to escape the “prison of time,” utilizes fiction (the output of the
Authorial Nabokov) to enable himself the semblance of a glimpse beyond this world. It could be argued that all of Nabokov's works were an attempt to “doff [his] identity” in order to gain some glimpse of the void at either end of existence, and quite possibly another view of existences in the world.
By way of the timelessness of fiction, through the play of fantasy, the Authorial
Nabokov enabled the Historical Nabokov (through the figure of Nabokov the Reader) to step out of time in some fashion, to “open a newspaper of 2063” in order to read of his shared fate with Fulmerford (“Nobody reads Nabokov or Fulmerford today”), and in
Transparent Things we find some kind of model for Nabokov's own death and posterity.
By way of the character of Mr. R., Nabokov was able to remove his own identity and invest some of his characteristics into R. and explore the possibility of death and the relationship between a dead author and his reader. Even though Nabokov died biologically, he is still existent through the consumption of his fictions (interviews and forewords included here), his lectures, his autobiography, and his criticism. Despite his 35
death almost forty years ago his presence is still palpable. New books of criticism are being regularly published, lively discussions are always present on NABOKV-L, and new generations of readers are being exposed to his works by way of literature classes and popular culture. Yet Transparent Things was not the end for Nabokov and the vitriol stirred up by what he felt was a failed and misguided attempt at biography prodded him into another exploration of life and existence, one that bears some marked similarities to
Nabokov himself. This work is Look at the Harlequins!, a memoir of an author named
Vadim Vadimovich wherein we find a continuation of and expansion upon a number of elements that concerned Nabokov in Transparent Things. 36
Chapter Two - A “mucking biograffitist”
While it is accepted that Vladimir Vladimirovich felt that Transparent Things would be his final novel, as noted earlier, the results of Field's biography gave Nabokov the impetus to pen another novel, the final one published in his lifetime. Even before
Andrew Field began his biography, in fact even before he had published his critical work
Nabokov: His Life in Art, Nabokov was warned by Gleb Struve that Field was “a total ignoramus when it comes to Russian” (SelectedLetters 378). Nabokov replies to this observation that while Field's “errors... are monstrous,” it is not any worse than other
(according to Nabokov) faulty work done by others at the time and Field was focused primarily upon the works in English. Despite this early warning Nabokov still authorized
Field as his official biographer, allowing Field unprecedented access to personal correspondences, putting Field in contact with individuals from his past, allowing audio recordings of conversations with Field, and resulting in a protracted legal sortie that would ultimately end with the publication of the biography in the final year of Nabokov's life.
As the project moved forward it became clear to Nabokov that he had misjudged
Field's intentions, capabilities, and his own ability to control Field". In the resulting
11 In a letter from 26 February 1973, Nabokov responds to his receipt of Field's typescript by noting that he had “250” cards of revisions awaiting transcription and lamenting the fact that the work was not sent chapter-by-chapter (SL 511). Given that Nabokov was given “final word as to what would be better deleted” at the outset of the project one must wonder about the trajectory of the biography (517). Based on the Selected Letters it would seem that Nabokov expected Field to utilize himself as a fact-checker in order to avoid “mistakes” in the biography. Obviously this did not happen in the way Nabokov had 37
biography Nabokov felt that he was maligned and mischaracterized, concerned with
Field's insistent explorations of possible familial connections to the Tzars, his fixations upon Nabokov's romantic life before his marriage, and a “separation” from Vera.
Nabokov felt very strongly that the depiction of himself in Field's biography was inaccurate and unrecognizable to himself.
In Look at the Harlequins!, Nabokov's reaction to Field's biography, perhaps
Nabokov was fulfilling (in his own manner) a joking agreement between himself and
Field: “We'll make a deal, Andrew. I'll write your biography. We'll do each other. No holds barred” (N.HLP 13). Despite the apparent jovial nature of this proposition (which falls flat in Field's narrative after he offers his first wife's address), perhaps in his own vindictiveness Nabokov did do something of the sort. Field himself was a novelist, penning the novel Fractions which was appraised by Nabokov in a kindly, but still biting manner (SL 452). Nabokov was clearly unimpressed by Field's skill as an artist, and yet
Field himself declares Nabokov his “competitor” (N. HLP 32). Certainly he means competitor in the enterprise of the composition of the biography, but perhaps Field means this as well in the sense of artistry. As we delve into Look at the Harlequins! it becomes
hoped. Certainly in Field's finished book it seems that he was a bit exasperated by the constant corrections from the Nabokovs and quibbles over accuracy and autobiographical elements in the works o f Nabokov. Field states early on, in reference to a disagreement, that Nabokov “was defending his life. I was defending my task and my independence” (N. HLP 13). Clearly both misunderstood the other's expectations, resulting in the ensuing rancor. I must wonder if Nabokov felt that he could control Field (note the early dismissal o f misgivings about Field above) and manipulate him into producing “the semblance of... a plausible and not altogether displeasing personality.” It would appear that Nabokov underestimated the level of control he could exercise over Field which resulted in Field's push for independence and his desire to portray unflattering aspects o f Nabokov. Especially after the resultant legal wranglings it would appear somewhat reasonable for admiration to become enmity. 38
apparent that Nabokov is not only inverting and parodying himself, but that perhaps he is subtly mocking Andrew Field through the foci of the novel and the character of Vadim
Vadimovich.
Lust, Inferiority, and a Sirin sans Lyre
From the start of Look at the Harlequins! it appears that Nabokov is creating an autobiography along the lines of Field's apparent aims of biography:
I met the first of my three or four successive wives in somewhat odd
circumstances, the development of which resembled a clumsy conspiracy,
with nonsensical details and a main plotter who not only knew nothing of
its real object but insisted on making inept moves that seemed to preclude
the slightest possibility of success. Yet out of those very mistakes he
unwittingly wove a web, in which a set of reciprocal blunders on my part
caused me to get involved and fulfill the destiny that was the only aim of
the plot. (3)
At once in “the first of my three or four successive wives” we find a resonance with
Field's attempts at cataloging Nabokov's miscellaneous romantic affairs, including the previously mentioned Irina Guadanini affair that occurred during Nabokov's marriage, but we are also reminded of Field's inaccuracies as a result of glossing over easily 39
verified facts . Certainly it would not be too difficult to keep track of the number of one's spouses, or find the proper number with some brief consultation. In fact, one would think that Vadim Vadimovich could at least consult the notes he references throughout the novel, much as Nabokov wished that Field would have consulted himself for clarification. Although, along the lines of Vadim's failure to check his notes, one must wonder about Field's own notes (his “personal archive”: taped interviews, notebooks, etc.) that he enumerates at the end of VN, The Life and Art o f Vladimir Nabokov and which presumedly he had at least some of at the time of the first biography's composition
(VNLA VN 377-378). This kind of slap-dash approach is exactly what Nabokov lamented in Field's work on the biography, an apparent “conspiracy” to slander Nabokov and his family with all sorts of “nonsensical details” which made it seem as if Field (“main plotter” of the biography) “knew nothing of [his] real object” and “insisted on making inept moves that seemed to preclude the slightest possibility of success” (Field's strict attempts at independence from Nabokov and failure to consult “the only individual in the world who is able to set straight the incidents, situations and other matters... botched by that biographer”)(SX 517). Given Field's consistent errors and apparent attempts at blackmail (517), it seems that we could see Field's morass of a biography as the “web” above and the “reciprocal blunders” as Nabokov's agreement to allow Field the position
12 For multiple instances of Field's inaccuracies and questionable methods in his biography o f Nabokov see Boyd's VN:AY (esp. 723-726, note 23) and Dmitri Nabokov's pieces, “A Rejoinder From Dmitri Nabokov” (National Review, 30 January 1987) and “Did he really call his mum Lolita?” {The Observer, 26 April 1987). Also see SL 517, 523-524, 536, 544, especially Dmitri's note on page 4 regarding one of Field's most wild and baffling assumptions. 40
of biographer and Field's questionable research and command of information regarding
Nabokov, creating the situation in which Nabokov decided to write Look at the
Harlequins!. By writing the final published novel of his lifetime Nabokov was writing an autobiography that focused upon the more prurient aspects of a writer's life, a fictitious one much like the depiction Nabokov found in Field's biography, a work whose looming conundrum can be broken down to a matter of confusion (perhaps like many of the errors perpetrated and perpetuated by Field) between time and space {LATH! 252). There is certainly a kinship between Nabokov: His Life in Part and Look at the Harlequins!, and quite likely a kinship between Vadim Vadimovich and Andrew Field.
Clearly Vadim Vadimovich is meant to bring to mind and represent a vacated, parodic version of Vladimir Vladimirovich (much like the depiction of Nabokov in
Field's biography), we are even informed that “in rapid Russian speech longish name- and-patronymic combinations undergo familiar slurrings” wherein “'Vladimir
Vladimirovich' becomes colloquially similar to 'Vadim Vadimych'” (249). Let us consider here the meaning of “colloquial,” defined by Merriam-Webster as “of or relating to conversation,” “used in or characteristic of informal conversation; also: unacceptably informal,” and, as a synonym, we are provided “nonliterary.” So Vadim Vadimych (and by extension Vadim Vadimovich) is a conversational, “nonliterary” rendering of
Vladimir Vladimirovich; the narrator of Look at the Harlequins! is clearly a
“nonliterary,” “unacceptably informal” depiction of Nabokov and most likely another jab at Field's biographical work. Through the “familiar slurring” of his name and patronymic, 41
Nabokov brings to mind another meaning for the word “slur,” such as an epithet or insult, and is perhaps referencing Field's threats of “blackmail” by use of “informal utterances
on two afternoons of tape-recording, the garbled recollections of strangers, and the various rumors that fell into [Field's] unfastidious lap” (SL 517). Certainly the use of recorded conversations, “recollections of strangers,” and rumor would be incredibly nonliterary, and of questionable reliability (especially given Field's apparent inability to understand/appreciate Nabokov's rather dry sense of humor13). Beyond the importance of
colloquiality in reference to the similarities of Vadim Vadimovich and Vladimir
Vladimirovich, and Field's own colloquial methods in biographical composition let us move on and consider more possible connections between Field and Vadim Vadimovich.
When I began to consider this novel, one of my first questions was: “What is the
significance of the difference between Vadim and Nabokov?” Besides Vadim's absent
(excepting the first letter) surname, there are the letters “L,” “I,” and “R” missing. Could
this mean anything? What could it mean? After some thought I consulted a chart
comparing Cyrillic characters with Latin characters and found that while the combination
“LIR” was revealing nothing to me, the “I” could be transliterated to a “Y” depending
13 Here are two examples of such from the first chapter of Field’s biography: Nabokov reminding Field “to tell [him] about his daughter and previous wife,” Field finds the joke “historical,” “one which he [Nabokov] had been telling for over thirty years and which had fallen on most receptive soil” and “still spoken of at Wellesley,” apparently taking his task too seriously to be able to “banter” with Nabokov about an absurd rumor that Nabokov is playing with as possible fact with the individual who is charged with recording a semblance o f facts about Nabokov (10); despite his ability to see through the previous jest, Field is apparently taken in by Nabokov's comment that, “Yes, sometimes I feel the blood of Peter the Great in me,” after Nabokov has “dismissed the topic out o f hand,” apparently because “he said it with a straight face,” and everyone knows that a straight face invariably means sincerity (13). 42
upon the sound. Thus, the “LIR” that turned up nothing but references to early sources for King Lear, became “LYR,” more recognizable as a lyre, ancient symbol of artistry and inspiration. Hence Vadim became Vladimir sans lyre, or a version of Nabokov without the symbol of artistry. This lines up perfectly with the feelings of Vadim that he is merely a character in someone else's plot, the wan shadow of someone else. Much as
Nabokov felt that Field's portrait was inaccurate and the product of a “deranged mind,”
Nabokov provides us with a work that is very much the same: the novel is made up of a hodge-podge of inversions or reversals of Nabokov's life (multiple wives and a daughter, travestied conflations of Nabokov's novels, the confusion of space and time, poor recollections of events, a penchant for drunkenness, and so on...).
In this same vein, if we return to Field's description of Nabokov as his
“competitor,” perhaps Nabokov is utilizing the figure of Vadim Vadimovich to mock
Field's artistic aspirations. Beyond being an indicator of artistry and artistic inspiration the lyre is also the accoutrement of the siren, a mythical creature from classical
mythology that is commonly linked with the sirin, the source of Nabokov's Russian-
language pseudonym. Both are half-human, half-bird entities and certainly their names
are similar but for one letter, however the sirin seems to have some positive qualities in that it can be a harbinger of great joy, whereas the sirens are full of talent but use that
talent to drive sailors to their death. Both creatures convey beautiful song, but only the
siren is commonly depicted with a lyre. Thus by combining himself and Field in the
character of Vadim Vadimovich, Nabokov is at once identifying his own signature and 43
vilifying Field through this artistically vacated version of Vladimir Vladimirovich.
Vadim Vadimovich is Nabokov in that he is sans lyre like a sirin, and he is Field because he is the artist without the symbol of artistry, the lyre. Also it should be noted that many conflate the sirin and the siren, the kind of over-generalizing scholarly error that Field demonstrated repeatedly and that Nabokov despised.
At the beginning of this chapter I brought attention to a quote in Field's biography wherein Nabokov suggests that they each write the other's biography, “no holds barred,” and perhaps this is what Nabokov was attempting to do in a biting, and yet more artistic manner (in Nabokov's mind) than Field had achieved with his biography. In an interview from June 10,1971 Nabokov was asked, “What are the literary sins for which you could be answerable some day—and how would you defend yourself?” and replied, “Of having spared in my books too many political fools and intellectual frauds among my acquaintances. Of having been too fastidious in choosing my targets” (SO 181). It seems rather plausible, then, that Nabokov could very well be attempting some atonement of his
“literary sins” by not sparing Andrew Field, by taking him to task in print and mocking him at the same time that he is showing his superior artistry. As mentioned above, Vadim
Vadimovich despite repeated references to notes in his possession recording events in his
life, is constantly making strange blunders with regards to details in his life. One example
is Vadim's trip to the doctor while vacationing with Ivor and Iris Black. First off Vadim
refers to a place called “Cannice,” which looks a lot like a bastardization of Cannes
(although strangely Vadim refers to Cannes correctly on page four of the novel), further 44
supported by his later reference to a Mentone that would seem to be confused with
Menton (Mentone being places in Texas and Southern California, but not in France and certainly not water-adjacent vacation spots) (.LATH 17-19; 49). In this scene Vadim has an appointment and gets “frightfully tight in one or two pubs” before his arrival at the doctor's office (17). The doctor makes an appointment for him at a dentist and Vadim cannot recall whether he went “the same afternoon or the next” (18). We are presented with a description of the office and waiting patients that then turns into a party scene, apparently based on a “mistake” of the doctor's wife (19). However this all turns out to be
“an oneiric experience during a drunken siesta,” corroborated by “a special left-slanted hand” in Vadim's notes that indicates “dreams and other distortions of'reality'” (19, 20).
This type of depiction appears to be a combination of Field's scholarly ineptitude as well as Field's insinuations of Nabokov's habits towards drunkenness.
In Field's second biography there is in the index an entry for “drinking habits o f’
Nabokov, which entries are supposed to provide support for an increase in alcoholic
consumption as a factor in Nabokov's apparent decline (VNLAVN 409)14. Field cites
several instances of Nabokov consuming alcohol as if this is some kind of indicator of an
increased alcoholic intake, but it is up to the reader to decide whether Field's evidence is
supportive of his conjecture (I remain unconvinced of Field's suggestion, though I must
acknowledge that there is evidence of Nabokov's fondness for drink, though not
drunkenness) (193, 268, 366-367, 369). Thus Nabokov's inclusion of elements such as
14 See also the two pieces by Dmitri Nabokov previously referenced in the second footnote to this chapter. 45
Vadim's drunken “siesta,” would appear to be an acknowledgment of Field's theorizing turned into a joke within the novel, an example of Nabokov playing up his part (as he did for Field during their meetings) through the guise of Vadim Vadimovich. Beyond an inability to accurately consult notes and render details with some measure of accuracy there is another strange aspect of Vadim, that of his inability with regards to mental reversal. The recurrence of Vadim's fixation upon his “morbid condition,” “incurable illness,” “flaw[ed]... mechanism of his mind,” and “tussles with the Specter of Space and the myth of Cardinal points” would appear to at first be a strange trifle sown throughout the novel, but once we begin to consider various possibilities, what at first appeared a forgettable absurdity can be seen to serve several purposes (40; 103; 178; 231).
“[T]he workings of a deranged mind”
Vadim's bizarre infirmity breaks down to the simple inability to execute an about- face in his mind. He is able to firmly visualize his surroundings in a given thought- experiment, but when it comes to turning himself in his mind, “so that 'right' instantly becomes 'left',” he finds himself entirely incapable of the maneuver (41). Strangely he can reverse himself “by setting aside the mental snapshot of one vista and leisurely selecting the opposite view,” but otherwise is unable to imagine such an act (41-42).
What can we make of this odd element of the character Vadim Vadimovich? My initial impulse is to think of Vadim Vadimovich as a flat, two-dimensional character. 46
In literature we have the concept of a flat character as one that is under developed, that lacks depth and in the case of Field's biography the depiction we are provided of Nabokov is certainly in this order. Nabokov is depicted as a narcissist, a drinker, an erudite subject, a Russian who eschews contact with other Russians, and other such neat little compartmentalizations. However Field seems to miss the impish jokester, the dedicated son, brother, father, and husband, the consummate artist, exacting critic, and serious moralist. I wonder if this Vadim Vadimovich, this Vladimir Vladimirovich minus the emblem of artistic inspiration, is Nabokov poking fun at the under-developed character of himself in Field's biography. If one were a character that was truly flat (and relegated merely to the two-dimensional world of the printed page) then it would truly be impossible to execute the kind of maneuver that vexes Vadim so intensely. If one's face is pointed to the left, then one's face will remain pointing to the left except in the case of an intervention by something from the third-dimension that would take this “flat” character and reverse it. Let us consider for a moment multi-dimensional interaction.
In episode ten of the original Cosmos television series, “The Edge of Tomorrow,”
Carl Sagan undertakes an exploration of the perception of dimensions. In this thought-
experiment he supposed that there existed a population of “flat,” two-dimensional
characters and shows the limitations of two-dimensional perception. He provides us with
a two-dimensional, square character residing within his or her house, in three-dimensions
a flat rectangle that surrounds the character. To our three-dimensional perception this is
merely a shape within a box on a page, but to the two-dimensional character he or she is 47
completely enclosed within four walls. However Sagan shows the limits of inter- dimensional comprehension by contemplating the intrusion of a three-dimensional object, an apple, into the two-dimensional world. If this apple inserted itself into the flat world of the two-dimensional being it would only be perceived as cross-sections of its three-dimensional shape, slices intersecting the limited perceptual capabilities of the two- dimensional being. He then goes on to describe the perception of a four-dimensional hypercube in three-dimensional space. What would have more dimensions to it is rendered in our space as a kind of three-dimensional shadow of the actual hypercube, resembling a cube with stunted growths protruding out. The reason for this description of the concept of multi-dimensional interaction is to bear out another oddity of Vadim
Vadimovich in relation to his “flat” nature and link this to his intrinsic feelings of
inferiority.
Since Vadim Vadimovich is indeed a “flat” character dimensionally (relegated to the flat landscape of the printed page) as well a flat, skewed, hodge-podge of Nabokov
himself it seems fitting to discuss Vadim Vadimovich in similar terms to the multiple-
dimensions discussion above. While a four-dimensional object casts a three-dimensional
“shadow,” a three-dimensional object casts a two-dimensional shadow. As a rendering of
Nabokov, Vadim is certainly a “shadow” of sorts akin to the limitedly-developed
Nabokov of Field's biography. As evidenced in Nabokov's letters regarding Field's
biographical enterprise, Nabokov felt that the individual presented within was some kind
of twisted amalgamation of lies, rumors, apparent invention, “blunders of fancy, and 48
[offensive misinterpretations]” creating an entirely different Nabokov than the one he himself knew or recognized (SL 517). By having Vadim Vadimovich encounter a similar
(though more corporeal) kind of experience Nabokov appears to be playing with the disconnect he felt upon reading Field's biography of himself:
I now confess that I was bothered that night, and the next and some time
before, by a dream feeling that my life was the non-identical twin, a
parody, an inferior variant of another man's life, somewhere on this or
another earth. A demon, I felt, was forcing me to impersonate that other
man, that other writer who was and would always be incomparably
greater, healthier, and crueler than your obedient servant. {LATH 89).
By putting this sentiment into the mouth-piece of Vadim Vadimovich (a parodic representation of Nabokov and partial representation of Andrew Field in some sense, as discussed above) Nabokov is confronting his own dismay at Field's treatment of his life as well as perhaps poking fun at Field's own possible doubts as a writer and artist.
Nabokov's reaction to the biography was one of initial perplexity. Upon receiving
Field's draft, Nabokov found himself confronting enough errors to fill 250 index cards
(“which is more than I expected”) (SL 511). In a letter to Samuel Rosoff less than a
month after his receipt of Field's draft Nabokov speaks directly to the kind of sentiment
expressed by Vadim: “His version of my life has turned out to be cretinous. I have had to
correct or delete hundreds of passages teeming with blunders and inventions of all kinds” 49
(513). While these statements can certainly be considered to be Nabokov's own feelings about Field's depiction, we must also pay some notice to the fact that this feeling was with him for “some time before.” Given the fact that this work bears the striking marks of vengeance and my feelings that Nabokov was possibly atoning for his “literary sins” by not sparing someone he felt to be an “intellectual fraud,” it seems fitting that Nabokov would be perhaps “crueler” than he would typically be in print15 and mock possible feelings of inferiority and insecurity held by Andrew Field. Thus what could be immediately taken as Nabokov's reaction to Field's biography can also be taken as a biting suggestion of Field's own insecurities and inferiorities as a writer and scholar. We must also recall Field's description of Nabokov as his “competitor” as well as his comment and question in “In Place of a Foreword” in Nabokov: His Life in Art wherein he states “Nabokov, I have mastered your themes,” but then queries “Nabokov, have I mastered your themes?” which strongly suggests both a strong dose of hubris as well a bit of timid insecurity (8).
Continuing in this vein let us consider the “demon” which is “forcing” Vadim “to impersonate that other man.” When Nabokov replied to a letter apparently bordering upon “blackmail” from Andrew Field he “attribute [d] to the workings of a deranged mind” the scurrilous and baffling parts of Field's work (SL 517). If someone is deranged
15 In private Nabokov could be rather nasty and insulting, especially in reference to homosexuals and homosexuality. Examples of this can be found in Boyd's Russian Years on page 370 wherein Nabokov refers to critic Georgy Adamovich as “Sodomovich,” and in Boyd's American Years on page 261 where Nabokov describes Taos, New Mexico as “a dismal hole full of third-rate painters and faded pansies.” See also Lev Grossman's “The gay Nabokov,” Salon (http://www.salon.eom/2000/05/17/nabokov_5/. 50
there could be a number of possible causes, including demonic possession or even a condition like dementia, allowing for a possible connection here between Vadim and
Field, Vadim influenced by “Dementia” and Field suffering from “a deranged mind”
(LATH 85). Vadim tells us that his autobiography (the novel we are reading) is “oblique, because dealing mainly not with pedestrian history but with the mirages of romantic and literary matters—I consistently try to dwell as lightly as inhumanly possible on the evolution of my mental illness,” then adding, “[y]et Dementia is one of the characters in my story” (85). What do we make of this? Certainly he is telling us that his autobiography is indirect because of the fact that instead of dealing with “pedestrian history” (or perhaps “average reality”) this autobiography is focused upon “mirages of romantic and literary matters,” said mirages sounding much like hallucinations or perhaps more akin to the nature of a mirage, they could be the product of inherent flaws in modes of perception, or an optical illusion. It seems of important to note that “the mirages of romantic and literary matters” approach to Vadim's autobiography is very much like the strategy employed by Field: One focused upon the banal details of an artist's life, in which the artistry has been stripped away or ignored. Whereas Nabokov felt that “[t]he best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style,” an element that appears sorely lacking in Field's biographies due to the inclusion of Field's attempts at “sleuthing” out secrets (or rumors) about Nabokov and his family. 51
But yet Nabokov/Vadim is fixated upon this notion of “mental illness” and
“Dementia” as a character in his story. Given the touting of Look at the Harlequins! as an autobiography and the echoes of Speak, Memory that pervade the end of the novel, I'm struck by the importance of comparing “Dementia” to “Mnemosyne” whose name was meant to grace the title of Nabokov's autobiography. By referring to Dementia (a condition with symptoms that strongly effect one's memory) as a character in the book, it would appear that Nabokov is placing Look at the Harlequins! in sharp opposition to
Speak, Memory. Mnemosyne is goddess of Memory and the muse of Nabokov, the title of his autobiography reminiscent of the muses' invocation at the start of ancient epics.
Dementia is not a goddess in standard pantheons though if one were to be under the influence of a goddess Dementia a quick survey of Mayo Clinic dementia symptoms rings true with much of the behavior Nabokov lamented in Andrew Field (though of course we must take this as more tongue-in-cheek than diagnosis). Possible Cognitive changes entail: “Memory loss” (Field's apparent inability to recall his agreement to give
Nabokov “final word as to what would be better deleted”), “[difficulty communicating or finding the right words” (Field's numerous errors in nomenclature and translation, perhaps even his reticence to ask Nabokov for help), “[difficulty with complex tasks”
(Field's apparent inability to handle all of his sources, the threads of Nabokov's life and works), “[difficulty with planning and organizing” (see the previous), “[difficulty with coordination and motor functions” (this would certainly apply to Vadim and the progression of his spatial issues), [pjroblems with disorientation, such as getting lost” 52
(the apex of Vadim's condition, Field's wild excursions into the Nabokov family history).
Psychological changes may include: “Personality changes” (Field's shift from eager biographer to enmitous rival), “[i]nability to reason” (Field's insistence upon the accuracy of his claims even when confronted with direct evidence to the contrary),
“[inappropriate behavior” (Field's apparent threats bordering on blackmail and his use of unreliable sources and unverified rumors), “[p]aranoia” (Field's view of Nabokov as his
“competitor” and his assumptions based on Nabokov's “informal utterances”),
“[a]gitation” (Field's combative back-and-forth with Nabokov regarding the book),
“[hallucinations” (the radost!Lolita debacle16).
By invoking Dementia as opposed to Mnemosyne and modeling Part Six, Chapter
One after Speak, Memory Nabokov links both works and asks us to consider the connection between these works. Speak, Memory was (among many other things)
Nabokov's ode to the artistry of life and the importance of his family in his life, whereas
Look at the Harlequins! reads primarily as a travestied reinvention of Nabokov's life acting as a sort of taunt to Field's (and other critics') ineptitude in analyzing his works. It would almost seem that by modeling part of Look at the Harlequins! after Speak,
Memory Nabokov is linking his fiction to his life in a very explicit manner, reiterating the impenetrability of his and Vera's relationship and adding the clear rebuke to the
“biograffitist” that had tried to invade their privacy17. By taking an autobiographical
16 See the previously mentioned (footnote two) “Did he really call his mum Lolita?” by Dmitri Nabokov. 17 Among many issues Nabokov had with Field's work was Field's apparent attempts at impeaching the 53
element and tweaking it slightly for inclusion in a fictional autobiography it seems like
Nabokov is at once reaffirming his dedication to his wife in the face of Field's accusations of a breakdown in the marriage and reaffirming his own feelings regarding
Fate and the impossibility of himself and Vera being apart. When Andrew Field asked
Vera about her life had the Russian Revolution not occurred, Nabokov interrupts: “You would have met me in Petersburg, and we would have married and been living more or less as we are now” (.N. HLP 34). By introducing the instantly recognizable reference to
Speak, Memory Nabokov appears to be confirming something akin to the above sentiment. No matter what kind of bizarre turns that life could have taken for him, even in his travestied, fictional, two-dimensional existence “You” would have still been the ultimate love and balance in his life. Even in a parodic fiction Fate would still win out.
Setting the Record Straight Through Artistry
Field's biography would appear to represent for Nabokov a prime example of what he was trying to prevent through the triangular enclosure of Author, Reader, and
Historical Individual. By inserting himself as the arbiter between Author and Historical
Person Nabokov attempted to place primary focus upon his works of art, separating himself from his works and walling off his personal life. However, Field showed himself to be the kind of reader/critic that felt that the work of the author was a direct reflection
veracity of Speak, Memory. For an example of Nabokov's own ideal criticism o f the autobiography see “'Chapter sixteen' or 'On Conclusive Evidence"'’ included in the Everyman's Library edition of Speak, Memory. Within this fictitious review of Speak, Memory and another non-existent biography Nabokov outlines his own view of the autobiography, providing examples of the complex plotting and intertwining themes o f the work. 54
of the life of the author and person. This resulted in the neglect of the position of
Nabokov as primary Reader of his own works, taking the overly convenient bait of linking Historical Person and Author directly. Thus, in response, the Authorial Nabokov produced Look at the Harlequins!, a work that reaffirms the triangular enclosure of
Author, Reader, and Historical Person. We must remember that Nabokov felt that he was at the end of his life and that he felt it would be a good idea to have the first biography written during his lifetime in order to maintain some measure of control over his posterity. Because of the numerous issues with Field's biographical project and the clarity of his inability to rein in Field's work, the Authorial Nabokov responded by taking Field to task through artistry with Look at the Harlequins!, at once providing a parody of
Field's attempt at biography, reaffirming the importance of style over “reality,” and perhaps creating a fiction where he could once again identify himself as the subject.
Critical evaluations of Look at the Harlequins! have often dwelled primarily upon the similarities between the works of Nabokov and the life and works of Vadim
Vadimovich. One common charge has been of “autoplagiarism” and “narcissism” as a result of the apparent commonalities between Nabokov's life and fictions and Look at the
Harlequins!. However this reductivist, facile approach to the novel ignores the structures that make the novel more than a parodic stroll through Nabokov's life. As I have argued there are many deeper concealed facets to the novel: rebuke to inept biographer/critics, reaffirmation of triumph of Art over Life, the importance of close reading, and the unbendable will of Fate. Through this work Nabokov reasserts his authority as primary 55
Reader of his texts through a maze of parody, travesty, and structured correspondences, especially with the inclusion of “You” and the echoes of Speak, Memory. In this work,
Nabokov allows us to share in his ire with the trajectory of his first biography. We are able to take a stroll through Nabokov's life as if through a carnival hall-of-mirrors, chuckling at bizarre misshapen reflections of familiar works, puzzling over seemingly impossible transformations, only to emerge into the light of an unaltered “reality” wherein we are reminded that what we saw was only illusion, and Nabokov, the purveyor of this hall-of-mirrors, closes and locks the door reminding us that what we saw is only artifice and that we will never know what the “You and I” of Speak, Memory know.
Through this work Nabokov the person was able to reclaim himself and reaffirm his separation from his Art through the guise of the Authorial Nabokov producing a work of
Art that provided Nabokov the Reader a recognizable portrait that could be subsumed back into the Person. Remember, “[t]he best part of a writer's biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.” Certainly the most dazzling aspect of Look at the Harlequins! is its complex and variegated style. With this final complete work
Nabokov was trying to counter a work that threatened his desired literary legacy. Though he was also providing a kind of guide to the reading of his works by playing with elements from his entire oeuvre, something that links both Look at the Harlequins! and the unfinished The Original o f Laura. 56
Chapter Three - “Some Cards Named Laura”
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov's final, unfinished novel was conceived the year, 1974, before the fall that marked the beginning of the end of his lepidoptera-hunting forays (The Original o f Laura xi-xii). According to the introduction by Dmitri Nabokov, this event seemed to mark the beginning of the decline that lasted until Vladimir
Vladimirovich's death (xi). The novel consists of 138 index cards and is largely fragmentary, yet it is clear that Nabokov was definitely looking towards his own death and legacy. This is evidenced by Nabokov's infamous edict that the novel should be burned in entirety if left incomplete. Clearly he did not desire an inferior product to reach the marketplace and tarnish his position in the world of letters. Instead the index cards sat in the possession of Vera Nabokov, passed onto Dmitri after her death, were placed in a
Swiss bank vault, and finally published amidst much controversy, elation, suspicion, disappointment, and plenty of heavy-handed marketing. The publishing of The Original o f Laura became the literary event of the late-2000s, with Playboy paying the highest fee ever for a piece of fiction to appear in their pages, a roll-out of several translations in rapid succession, and many pokes and jabs accompanying the book's publication from all directions.
Not only was the novel criticized as being more of a rough sketch than a discernible novel, it was also criticized as containing what appeared to be repetition of characters and situations from other novels, most notably Lolita, with the inclusion of 57
Flora as a matured Lolita-esque character and the remarkably familiar Hubert H. Hubert.
Many critics saw this as an artistically vacated re-hashing of elements of Lolita and judged this to be a mark of clear disintegration as an artist in Nabokov's later years, belying a lack of creativity, self-indulgent self-obsession, and a chilling, icy, removed distance prevalent throughout the fragmentary text. However this view has been tempered, if not somewhat abated, by the publication of Shades o f Laura: Vladimir
Nabokov's Last Novel The Original of Laura, a collection of critical pieces, reviews, and round-table discussions on various aspects of the novel edited by Yuri Leving. Once the dust of disappointment and failed, possibly over-inflated expectations settled critics began to look more closely at the work and discovered more richness than had been found upon the novel's immediate publication. A notable reversal was most certainly that of Brian Boyd, who was given the opportunity to read the cards under the supervision of
Vera as a kind of acid-test of whether or not the work ought to be published. Boyd felt that the novel should not be published after his first reading. In his piece that closes
Leving's Shades o f Laura, “The Last Word - Or Not? On Some Cards Named Laura,”
Boyd systematically overturns each of his previous qualms regarding the novel. Instead he shows how each of his qualms actually reveal very important distinctions that set the novel apart from Nabokov's previous works. He shows how what initially appears as repetition or self-plagiarism, can actually be read as a test of careful reading and knowledge of Nabokov's works. 58
While the novel (or fragment) was, in my own opinion, certainly commodified and marketed as much more of a mainstream property than the work ultimately reveals itself to be, it is undeniably a work of much importance to Nabokov scholars and most important as a final piece of Nabokov's work revealing a continuation of Nabokov's concerns with his own imminent demise and ensuing literary posterity. According to
Dmitri Nabokov's foreword to the novel, “[djuring the last months of his life in the
Lausanne hospital, Nabokov was working feverishly on the book” (xvi). His health had been failing for some time and as I have discussed in my previous chapters, it is clear that
Nabokov had known that the end was coming. He initially felt that Transparent Things would be his final novel until Andrew Field supplied him with the indignance and impetus to pen another novel that he felt might be his last. However “[e]ven before he completed Look at the Harlequins! at the beginning of April 1974, Nabokov had been eager to tackle his next book,” which would be The Original o f Laura (VN.AY 643).
Once Look at the Harlequins! was completed Nabokov desired to have it published and released as soon as possible so that his next book would not appear so closely and dilute the market (643). I read this breakneck pace as evidence that he felt that he might not be around much longer and thus desired to get his final works published in his lifetime. The atmosphere in which the novel was conceived and penned was one of finality, during a period of the tying up of loose ends. Nabokov was attempting to finish the final six books of his contract with McGraw-Hill and was still in full possession of his mental faculties 59
when he began mentally composing The Original o f Laura. But the distraction of other work kept him from putting the novel down onto index cards.
By December of 1975, roughly six months after his mountain tumble, Nabokov was back at work on the novel, which he was calling A Passing Fashion, and work continued at a regular rate (653-654). By February he had settled on the final title, The
Original o f Laura, and it seems that he continued working on the novel while finishing up arrangements for other projects in fulfillment with his contract with McGraw-Hill. But near the end of April 1976, Nabokov had a terrifying nightmare “of the 'this-is-it' sort” and a week later tripped and injured his head leading to the first of his ensuing hospitalizations on the way to his end (656). Despite this he remained dedicated to finishing Laura, providing Victor Luisanchi of the New York Times a list of the books he read in the summer of 1976 during his convalescence that ended with “The Original o f
Laura, the not quite finished manuscript which I had begun writing and reworking before my illness and which was completed in my mind” (Shades o f Laura 21). A series of infections, hospitalizations, and a flu caught from Dmitri in March 1977 created a series of obstacles leaving Nabokov physically unable to transcribe his mental composition onto physical cards (658). By May, shortly after his return from the hospital for treatment of influenza Nabokov was still working on the novel when capable of it, however signs of infection were returning and June found him once again in the hospital (660). On July 2nd he passed away, the novel incomplete and its fate uncertain. 60
When the text finally saw the light of day it was to an enormous amount of fanfare and, in my humble opinion, overinflated expectations. The novel's publication was presented as the literary event of recent history and huge amounts of publicity increased the anticipation of the public and literary circles. Interest had been building for some time, owing to the efforts of Ron Rosenbaum, and many kept clinging to various statements relating to the quality of the novel, such as Jaqueline Callier's statement that
Nabokov “said that The Original o f Laura would be the best of his works” (Shades o f
Laura 22). It would almost seem that the knowledge of the novel's extreme fragmentation was kept very much under wraps in order to drum up a massive amount of interest in the novel and thus guarantee a significant• payday 1 Q . Certainly the text was the property of
Dmitri to dispense with as he saw fit and there is nothing wrong with making some money from one's property, but it would appear that the novel was marketed towards a mainstream audience with the insinuation that the work was much more complete than was ultimately the case.
Certainly the pieces of this novel are of value to Nabokov scholars and perhaps of interest to some writers who would like a peek into Nabokov's woodshed, but the lavish publication treatment (with removable replica cards) and publication of excerpts (albeit somewhat altered) in Playboy would appear untoward. This apparent overstatement and
18 By way of contrast I am reminded of the case o f Poe's The Journal o f Julius Rodman, another unfinished novel. Both of these books' fates hinged on money, with the far-less complete Laura being transformed into a veritable cash machine, compared to Poe's refusal to finish Rodman because he was not being paid to do so. A reversal I find rather amusing. 61
build-up of the novel would certainly be sufficient reason for so many critics to be underwhelmed with the novel. We were promised something of a lost Vermeer that would reveal the secret of his technique, but instead were presented with some obscure, complex, jumbled notes that may somewhere contain a key revelation: an object that is obviously fascinating, but primarily to a limited audience of experts who can decipher and appreciate such a niche object of study.
Unfortunately the expectations of critics were certainly calibrated so high that the novel could have done nothing other than underwhelm individuals who expected so much more than they received. Equally unfortunate is the fact that many critics did not take the time they were saved by the brevity of the text to analyze the work in a deeper, more rewarding manner (such as Ellen Pifer's and Brian Boyd's contributions to Shades o f
Laura) that would allow them to see the intrinsic value in even such a fragmentary work.
Let's join Pifer19 in a more nuanced exploration of The Original o f Laura and ferret out some of the careful specificities that show Laura to be more than just the last fragments of an author whose mind and body were failing.
“[DJetails lost or put back in the wrong order”
Specific details were and are an intrinsic element of Nabokov's compositional acumen. He encouraged the creative writer to “study carefully the works of his rivals,
19 Although I focus primarily upon Pifer's evaluation of the Humbert/Hubert conundrum, Boyd's piece from Shades of Laura is also o f interest for its explanation o f Boyd's change of heart over time with relation to the novel. 62
including the Almighty,” (Strong Opinions 32) and in reply to the question, “Magic, sleight-of-hand, and other tricks have played quite a role in your fiction. Are they for amusement or do they serve yet another purpose?,” Nabokov expounds that
[deception is practiced even more beautifully by that other V.N., Visible
Nature. A useful purpose is assigned by science to animal mimicry,
protective patterns and shapes, yet their refinement transcends the crude
purpose of mere survival. In art, an individual style is essentially as futile
and as organic as a fata morgana. The sleight-of-hand you mention is
hardly more than an insect's sleight-of-wing. A wit might say that it
protects me from half-wits. A grateful spectator is content to applaud the
grace with which the masked performer melts into Nature's background.
(153)
Nabokov, in invoking the importance of studying “the Almighty” in the first quote is highlighting the importance to himself of specific details in Nature, such as looking at a tree and knowing what kind of tree it happens to be. If a writer only describes a tree in terms of a description of its leaves, bark, and trunk we are left with only a scant mental image of this object. Whereas if a writer describes the tree and provides a common name or the scientific nomenclature of that tree, the reader is capable of either knowing this tree from his or her own personal experience, bringing together Art and personal memory, or have the opportunity to look up specimens of this tree thereby enriching his 63
or her engagement with the world, an act that would have certainly been desirable to
Nabokov of a reader. By bringing in “Visible Nature” Nabokov references the collective illusion of “[m]agic, sleight-of-hand, and other tricks” as unnatural methods, linking these “tricks” to nature's own forms of artful mimicry, deception, and apparent artificiality. He shoots down the notion that mimicry is merely a defense mechanism and compares it instead to the kind of artificial construct that Art can embody. By claiming that “individual style is essentially as futile and as organic as a fata morgana,” he shows how what can appear as concrete as “individual style” is actually an illusion created by
Nabokov. This illusion has the added benefit of insulating himself from “half-wits” incapable of appreciating his performance, as Author and Historical Person, “melt[ing] into Nature's background.” Nabokov reminds us that his Art is a performance akin to a butterfly's winged patterning resembling an eye, it may seem like this eye is peering back at us, precluding any chance of surprising the creature but it is only an act, a performance designed to dissemble. Perhaps if we looked close enough we could discover that it is merely a cheap parlor trick much like many acts of magic or sleight-of-hand wherein the solution to the trick is merely well-timed distraction that enables the appearance of a magical trick. These fine details are the elements that allow Nabokov to appear to create tricks, but really what they amount to is a challenge to read and consider his works, and pretty much any part of our lives, in minute detail.
In Pale Fire John Shade (although the sentiment certainly applies to Nabokov's view of the world) writes about his attempt to corroborate a near-death experience that 64
leads him to realize that his apparent corroboration was based on the typo “fountain” for
“mountain”:
Life Everlasting - based on a misprint!
I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,
And stop investigating my abyss?
But all at once it dawned on me that this
Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But topsy-turvy coincidence,
Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found. (62-63) 65
Herein we find another example of the importance of the specific, but not just the simple specific. Shade puts so much stock in the possibility that someone else had had a similar experience that appeared to corroborate his own. However this corroboration is based upon a one letter difference that winds up being a typo that destroys the foundation of his corroborating evidence. But instead of merely taking that small difference of one letter as a sign that the whole enterprise should be scrapped, he instead finds encouragement in a more complex “web of sense” based not on “text” but based upon “texture,” a tactile approach that links with the later “correlated pattern” and “[pjlexed artistry.” This shift in viewpoint, from “text” to “texture,” bespeaks of an importance in linking unique details and apparently wild coincidence instead of merely hanging upon one word, or one letter that differs between two quite different, albeit similar, words. Details are important, but it is all in how we deal with these details. We are not to take the smallest of details and explode them out in some giant conclusion based upon some tiny unique detail but instead we must take all of these small details together into a larger whole without ever losing sight of the importance of each individual detail in the “web” or “texture” or
“game.” This is very much reminiscent of Pointillism, wherein from up close all we see are a lot of dots. But when we allow ourselves to take in the entire picture those dots come together to form a more discreet image.
In Nabokov's works it is of importance to notice the small details in relation to the rest of the text. A name or description might be casually dropped early in a work only to become identified as an important detail later in the work. As Nabokov said in relation to 66
a query about “large issues” that concerned him: “The larger the issue the less it interests me. Some of my best concerns are microscopic patches of color” (SO 182). Much as texts are broken down into various units (Volume, Part, Chapter, page, paragraph, sentence, word, letter) so is the physical world that Nabokov found so much delight in. Our universe is made up of stars, planets, continents, regions, countries, states, counties, towns, streets, animals, plants, and microorganisms, but beneath all this there are even smaller units that weave into a cohesive web, a “texture” or a “game” or “[s]ome kind of link-and-bobolink” that defies our ready apprehension.
I dwell on these points at some length in order to firmly establish the importance when reading Nabokov of closely analyzing small details and apparent coincidences or oddities. This is because of one of the prevailing criticisms of The Original o f Laura involving the character Hubert H. Hubert and his nominal similarity to that famous
Nabokovian scoundrel Humbert Humbert. While the names may seem immediately similar there should have been some more querying of why the difference and similarity, and not in immediately falling into the familiar rut of treating this character as a double of Humbert Humbert.
We must remember “not text, but texture,” and we must remember to keep our details in order. It would seem that many serious critics who claimed some knowledge of and fondness for Nabokov could not keep this in mind and ignored this quote from
Nabokov: “I would say that the main favor I ask of the serious critic is sufficient 67
perceptiveness to understand that whatever term or trope I use, my purpose is not to be facetiously flashy or grotesquely obscure but to express what I feel and think with the utmost truthfulness and perception” (179). In making a not-very-oblique reference to one of his most famous of characters Nabokov wound up being far too oblique for many critics. Unfortunately this was taken as laziness, or narcissism, which empowered critics, for example Martin Amis in his review “The Problem with Nabokov,” to declare that The
Original o f Laura is clear evidence of Nabokov's long-failing faculties, trotting out their inability to appreciate Ada, Transparent Things, and Look at the Harlequins! as corroborating evidence. 90 Now that our reminder of the importance of details and close- reading in Nabokov is through, let us look at a piece of the more insightful, considered criticism that will begin to show us the intriguing underpinnings of The Original o f
Laura.
Ellen Pifer, in contrast to Mr. Amis and many other diverse critics, looks at the details in Laura and discovers some very rich contrasting aspects to the apparently similar Hubert H. Hubert and Humbert Humbert. In an oft-referenced-in-reviews scene,
Hubert H. Hubert is seated at the foot of young Flora’s bed as she is convalescing from a
20 I must admit that I myself have qualms with the rather baroque qualities of Ada and that I am not overly fond of Lolita because I feel that its success overshadows many other great works of Nabokov's. I can certainly recognize merit in these works: Ada is a complex work that kept me scrambling back and forth through its pages almost as much as Pale Fire (one of my favorite of Nabokov’s novels) and Lolita contains some of the most twisted, yet beautiful passages of passion and obsession, as well as some wonderful subtleties of plotting, foreshadowing, and deception (good John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.). However despite my misgivings with these novels I would find it inappropriate and pointless to look at them as evidence of a lapse in Nabokov’s abilities at those times. I feel that these reviews are related to the phenomenon o f looking for lapses in aging writers that I reference in Chapter One, footnote One. 68
cold and they are playing a game of chess. She tires of the game, puts a rook in her mouth, ejects it, and Hubert removes the board from the bed. Hubert expresses concern for her health (“I'm afraid you are chilly my love”) and reaches up under the covers to touch Flora's legs. Flora's response is “a yelp and then a few screams” followed by a kick to the groin with “pedalling legs” (TOOL 63-71). Pifer looks closer at the relationship between Hubert and Flora, finding that while many elements seem to mirror Lolita
(Hubert being an older man moving in with Flora and her mother as a boarder, his interest in Flora, his desire to marry Flora's mother) the subtleties in the writing tell a markedly different story.
Hubert has lost a daughter, Daisy, and in Flora he finds a reminder of his dead daughter and an outlet for his undiminished love and loss. As Hubert fluffs the pillows behind Flora he is reminded of the death of Daisy who “had been crushed to death by a backing lorry on a country road - short cut home from school,” his mind shifts into other thoughts “and the muddy road was again, for ever a short cut between her and school, between school and death, with Daisy's bycycle wobbling in the indelible fog” (59, 67 &
69). Within this scene we find that Flora is put in a similar position to Humbert's lost love that he seeks to reclaim within Lolita but that in contrast the individual that Hubert is seeking to reclaim is his daughter. As Flora is ill, he displays much more parental concern with regards to Flora compared to Humbert's mere desire for carnal satisfaction no matter what condition of Lolita. With the shift to the muddy road of Daisy's demise as he cares for Flora and the “pedalling legs” of Flora as she kicks poor Hubert in the most 69
sensitive of areas, his groin, and it would seem also, the heart, we find that Flora is linked more closely to Daisy. Most likely Hubert had nothing but the most caring, fatherly concern towards Flora. Clearly Flora's “pedalling legs” link her directly to Daisy, who was killed while riding her bike. For Hubert Flora represented an escape from the omnipresence of that muddy road and his loss of his daughter, akin to Nabokov's image from Speak, Memory of his father “reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon,” an image meant at once to celebrate a treasured memory of the loved one and to eternally capture that moment in order to in some manner prevent that death through his artistry (31). Pifer observes that
“[ijgnoring such distinctions, ready to assume that Flora has been
victimized by predatory Hubert, most critics find her mother's reaction to
the scene ironic... That Hubert desires to marry Flora's mother because of
her resemblance to his dead wife reinforces the point... that his tenderness
toward her daughter may be similarly based on Flora's resemblance to
Daisy,” (Shades o f Laura 97-98) which we find very much supported by the close-reading and analysis above.
As further evidence of a marked difference between Hubert and Humbert, Pifer also astutely observes the subtle treatment of Hubert's death, “Hubert meets his maker
'going up'” (98). This is a marked contrast, she notes, to Nabokov's reference to
Humbert's fate in comparison to Hermann in his foreword to Despair, “[b]oth are 70
neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a green lane in paradise where Humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a year; but Hell shall never parole Hermann” (9). As Pifer notes it would seem that Hubert's death “going up, one would like to surmise” is a clear indicator that Hubert is really the innocent, sweet old man that close-reading would posit, certainly heading the opposite direction of Humbert, who despite his “parole” once a year is still relegated to Hell (TOOL 75).
In the scenes involving Hubert, spread over the space of a few cards, Nabokov provides us with so many small little embroidered details that get lost in the overall pattern, which enables the non-astute reader to take a mental shortcut and link Hubert H.
Hubert to the abominable Humbert Humbert. Thus far we have merely differentiated
Hubert and Humbert, but now in order to be the kind of “serious critic” of “sufficient perceptiveness” Nabokov hoped for we must ask ourselves the next big question: Why the similarity between the two and what purpose can it serve?
“efface, expunge, erase, delete, rub out, wipe out, obliterate”
As The Original o f Laura was being composed and Vladimir Nabokov found himself preparing for the end of his life and career, he was wrapping up arrangements for the final books of his contract, dealing with an impertinent biographer, working to dissolve his literary trust, and for some time had been considering his literary posterity.
His previous two novels had been rather poorly received, as noted in the previous two chapters, and I would argue were misunderstood. Transparent Things in many ways 71
amounts to a primer in reading Nabokov's works, a complex work in miniature that required close, careful reading and the ability to retain details over the length of the novel. Look at the Harlequins! is a playful romp through Nabokov's works reflected through a distorting mirror with Vadim Vadimovich providing a pedestrian re-imagining of Nabokov himself that was an artful rebuke to what he felt was the shoddy work of an inept biographer. While Transparent Things was faulted for being so short and complex,
Look at the Harlequins! was criticized as being incredibly narcissistic. The Original o f
Laura has been criticized along the same lines.
Critics faulted the short, fragmentary form of the novel, lamented the apparent self-obsession represented by the character Hubert H. Hubert, bristled at the decidedly unappetizing scenes of sexual activity, and came to the opinion that this work was of little value to any but the most ardent Nabokov reader. However I believe that these last three novels are indicative of Nabokov's active meditation upon his legacy. Lolita was and is his best known novel. It brought him literary fame and fortune but it also cast a lasting shadow over the rest of his career. The novel was instrumental in ending the practice of banning books for sexual content and opened up the mass marketplace to books containing overt passages of sexuality. I imagine that Nabokov was not unaware of this reality. By the time Nabokov wrote Ada the sexual envelope was being pushed in every kind of media, often in exploitative ways that were far from the careful artistry of
Nabokov's (a prime example of this kind of entertainment being the works of filmmaker
Russ Meyer, for one). 72
In a 1969 interview that appeared in The New York Times Nabokov commented on the “sexual kick in literature” at the time, observing that “[a]rtistically, the dirtier typewriters try to get, the more conventional and corny their products become” (SO 133).
I believe that with Laura (and his previous three novels) Nabokov is mocking the proliferation of pedestrian pseudo-pornography in popular culture. This is why he presents such sterile scenes of intercourse, devoid of any real feeling, couched in highly stylized, elaborately rendered constructions such as:
[o]nly by identifying her with an unwritten, half-written, rewritten book
could one hope to render at last what contemporary descriptions of
intercourse so seldom convey, because newborn and thus generalized, in
the sense of primitive organisms of art as opposed to the personal
achievement of great English poets dealing with an evening in the country,
a bit of sky in a river, the nostalgia of remote sounds - things utterly
beyond the reach of Homer or Horace. Readers are directed to that book -
on a very high shelf, in a very bad light - but already existing, as magic
exists, and death, and as shall exist, from now on, the mouth she made
automatically while while using that towel to wipe her thighs after the
promised withdrawal. (TOOL 21-25)
With the above quote Nabokov at once laments the problem of “contemporary” literature as “primitive organisms of art” incapable of rendering the artful subtleties of describing 73
Flora/intercourse in a way that transcends the merely pornographic. It is suggestible that the book in question could actually be the book we are reading: “unwritten” (incomplete, meant to have been destroyed), “half-written” (some estimates have the novel at roughly half its completeness), and “rewritten” (Nabokov's intense erasures that adorn the cards, the editing and formatting done by other hands). As he denigrates contemporary, popular literature and laments its inability to compare to the artful descriptions of “great English poets” Nabokov reveals his own ability to sensitively and carefully evoke a complex, difficult concept. He posits a book and points us towards it, a book that did not exist until moments ago when it was posited by Nabokov in the previous sentence, a book “already existing, as magic exists, and death,” until he finishes with Flora's mouth, now
immortalized by the art of Nabokov, and the crude directness of Flora wiping her thighs
after intercourse. Where Nabokov creates an artful passage that will endure in near
perpetuity, modem, contemporary attempts at using erotic imagery to artistic ends are
sterile, wiped away and discarded without ever finding fertile soil for fruition.
At once Nabokov mocks the uptick in crass commercialization of sexuality to sell
otherwise mediocre material and at the same time it could be argued that by way of the
awkward, unappealing scenes of sexual congress Nabokov suggests that the exploitation
of sex in popular culture cheapens an act of intimacy. Nabokov was very private about
his marriage, but obviously very much in love with his wife; in Speak, Memory he
highlights the value of privacy in intimacy with his final chapter and revels in the fact
that “presently nobody will know what you and I know” (295). By depicting such 74
unappealing scenes Nabokov is showing how the proliferation of sex in popular entertainment is decidedly un-sexy and at the same time mocking individuals who found the exploitation of sex in literature appealing, a sort of “well what do think of this? Still like it?” to the masses. There is certainly more to be discussed here but I will refrain until my conclusion where I will bring in the other two novels I have discussed and elaborate on this topic with all three works. There are still aspects of Nabokov's retrospection to be considered.
To return to the significance of Hubert H. Hubert and link this element back to
Nabokov's retrospection we must recall that in his previous two novels, Transparent
Things and Look at the Harlequins!, Nabokov created characters that were obvious travesties of himself to different ends. In the character of Mr. R., Nabokov depicted an author/reader relationship based in attempts at communicating from across the abyss of death, finally ending with the author welcoming his recently deceased reader to the next plane of existence. I argued in my first chapter that this element is expressive of the
Historical Nabokov toying with his own posterity through the relationship between Hugh
Person and Mr. R. Within Look at the Harlequins! the character Vadim Vadimovich functions as a vacated version of Nabokov that was more in line with the kind of scurrilous biography he felt Andrew Field was producing. Vadim is a production of the
Authorial Nabokov created to at once mock Andrew Field and at the same time restore through fiction a recognizable portrait of the Historical Nabokov, vaunting the superiority of Art over Life. The Original o f Laura has so many various threads and 75
possible themes that are unfortunately present, but incomplete. We follow many strings only to be met with a wet, recently chewed, frayed end of cordage as we reel them in.
However, beyond the apparent similarities to Lolita and the crass sexual depictions there is one final element I would like to belabor in this discussion: Philip Wild's auto dissolution.
Flora's husband is Philip Wild, a rather rotund, older gentleman with a host of health ailments that drive him to experiment with self-deletion. He is a neurologist and his chosen method of relieving himself of himself is by way of his mind: “I taught thought to mimick an imperial neurotransmitter an aw[e]some messenger carrying my order of self destruction to my own brain. Suicide made a pleasure” (127). Philip Wild is another in our chain of Nabokov-tumed-inside-out characters that occupy his final works.
He shares a few similarities such as frustrating foot pain, ill health, being a writer who dwells in the mind, both expired during the composition of their works, and both focus upon human artistic agency. However Wild is also quite the opposite of Nabokov: His wife is much younger than himself and unfaithful, Wild seems to have no children, he is a neurologist and not a popular author, and his “visual imagination is nil” (135). This lack of “visual imagination” is what leads Wild to focus upon a drawing of an “i” upon his “mental blackboard,” the focus of his attempts at willing away himself (131). In order to make some sense of this in a manner of comparing Wild and Nabokov I would like to bring our memories back to the discussion of Nabokov's “doff[ing]” of identity from my first chapter. 76
Whereas Wild is focused upon erasing himself to relieve the physical pain afflicting him, Nabokov is focused upon dissolving the self in order to pass into other realms of being so that he may probe the “prison” of time and existence. Wild is merely focused upon getting himself to the abyss at the end of life in a pleasurable method through his own volition. He is merely trying to escape existence whereas Nabokov's attempts are at discerning some sort of inkling of a hereafter. While Wild develops a system of pleasant self-slaughter, Nabokov uses Art to interrogate the world for the possibility of something else beyond this existence. Nabokov and Wild both use their minds in order to control their existence. Nabokov uses his artistic agency to triumph over the adversities and tyrannies of the world through transforming “average reality” into “true reality”, but Wild uses his artistic agency solely to escape from the burden of his existence. These differences are significant and warrant some serious notice,
especially in relation to the triangular figuration of Nabokov that we have returned to
repeatedly for some orientation.
“[M]agic... replaced by maggots”
The Historical Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov knew very, very well that the
end of his life was arriving when he was composing, and especially transcribing, The
Original o f Laura. It had to have been clear to him that this would be his final novel and
his final statement of artistry. Given that this was the case, and that Nabokov's previous
two novels were very much concerned with training and testing his readers, it makes 77
sense that Nabokov would return to his most famous and widely read novel in some way.
Nabokov spent a good amount of effort trying to admonish and correct many of the critics that he felt had misinterpreted his books, which I feel accounts for the nature of his final three works. He lamented the overt critical focus upon the sexual elements of his novels, asking in a piece in The New York Review of October 7, 1971 (republished in
Strong Opinions), “[o]ne may wonder if it was worth Mr. Rowe's [the critic on whom the piece is focused] time to exhibit erotic bits picked out of Lolita and Ada - a process rather like looking for allusions to aquatic mammals in Moby Diclfc” (SO 304). It seems fitting, then, that the Authorial Nabokov would utilize crass depictions of sexuality in order to perhaps distract or derail the less-than-ideal reader of his fictions. The Historical
Nabokov, through the guise of the Authorial Nabokov, regularly lamented being compared to characters in his books and despised the incessant focus upon bawdy moments in the same. This explains his use of the Authorial Nabokov as a kind of buffer between himself and his works. However the Authorial Nabokov was also his method of issuing rebukes to those who trotted out travestied interpretations of his novels and the types of readers who underline the titillating passages for the next reader. Because the works are the products of the Authorial Nabokov it follows that The Original o f Laura was his final attempt at controlling the literary legacy of the Historical Nabokov and through this work issuing his final challenges and rebukes. Laura, perhaps because of its
fragmentation, provides a number of challenging pitfalls for the reader (some of which we have discussed above). In my discussion of the use of Hubert H. Hubert, Philip Wild, 78
and his treatment of sexuality in the novel I endeavor to show how this work is not evidence of Nabokov's failing faculties or a narcissistic romp through his catalog, instead this is Nabokov's final expression of his concerns about his literary posterity and his attempt at a final group of rewarding challenges for his “ideal” reader, which he might have surmised would not have been himself in the end. I hope I have shown that, even in
its fragmentary state, The Original o f Laura stands alongside Transparent Things and
Look at the Harlequins! as an important part of a final trilogy that aimed at countering
the incessant focus upon pedestrian elements and interpretations of his works and
revealing a break in Nabokov's very hard-lined statements separating himself from his
works. Perhaps with this book Nabokov was finally allowing us into his works and
providing us with more than a specter of himself within. This was Nabokov's final
attempt to prevent the “magic [from being] replaced by maggots,” thereby keeping his
books alive and keeping them (and himself) in “true reality” and staving off the “average
reality” where he and his works “will rot and stink as soon as the act of individual
creation ceases to animate” them. 79
Conclusion
Edward Said begins his On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain, a study of the late style of several musicians and writers:
The relationship between bodily condition and aesthetic style seems at
first to be a subject so irrelevant and perhaps even trivial by comparison
with the momentousness of life, mortality, medical science, and health, as
to be quickly dismissed. Nevertheless, my contention is as follows: all of
us, by virtue of the simple fact of being conscious, are involved in
constantly thinking about and making something of our lives, self-making
being one of the bases of history, which... is essentially the product of
human labor. (3)
At this point it should be apparent that my concern throughout has been focused upon
Vladimir Nabokov's own late style: I attempt to explore and reveal the incredible importance of his final three works that have been denigrated, minimized, and overlooked by many of his critics. Immediately I find it rather interesting that Said posits that “bodily condition and aesthetic style” appear to be so “irrelevant” in relation to “the momentousness of life, mortality, medical science, and health, as to be quickly
dismissed.” As we have found in each chapter of this work, that was and is certainly not
the case with the criticism of Nabokov at the end of his life. Critics have been all too
eager to demote his final works, or to trot them out as evidence of a failing writer. 80
However, I wholeheartedly agree with his next sentiment: that we are all, as a result of consciousness, regularly considering our lives and creating personal narratives out of them. I also appreciate that he links this to history and “the product of human labor.” In the case of my own work herein, I find that this notion reconciles with Freud's
“The Creative Writer and Daydreaming,” which I use earlier in order to elucidate a point of entry into Nabokov's texts via biographical details wherein I posit that: “Nabokov's fictions are... the fantasies of the Historical Nabokov... which are transmuted by the
Authorial Nabokov... into fictional explorations designed to be read by Nabokov the
Reader.” In the case of Nabokov it is apparent that his fictions, while certainly not a perfect reflection of his life circumstances at the time of a work's composition, were a method for him to reflect on, reorder, improve, or defeat the circumstances of his life. Or, in Said's terms, Nabokov's fictions were his own form of “self-making” and self- historicizing.
Rather uniquely, Transparent Things, Look at the Harlequins!, and The Original o f Laura occupy themselves primarily with posterity: anxiety over the posthumous reader/author relationship, exploration of an afterlife wherein one retains one’s own consciousness and a connection to the world of common human existence, a travestied autobiography meant as an artful rebuke, and final challenges for the astute reader of
Nabokov's works. Throughout these three novels, Nabokov parodies himself and provides some apparent correspondences only to shatter them with sometimes subtle differences. 81
Certainly this could present itself as bait for the Freudian coterie that Nabokov so despised, but it also created a space wherein he, as primary reader of his texts (“the person he sees in his shaving mirror every morning”), was able to explore his life in the venue of Art, thereby taking the limited shelf life of existence in”average reality” and transforming it into “true reality”: preserving and altering elements of his life within his artistic creations in order to keep them from being degraded or lost. Through the productions of the Authorial Nabokov, the Historical Nabokov remains as a shadow within the works, in a sense escaping the deletion of death. He may not corporeally exist in the standard sense, but he still exists within the corpus of his works and he will continue to do so as long as he is read (let us hope his popularity endures beyond 2063).
Nabokov was obsessed with the desire to find out what was on either side of the voids at the beginnings and endings of our lives, hoping for some hint of another transcendent realm beyond our own as if our conscious existence in this world was some kind of chrysalis from which we can emerge into another, different form of being. Within
Transparent Things and The Original o f Laura this is a central concern: the postmortem attempt at communication by Mr. R., his welcoming of Hugh Person into the next realm, and Wild's misguided attempts at a version of this kind of transition.
These final works defy the prevailing expectations of what constitutes a great work of Nabokov's, in the words of Said interpreting Theodor Adorno's remarks on
Beethoven's own late style, “where one would expect serenity and maturity, one instead finds a bristling, difficult, and unyielding - perhaps even inhuman - challenge” (12). 82
Nabokov bucks expectations and many seem unable to realize that this is part of why
Nabokov's works are of such incredible interest. Nabokov was no commonplace popular author that churned out crime novel after crime novel, or romance novel after romance novel: his works are multifaceted, meditative on the acts of writing and consuming fiction, searching for new ways of literary expression, and defiant of common expectations. His later works are of a decidedly different casting from his most popular novel, Lolita, and he exploits the expectations of similar style in Laura, providing Hubert
H. Hubert as a stumbling block in order to highlight what he felt was one of the most important elements of consuming fiction: close reading of details and bringing these details together to form a coherent whole. Instead of pivoting along with Nabokov into his late style, critics remain rigid in their insistence upon a fixed Nabokovian style of fiction, and thereby fail to fully appreciate his final testaments of the supremacy of Art over Life.
Death and Posterity as a Matter of Style
As discussed previously, Nabokov's final novels reveal themselves as meditations upon his forthcoming demise and concern over his literary legacy. In looking forward
Nabokov is also looking back and attempting to rectify what he felt were misguided readings of his works and his life. Seeing the end of his life coming towards him he crafted works that were indicative of this anxiety as he battled to establish a suitable literary legacy through the finalization of his literary affairs (biography, final works, 83
publishing contract). As I discuss in the previous chapter Nabokov was certainly very aware of his linkage to sex in literature. In an interview with Playboy that appeared in
January 1964 he responded to the prevailing notion “that the Philistinism [he found] the most exhilarating [was] that of America's sexual mores”: “[s]ex as an institution, sex as a general notion, sex as a problem, sex as a platitude - all this is something I find too tedious for words. Let us skip sex” (SO 23).
It seemed to the public that because he wrote a book that dealt with a form of sexual deviancy that Nabokov must be some sort of sex-obsessed dirty old man. As I mention in my Introduction, the triadic personae of Nabokov makes its appearance at the time of Lolita's success. He realized how closely he was linked to the discourse of sex in literature, despite his own reticence, and needed a device to insulate himself from the public assumptions. The result was the creation of the Authorial Nabokov of interviews, feigning spontaneity and “constructing] in the presence of [his] audience the semblance of what [he hoped was] a plausible and not altogether displeasing personality” (SO 158).
At this point I would like to return to my discussion in the previous chapter of the presence of the very much unappealing scenes of sexual congress within the three final novels in order to discuss further the implications of these scenes in their relationship to
Nabokov's concerns about posterity.
Previously, I discuss how the sterile, dispassionate scenes of sexual congress in
The Original o f Laura are a reaction to the artless proliferation of sex in literature. 84
However we find these types of scenes in both Transparent Things and Look at the
Harlequins! as well. Within all three of these novels we find very dispassionate scenes of human “intimacy.” I use quotes with regards to intimacy because these scenes are of intimate acts that are devoid of any kind of non-physical intimacy. The scenes of sex in the novels are more perfunctory than erotic and serve as a way of expressing some kind of indicator of a lack in the characters involved. In Transparent Things Armande merely announces, “[a]nd now one is going to make love. I know a nice mossy spot just behind those trees where we won't be disturbed, if you do it quickly” (7T 54). For Armande sex is merely an empty act, perhaps an expectation, or perhaps a way of compensating for her complete cold removal from any kind of real intimacy. She merely “consent[s] to pull
[her tights] down only as far as necessary. Nor [does] she let him kiss her, or caress her thighs” (54). We could interpret this in a multitude of ways, but what it provides us is a view further into our protagonist, Hugh Person.
Hugh wants all of the wrong things and refuses to move forward in his life, instead circling back around the same mistakes by visiting Switzerland in an attempt to relive the short happiness he thought he had with Armande. Hugh stands in for all those individuals who care nothing for the kind of intimacy Nabokov represents that he and
Vera possessed in their relationship. He is a symbol of the overly obsessed culture surrounding sex (“sex as...”) that vaunts physical intimacy over what was undoubtedly the most important intimacy to Nabokov: the intimacy of minds. In the previous chapter I brought up the notion that through the sterility and crassness of the scenes of sex in 85
Laura, Nabokov is implying that sex devoid of love cheapens the act of intimacy. In
Transparent Things sex (or marriage, for that matter) without love lead to incredible tragedy: Armande is murdered by Hugh in his sleep; Hugh ends up shuffling between prisons and mental hospitals; Hugh spends his last days after his release from prison trying to circle back to the short-lived and few pleasures of being married to Armande, and ultimately his obsession is what puts him in the hotel that bums down with him inside. All Hugh cares for is the illusion of intimacy, the act that would appear to connote a deeper connection but that has become commodified by popular entertainment and
stands in as a simulation of real, profound intimacy. But what of Vadim's string of unsuccessful relationships leading to “You,” how does this contrast with Transparent
Things and Laura?
If we recall the primary interests of Andrew Field's biographical aims, two of the large, looming concerns were Nabokov's possible family connection to the Tzar and his attempts at ferreting out and exposing Nabokov's several indiscretions. Within LATH!
Vadim Vadimovich works his way through a number of marriages, all of which crumble as a result of the sexual appetite of our protagonist. We must recognize at this point that despite Nabokov's intense love for his wife (one need only to start reading some of the recently published Letters to Vera in order to see at least how effusive he could be about his love for her) there were a number of indiscretions on his behalf, even beyond the 86
well-known Irina Guadanini affair21. Keeping this in mind we can perhaps also read
Vadim's serial relationships as a reversal made by Nabokov within the fiction and certainly see the final section of the novel as a reaffirmation of his devotion to the woman to whom he dedicated all of his books. As soon as “You” enters the novel we no longer encounter images such as: “It was a brief but thorough embrace, and I boiled over, discreetly, deliciously, merely by pressing myself against her, one hand cupping her firm little behind and the other feeling the harp strings of her ribs” {LATH! 107-108). With the entrance of “You” we are once again shut out, as in Speak, Memory, and there are no more passages regarding any kind of intimacy excepting that of minds.
Within these novels and their use of what many found to be very unnerving depictions of sexual congress we can see that Nabokov was not obsessed with crass depictions of sexuality, as many fault him for. Instead he is utilizing these scenes as a way of commenting upon and condemning the vast proliferation of literature that used sex to sell to the deficit of artistry. We can obviously deduce from Nabokov's works that he was certainly not averse to using sex in his novels (it appears in all of his novels in one fashion or another), but we must accept that he was “express[ing] what [he felt and thought] with the utmost truthfulness and perception” and not being overt in order to attract interest, sell more books, or disturb readers. For Nabokov, sex was merely another
literary color on his palette: an element from life he could use to express something
21 For more on this, and a great number o f stories about Nabokov's time teaching at colleges in America, see Stacy Schiffs informative Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). 87
deeper and more thoughtful. He did not want his legacy to be one of a smut-purveyor or a dirty old man with sex on the brain. He “believe[s] that one day a reappraiser will come and declare that, far from having been a frivolous firebird, [he] was a rigid moralist kicking sin, cuffing stupidity, ridiculing the vulgar and cruel - and assigning sovereign power to tenderness, talent, and pride” (SO 193). This is more in line with the Nabokov I have come to know from my study his books.
Multiple Minds - Final Thoughts
It is very apparent that the Historical Vladimir Nabokov was a man of contradictions, but this is part of the human condition. No matter how idealistic we are there is always some part of ourselves that we would like to suppress or alter. Through the figuration of the Historical, Authorial, and Readerly, Nabokov was able to carve out a space for himself as an author that was very uncompromising in his beliefs and his expressions. At the same time he sought (with varying success) to separate his own private, personal life from that of the author with whom he shared a name. He could argue with himself and decide that his previous formulation was incorrect (we must recall the first chapter's quote regarding author versus reader/author versus the world interview snippet), he could be rather needlessly cruel (his comments regarding Georgy
Adamovich 99 ), and he could provoke some of the most beautiful and poignant moments in literature that I have ever encountered (the image of his father in Speak, Memory that I
22 See Chapter Two, footnote fifteen. 88
have repeatedly referenced, and especially the ending of Bend, Sinister). Within this text
I have sought to show how his triangular formation of identities provide us with an avenue into biographical readings of his texts. Despite his protests, Nabokov is always within his texts and he is not always able to “[melt] into Nature's background” or appear merely as an anagram. Unfortunately many individuals are incapable of understanding what the “creative” part of creative writing means, which led to Nabokov's staunch public persona and his careful, obsessive control over the interpretation of his works.
Nabokov claims, “I alone can judge if details that look like bits of my 'real' self in this or that novel of mine are as authentic as Adam's rib in the most famous of garden scenes,” but I certainly hope that is not the case because I believe that “the story of his style,” at least in these final works, is “[t]he best part of [his] biography” (SO 154; 155). 89
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