Notes 1 Introduction 1. See Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw Hill, 1974) pp. 51-52, 302 (hereafter SO). 2. See John Bayley, Selected Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 175. 3. SO, p. 98. 4. SO, p. 184 (see also SO, p. 155). Malcolm Bradbury's lucid distinctions between two views of postmodernism have helped organize the argu­ ment in this paragraph. See his Saul Bellow (London: Methuen, 1982), pp. 16-18. 5. Contingency, [rony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 161, n. 26. 6. SO, p. 114. 2 Lives of a Young Emigre: Mary, Glory, and The Gift 1. All page references are to the American hardback editions, except where indicated: the page reference of the Russian original precedes the one to the translation. 2. See Arthur C. Danto, Nietzsehe as Philosopher (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 209-13. 3. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Reuisited (New York: Putnam, 1966), p.219. 4. For a useful summary of the distinguishing features of the Romantic movement, see Cedric Watts, APreface to Keats (London: Longman, 1985), pp. 74-75. 5. Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 361. The theme of the transcendent realm is explored in Boyd's two-volume biography and in Vladimir Alexandrov's Nabokov's Otherworld (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1991), two recent publications that should prove indispensable for readers of N abokov's work. 6. Those interested in Nabokov's life at Cambridge should consult Speak, Memory, Chapter 13, and Nabokov: The Russian Years, pp. 166-95, but there is also the delightful 'Universitetskaya poema [University 126 Notes 127 Poem]', Sovremennye Zapiski, 33 (1927), pp. 223-54, which teIls in sixty-three neo-Pushkinian stanzas the story of an affair between a young Russian student and a local girl. Sodal teas, cramming for exams, talking politics with the locals - these events are aIl rendered with a mastery that suggests how skilled a narrative poet Nabokov was, a suggestion that was confirmed in 'Pale Fire'. 7. The Nabokov-Wilson Letters: Correspondence Between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson 1940-1977, ed. Simon Karlinsky (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 96. 8. See John Bayley, Selected Essays, p. 156. 9. Nabokov-Wilson Letters, p. 240. 10. Journey to Arzrum (Sochineniya v trex tomax) (Moscow: Khudozhest­ vennaya literatura, 1986), In, p. 409. 11. SO, p. 103. 12. 'The Denouement of The Government Inspectoi, Sobranie &chineniy v semi tomakh, ed. S. I. Mashinskoy et al. (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya Literatura, 1967), IV, p. 410. 13. SO, p. 95. 14. Lectures on Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Bruccoli Clark, 1980), p. 64. See Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, pp. 147-48: 'The pursuit of private perfection is a perfectly reasonable aim for some writers - writers like Plato, Heidegger, Proust, and Nabokov, who share certain talents. Serving human liberty is a perfectly reasonable aim for other writers - people like Dickens, Mill, Dewey, Orwell, Habermas, and Rawls, who share others. There is no point in trying to grade these different pursuits on a single scale by setting up factitious kinds called "literature" or "art" or "writing"; nor is there any point in trying to synthesize them'. 15. Many Nabokov critics see the treatment of Chernyshevsky in The Gift rat her differently. Brian Boyd argues that 'Because [Fyodor) considers his subject afresh, as a unique person and not the saintly icon of the progressives, he can detect the fatal flaw everywhere in Chernyshevsky's destiny that reduces all his hopes to no thing. .. What at first seems a mocking hostility on fate's part and Fyodor's proves to be an unrelenting focus on what is unique in the man, and therefore irreplaceable, vulnerable, frail'. He adds that Alexander Dolinin (Vladimir Nabokov: Izbrannoe [Moscow: Raduga, 1990)) 'demonstrates conclusively V.N.'s fidelity to the documentary evidence' (Nabokov: The Russian Yean, pp. 458, 578, n. 4. But the fact that Nabokov has an actual source for all the things he says about Chernyshevsky does not make Chapter Four an authentic portrait of Chernyshevsky's 'uniqueness'. Professor Dolinin himself admits that Nabokov's character 'of course treats his material freely enough', and that his account includes 'both inaccuracies and deliberate changes' (Izbrannoe, p. 622). And one can be faithful to the documentary evidence and still misrepresent one's subject, for example, by omitting references to material that does not support one's particular view. Dolinin's extremely detailed and helpful annotations to this extraordinarily allusive chapter establish only 128 Notes the first kind of fidelity. See my Vladimir Nabokov: A Critical Study of the Novels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 64-92, for a more detailed account of these issues. It is interesting that the Chernyshevsky biography has mostly been ignored by those who have written about hirn since The Gift was published. These are people who are not in the least blinkered by a revolutionary religiosity in their view of hirn, and who manage to present a balanced account ofhis character and achievements without resorting to Nabokov's inspired caricature. See, for example, Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers, ed. Henry Hardy and Aileen KeHy (London: The Hogarth Press, 1978); William F. Woehrlin, Chernyshevskii: The Man and theJournalist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971); and Irina Paperno, Chernyshevsky and the Age ofRealism: A Study in the Semiotics of Behavior (Plao Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988). Even Vasiliy Rozanov, whom one cannot imagine to be a writer more different from Chernyshevsky, conveys in a couple of pages in Solitaria more intuitive understanding of the Russian radical than Nabokov does in his long chapter (see Solitaria, trans. S. S. Koteliansky (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), pp. 62-65. 16. The Wit and HumorofOscar Wilde, ed. Alvin Redman (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), p. 229. 17. Quoted in Boyd, Nabokov: The Russian Years, p. 54. 18. The Bodley Head G.K. Chesterton (London: The Bodley Head, 1985), p.262. 19. In the original these last sentences are also rhymed, but the second line reads 'For visions there are also no mortal postponements', and Dar concludes: 'the extended phantom of existence shows blue beyond the bounds of the page, like tomorrow's clouds, - and the line is not finished'. 20. See SO, p. 153. 21. Eugene Onegin, revn. edn, trans. with a commentary by Vladimir Nabokov (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1975), III, p.241. 3 Studies in Obsession: The Defense, The Eye, Laught,er in the Dark, and Despair 1. The Complete Psychological Works, ed. and trans. James Strachey (Lon- don: Hogarth, 1953), XX, p. 139, IV, pp. 212-13, X, p. 241. 2. Speak, Memory, p. 38. 3. 'Review of The Defence', The New Statesman, 6 November 1964, p. 703. 4. Worlds in Regression: Some Novels ofVladimir Nabokov (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1985), pp. 83-92. 5. Brian Boyd, 'The Problem of Pattern: Nabokov's Defense', Modern Fiction Studies, 33 (1987), pp. 575-604. The article is summarized in Boyd, Nabokov: The Russian Years, pp. 333-39. 6. Nabokov: The Russian Years, p. 339. Notes 129 7. The fifth sentence in Soglyadatay concludes: '[tJo co me to no conclusions, simply to stare'; Nabokov cut this and added epithets like 'vitreous' and 'bloodshot' in the English translation. All the details about the undeIWear on the clothesline are also additions; the original refers only to 'heartrending meetings at night'. 8. See, for example, Alfred Appel's comments in his delightful study of Nabokov and the movies, Nabokov's Dark Cinema (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 262. 9. This passage does not exist in Kamera Obskura, which was substantially reworked by Nabokov when he translated it. 10. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Hogarth Press, 1963), p. 50. 11. Quoted in Boyd, Nabokov: The Russian Years, p. 438. 12. I have drawn here on John Kucich's discussion ofvillainy in Dickens; see Exeess and Restraint in the Novels of Charles Diekens (Athens, Ga.: University ofGeorgia Press, 1981), pp. 59-104. 13. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, pp. 176-77. For a detailed discussion of this question, see Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking ofthe World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 14. A. D. Nuttall, 'Crime and Punishment': Murder as Philosophie Experiment (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press for Sussex University Press, 1978), p. 101. 15. A Treatise ofHuman Nature, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose (London: n.p., 1886), 11, p. 195. 16. Nuttall, 'Crime and Punishment', p. 101. 17. Nabokov's Russian publisher, Petropolis, refused to print the account of Hermann's sexual fantasies. 18. In Otehayanie the last words of this line are repeated: 'Zamyslil. Va. Pobeg.' ('Contemplated. I. Flight.') The inversion of the subject and the verb is perfectly normal in Russian, and the repetition nicelY recreates Hermann's solemn, deliberate intonations, as he tries to plant hints in the head of his empty-headed wife. 19. In Otehayanie, Nabokov calls Dostoevsky 'the Russian Pinkerton', an allusion to Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884), the founder of a famous US private detective agency. 20. After Bakhtin: Essays on Fietion and Criticism (London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1990), pp. 59-60. 21. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poeties ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 104. 22. Problems ofDostoevsky 's Poeties, p. 166. 4 Experiments in Mid-Career: Invitation to a Beheading, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and Bend Sinister 1. Entry for 21 November 1911, Diaries: 1910-1913, ed.Max Brod, trans. Joseph Kresh (New York: Schocken, 1948). 2. SeeJohnson, Worlds in Regression, pp. 31-46, for a outstanding analysis of Nabokov's linguistic brilliance.