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