Nabokov and the Art of Play

Abstract

Play is intrinsic to human nature, a way of understanding ourselves, each other, the world we live in, so it's no surprise that several social scientists and philosophers have highlighted its importance to our cognitive and physical development, emotional growth, and social interaction. Play manifests itself most obviously in the form of games, which have their own structures and rules, but it's also vital to our sense of freedom, reminding us that we’re not entirely bound to society's rigid regulations, the often obstinate, unyielding codes of community. Free play provides an escape (or to be more precise, an excursion) from these rules, allowing us to frolic mentally and physically in the margins of necessity—and find pleasure in doing so. We can’t imagine a world without play because imagination is play in its purest, most personal form. It follows that art, as the product of imagination, is a form of play, and that creative artists of all kinds are, in essence, players. For certain artists, however, play is both the centre and the subject of their aesthetic: a unifying principle and a matter of philosophical enquiry in and of itself. In the context of twentieth-century literature, a number of such artists spring to mind: Italo Calvino, Georges Perec, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Raymond Queneau, and, perhaps most notably, Vladimir Nabokov.