Nabokov's Work Research Articles

Nabokov's Cosmic Synchronization and "Something Else"

Nabokov Studies, 1 (1994), 155-77. J. B. SISSON (Edina, MN, U.S.A.; NABOKOV'S COSMIC SYNCHRONIZATION AND "SOMETHING ELSE" Central to his aesthetic and to an understanding of his work is the concept that Nabokov labels "cosmic synchronization."1 This concept is a formulation of the posited desire of the artist to apprehend the entire universe by an awareness expanding rapidly outward from the artist's consciousness and the part of the world immediately present in order to involve into a grand unity as much distant activity as is coherently possible . This process ideally occurs so rapidly as to create an effect of instantaneity , but of course in practice the artist who must work with temporal sequences, can construct only a suggestive simulation of such an effect. Nabokov's oeuvre develops certain devices for this increasing compre hensiveness of unified vision, from the three relatively simple devices of the catalogue of remote activity, the juxtaposition of contrasting images, and the metaphor of metamorphosis, to, in the later novels, the two significant but unusual devices of the fusion of the apparent contradictions of alternative realities, in Pale Fire (1962), and the incorporation of increasingly complex other worlds, in Ada (1969), Transparent Things (1972), and Look at the Harlequins! (1974). In this discussion I shall consider cosmic synchronization in some of Nabokov's earlier works, with an emphasis upon the first three devices enumerated above and upon the relationships of cosmic synchronization with Nabokov's belief in the limitless scope of love and with his frequent indications of a world of phenomena inaccessible to everyday perception. All these devices and themes are blended by Nabokov in his construction of literary models that stimulate in his reader an awareness of the process of cosmic synchronization , a pleasurable experience affording bliss. The experience of cosmic synchronization corresponds to the illumination that is the third and final phase of Christian mysticism, or, more precisely, since Nabokov excludes a Christian orientation, the experience of cosmic synchronization corresponds roughly to the secular and spontaneous ecstasy of universal oneness described by the psychologist 1. Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (New York: Putnam, 1966), p. 218. 156 Nabokov Studies Richard Maurice Bucke in Cosmic Consciousness (1901). And throughout Nabokov's work appear the principal features of the mystic experience as categorized by Arthur J. Deikman: "(a) intense realness, (b) unusual sensations, (c) unity, (d) ineffability, and (e) trans-sensate phenomena."2 Page Stegner has suggested that Nabokov "might dislike being called a mystic,"3 but many of Nabokov's effects are similar to those of mysticism , and when, for example, his narrator Hermann, in Despair (1936), scoffs at Dostoievsky's "mystical trimming,"4 the rejection is not of mysticism itself but of its superficial imposition. But Nabokov's mystical correspondences may be offered only as approximations, because Nabokov shows no inclination to analyze or explain cosmic synchronization beyond a brief and suggestive definition in his autobiography Conclusive Evidence (1951) and ¡ts revision, Speak, Memory (1966). One may also guess, for example, that Nabokov's experiences with cosmic synchronization began with the fevers of his childhood illnesses, described in chapter 2 of Speak, Memory. Instead of analyzing the experience of cosmic synchronization, Nabokov seems intent upon creating in his reader an aesthetic simulation of this experience. When in Speak, Memory Nabokov describes the circumstances of the composition of his first poem, in 1914, he asserts that, in a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members. Vivian Bloodmark, a philosophical friend of mine, in later years, used to say that while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time. Lost in thought, he taps his knee with his wandlike pencil, and at the same instant a car (New York license plate) passes along the road, a child bangs the screen door of a neighboring porch, an old man yawns in a misty Turkestan...

The Nabokov-Sartre Controversy

Nabokov Studies, 1 (1994), 69-82. D. BARTON JOHNSON (Santa Barbara, CA, U.S.A.) THE NABOKOVSARTRE CONTROVERSY Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) were, in their very different ways, leading figures on the Western intellectual scene during the middle decades of the twentieth century. The two men held radically divergent views of the world, and it is not surprising that they came into conflict. Their dispute arose from Sartre's 1939 re view of Nabokov's novel Despair and expanded, at least on Nabokov's part, to an attack on Sartre's views of literature, politics, and, ultimately, philosophy. While the Nabokov-Sartre controversy is less well known than the Nabokov-Wilson feud, it was no less elegantly acidulous. Brian Boyd and Andrew Field briefly discuss the Nabokov-Sartre exchange in their books, as does Simon Karlinsky in his notes to the Nabokov-Wilson correspondence and in a subsequent essay.' Both of the protagonists have published and republished their contributions.2 My purpose is to gather and summarize the available information and to suggest that an early Nabokov story may have some relevance to the imbroglio. In 1926 Nabokov wrote a short story called "Uzhas" or "Terror" about a world suddenly devoid of meaning.3 The first person poet-narrator is nameless, as is his mistress, the only other character of conse quence. There is no dialogue. Events take place in a nameless Russian city, and in an equally anonymous non-Russian city, all set in a featureless 1. Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 138-39; Andrew Field, Nabokov: His Life in Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), pp. 132-33, and VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Crown, 1986), pp. 167-68; Simon Karlinsky, ed. The Nabokov-Wilson Letters: 1940-971 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 198, and Simon Kariinsky, "Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)," in Histoire de la Littérature Russe. Le XXe Siècle**. La Révolution et les années vingt, ed. Efim Etkind, Georges Nivat, llya Serman et Vittorio Strada (Paris: Fayard, 1989), pp. 166-67. 2. Jean-Paul Sartre, "La Méprise," Europe, June 15, 1939, pp. 240-49; rpt. in Situations I (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), pp. 58-61; Vladimir Nabokov, "Sartre's First Try," The New York Times Book Review, April, 24 1949, pp. 3 & 19; rpt. in Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), pp. 228-30. 3. Vladimir Nabokov, "Uzhas," in Sovremennye zapiski (Paris), No. 30 (Jan. 1927), pp. 214-20; Terror," in Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 113-21. Page citations to Nabokov's works in the text of the article refer to both the Russian and the English versions, e.g. (R201/E118). 70 Nabokov Studies present. The Russian poet-narrator tells of earlier, brief episodes of existential estrangement. He has survived these, thanks, in part to his relationship with his beloved mistress whose gay simplicity seemingly protects him from the abyss of a stark, unmediated reality. The narrator's affairs require a solitary business trip abroad. On the fifth sleepless day, he goes out for a stroll. His head feels as if it were made of glass. On the street he suddenly sees "the world ... as it actually is" (R201/E118). Houses, trees, cars, people have all lost any connection with ordinary life: "My line of communication with the world snapped, I was on my own and the world was on its own, and that worid was devoid of sense. I saw the actual essence of all things" (R202/E119). Floundering to regain his former, habitual "reality," he feels he is "no longer a man but a naked eye, an aimless glance moving in an absurd world" (R203/E120). At that moment he receives a telegram telling him that his mistress is dying. His existential tenor instantly vanishes in the face of simple human grief. He travels back to her bedside, where she dies without regaining consciousness. Her death has saved him, but what is to protect him now?4 Nabokov's tale of vastation was written in Berlin. Some eight years later in that same city a...

Necessary Instruction or Fatal Fatuity: Nabokov's Introductions and Bend Sinister

Nabokov Studies, 1 (1994), 115-29. CHARLES NICOL (Terre Haute, IN, USA) NECESSARY INSTRUCTION OR FATAL FATUITY: NABOKOV'S INTRODUCTIONS AND BEND SINISTER' A Paradigm for Nabokov's Introductions With the exception of the re-written Laughter in the Dark, Nabokov wrote introductions to the English versions of all of his Russian novels (including the novella The Eye), and to the translation of the play The Waltz Invention. Among novels written in English, only two include commentary: Lolita has an Afterword (dated November 12, 1956, this is Nabokov's first attempt to explain one of his fictions to its readers), while Bend Sinister has an extraordinary, and extraordinarily long. Introduction, the subject of later sections of this essay. To demonstrate the uniqueness of the Bend Sinister introduction, we need to establish a basis of comparison with these others. I propose the following paradigm, which may prove useful: I. Personal and bibliographic (two-three paragraphs): A. Personal situation during the novel's composition B. Bibliographic information on its initial and subsequent publication C. Explanation of the title D. Statement concerning the translation, if applicable II. Miscellaneous comments prompted by this particular novel (one paragraph) III. Polemic statements (one paragraph): A. Rejection of comparisons and influences B. Denial of moral purpose and social commentary C. Rejection of "general ideas" and trashy authors D. Onesentence rejection of Freudian content IV. Elliptical commentary on the plot (one paragraph) 1. A shorter version of this essay was delivered under a similar title at the AATSEEL convention, December 1987. 116 Nabokov Studies Nabokov's first introduction to an English translation was to Invitation to a Beheading (June 25, 1959—dates given in this article are to writing rather than publication dates), only five paragraphs long. Brevity is achieved partially because unit IV, plot discussion, is virtually eliminated. Because Invitation and Bend Sinister have been considered sister works by Nabokov (Invitation 6)2 and others, it should be noted that his polemic section here is devoted primarily to rejecting comparisons with other authors, especially "H. C. Orwell" and the gifted Kafka; the same point is made again in the Bend Sinister introduction. Nabokov also denies that the events of his times had any influence on the book: I composed the Russian original exactly a quarter of a century ago in Berlin, some fifteen years after escaping from the Bolshevist regime, and just before the Nazi regime reached its full volume of welcome. The question whether or not my seeing both in terms of one dull beastly farce had any effect on this book, should concern the good reader as little as it does me. (5) Next came the rrrtroduction to The Gift (March 28", 1962), only six paragraphs long. Unit I consists of the first two paragraphs and the final one (on the translation); it contains no explanation of the title. Il (miscellaneous) consists of a reminiscence of the vanished worid of the emigration, one paragraph. IV (elliptic plot summary) also consists of a single paragraph; here as elsewhere, Nabokov's treats "plot" as being synonymous with "themes" and uses the term in unusual ways: "the plot of chapter 1 centers in Fyodor's poems." Entirely missing is III, the polemic section: an explanation that Fyodor is not Nabokov is, atypically, not coupled with a complaint against reviewers and readers who try to make such biographical connections—and of course, Nabokov cannot refuse comparisons and deny influences (III.A) when the novel intentionally invokes nineteenth-century Russian authors. The polemics are replaced by an interesting apology for not "[ruthlessly] recreating Berlin and its colony of expatriates": 2. All parenthetical page references to Nabokov's works in this article are to the US. cloth editions, which it seemed unnecessary to list individually. The Bend Sinister references are to the more recent cloth edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), which includes the Introduction that originally appeared in Time's subscription paperback. Necessary Instruction or Fatal Fatuity 117 Here and there history shows through artistry. Fyodor's attitude toward Germany reflects too typically perhaps the crude and irrational contempt that Russian émigrés had for the "natives" (in Berlin, Paris or Prague). My young man is moreover influenced by the...

"Cloud, Castle, Lake" and the Problem of Entering the Otherworld in Nabokov's Short Fiction

Nabokov Studies, 1 (1994), 131-53. MAXIM D. SHRAYER (New Haven, Conn., U.S.A.) "CLOUD, CASTLE, LAKE" AND THE PROBLEM OF ENTERING THE OTHERWORLD IN NABOKOV'S SHORT FICTION' Two works have appeared recently which open new horizons in Vladimir Nabokov research. Both Vladimir Alexandrov's Nabokov's Otherworld and Brian Boyd's two-volume biography of Nabokov attempt in their own ways to close a gap—constructed largely due to critics' insistence upon Nabokov's metaliterariness—between poetics and biography, between the narrative structures of Nabokov's texts and the philosophy of art that informs them.2 Ultimately, this new direction in Nabokov research aims to bring together an author's inferred world view and the hermeneutic strategy that this world view compels the critic to apply. Alexandrov places at the core of his investigation what he feels to be the central theme of Nabokov's writings, a theme that the vast majority of Nabokov critics have overlooked—namely that of the "otherworld." Alexandrov starts off with a reference to Vera Nabokov who was the 1. It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of the John Enders Research Grant (Yale University) and the Yale Council on Soviet and East European Studies which made the funding of parts of this research possible with generous support. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the brilliant staff of Slovanská knihovna (Prague, The Czech Republic), an ideal library for a Slavicist, for their assistance in locating several sources for this study during a month of research in April-May, 1993. Special thanks go to the Director of Slovanská knihovna, Dr. Milena KlÃ-mová, and the librarians Ms. Helena Musátová, Dr. Jurij Vácek, Ms. Renata Stindlovà , Ms. )arka Fiserová. I am indebted to Ms. Margit E. Kaye of the Map Collection, Sterling Memorial Library (Yale University) for her help with outlining the geographical dimensions of the story. I would like to thank Ms. Hilary Fink of Columbia University—a dear colleague from the Middlebury Russian School— for looking at the final draft of this paper and making several important suggestions. Finally, my warm regards go to all the participants of the Vladimir Nabokov Society Panel at the 1992 AATSEEL Conference (NYC)~where an early draft of this article was read for their support and encouragement. 2. See Vladimir E. Alexandrov, Nabokov's Otherworld (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990), and Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991). 132 Nabokov Studies first to point to the centrality of potustoronnost' (otherwordliness) for both Nabokov's life and his art. In her foreword to the 1979 collection of Nabokov's verses, Vera Nabokov writes the following: Teper', posylaia ètot sbornik ν pechat', khochu obratit' vnimanie chitatelia na glavnuiu temu Nabokova. Ona, kazhetsia, ne byla nikem otmechena, a mezhdu tern eiu propitano vsë, chto on pisal; ona, kak nekii vodianoi znak, simvoliziruet vsë ego tvorchestvo. Ia govoriu o "potustoronnosti", kak on sam eë nazval ν svoëm poslednem stikhotvorenii "Vliublënnost".3 ("I would like to call the reader to a key undercurrent in Nabokov's work, which permeates all that he has written and characterizes it like a kind of watermark. I am speaking of a strange otherworldliness, the 'hereafter' (potustoronnost'), as he himself called it in his last poem, 'Being in Love.'")4 The claims regarding the fundamentally metaphysical nature of Nabokov's art have been made, if covertly, by Nabokov's émigré critics in the 1930s and carried over into the 1950s.5 All the more welcome was a moderrv investigation-of Nabokov-'s metaphysical dimension. In his analysis of a number of Nabokov's fictional and discursive texts, Alexandrov demonstrates that they are underlain and triggered by Nabokov's "sui generis faith in a transcendent realm." By claiming that the metaliterary serves as a model for Nabokov's metaphysical/otherworldly beliefs, Alexandrov opens a fruitful avenue of inquiry into the "nature=artifice" equation of Nabokov's art.6 However, some reviews of 3. Vera Nabokova, "Predislovie," in Vladimir Nabokov, Stikhi (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1979), p. 3. 4. This seminal passage was translated...

Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years

The second of a two-volume biography of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the great writers of the 20th century, this book continues with his arrival in the United States in 1940. It describes both his anguish at having to abandon his native Russian language and his relief at finding a home in America after years of exile. In 1955 Lolita, Nabokov's best-known work, was published to worldwide acclaim - and censure. An intensely private man, he was bemused by the speed with which the book's publication made him almost a household name, but also grateful that its success gave him the financial stability to withdraw from the glare of publicity to a solitary life in a Swiss hotel.

Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years

This first major critical biography of Vladimir Nabokov, one of the greatest of 20th-century writers, finally allows us full access to the dramatic details of his life and the depths of his art. An intensely private man, Nabokov was uprooted first by the Russian Revolution and then by World War II. Transformed into a permanent wanderer, he did not achieve fame until late in life, with the success of Lolita. In this first of two volumes, Brian Boyd vividly describes the liberal milieu of the aristocratic Nabokovs, their escape from Russia, Nabokov's education at Cambridge, and the murder of his father in Berlin. Boyd then turns to the years that Nabokov spent, impoverished, in Germany and France, until the coming of Hitler forced him to flee, with wife and son, to the U.S.This volume stands on its own as a fascinating exploration of Nabokov's Russian years and Russian worlds, pre-revolutionary and emigre. In the course of his 10 years' work on the biography, Boyd traveled along Nabokov's trail everywhere from Yalta to Palo Alto. The only scholar to have had free access to the Nabokov archives in Montreux and the Library of Congress, he also interviewed at length Nabokov's family and scores of his friends and associates.For the general reader, Boyd offers an introduction to Nabokov the man, his works, and his world. For the specialist, he provides a basis for all future research on Nabokov's life and art, as he dates and describes the composition of all Nabokov's works, published and unpublished. Boyd investigates Nabokov's relation to and his independence from his time, examines the special structures of his mind and thought, and explains the relations between his philosophy andhis innovations of literary strategy and style. At the same time he provides succinct introductions to all the fiction, dramas, memoirs, and major verse; presents detailed analyses of the major books that break new ground for the scholar, while providing easy paths into the works for other readers; and shows the relationship between Nabokov's life and the themes and subjects of his art.

Igor, Ossian, and Kinbote: Nabokov's Nonfiction as Reference Library

“How ludicrous these efforts to translate Into one's private tongue a public fate!“Pale Fire, lines 231-232It is becoming apparent as research sets out the points of contact among Vladimir Nabokov's works that Nabokov deliberately designed his total oeuvre as a spiral that finds ever-widening patterns in the weave of the universe. We are beginning to see how Nabokov combines the passion of natural scientific investigation and the cool distance of literary creation in his art; from reading his commentaries to Pushkin's Eugene Oneginand The Song of Igor's Campaign,we understand how he interprets literary texts through the accumulation of precise detail anchored in fact. Just as the evolution of natural species involves tracing migration and patterns of mimicry, a literary work may be investigated through the evolution of its cultural history.

The return of 'our' Nabokov

More and more of Vladimir Nabokov's works are being published officially in the Soviet Union ‐ but not without resistance from the old guard.

The Return of ‘Our’ Nabokov

More and more of Vladimir Nabokov's works are being published officially in the Soviet Union—but not without resistance from the old guard.

Vladimir Nabokov: The Structure of Literary Desire by David Packman (review)

Studies in American Fiction113 various narrators in the telling of the tale, meaning hinges upon somehow coming to the "fact" of Bon's being "Negro," when ironically he is the one character the farthest removed (by all narrative accounts) from "Negro" and "nigger" as the novel and society have presented them (p. 218). In addition to the new perspectives this study brings to Faulkner's fiction, it also frees that fiction from the pervasive harangue about Faulkner and race relations. Its emphasis is on "the artistic weight Faulkner places on the Negro in his fictional world" (p. 247), and its achievement is considerable. Michigan State UniversityLinda W. Wagner Packman, David. Vladimir Nabokov: The Structure ofLiterary Desire. Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1982. 122 pp. Cloth: $16.00. In the late sixties and early seventies, Nabokov criticism was dominated by gameplayers, critics who delighted in Nabokov's artifice. In the late seventies and early eighties, it has been dominatedby humanists, critics who delight in Nabokov's humanity. The time is now ripe for a synthesis, something that David Packman could have provided, something that I hoped for afterseeingtheconjunction of"structure" and "desire" in his subtitle. But unfortunately Packman does not provide this synthesis. He builds on the work of the earliest Nabokov critics, embellishing it with insights afforded by fashionable French structuralists and others, but he ignores the work ofthe most recent critics (indeed, his bibliography includes only three works published after 1977). Packman admirably extends the work of the early critics, in this slim volume devoted toLolita, Pale Fire, andAda, yet I must confess—to use some ofhis terminology —to a desire for what is absent. Packman extends the work ofcritics likeJulia Bader, in Crystal Land (1972), by pointing out how, despite her proclaimed allegiance to art over "realism," she has been trapped by "realistic" expectations. He points out that attempts to find a primary author in Pale Fire— Shade or Kinbote—imply that character inheres in "reality"; stress on an internal framing effacesthe book'sexternal frame. Packman is useful too in sometimes offering a strikinginsight. He argues thatHumbert'sprogress from lustto loveisreflectedin a progress from snapshots to filmic fantasies, for "love demands not the fetish object, the fragmented, frozen image, but rather the narrative of the body, the classical trajectory Humbert evokes"(p. 50). In general, Packman wants the reader to see how Nabokov acknowledges the fictiveness offiction, how Nabokovuses fictiontoexplorereality. ThusPackmancitesTzvetanTodorov, who finds two worlds in a literary text: "The world of the characters and the world of the narrator-reader couple" (p. 46). Packman is instructing the naive reader how to read Nabokov , the reader who prefers being swept up by the story, by "the world of the characters," a reader who perhaps fosters Packman's sometimes simplistic, sometimes repetitious style. He urgesinsteadreceptiveness tothe second world: to the textitselfand theway itinvitesreading. He points out how the reader constructs the author from the text, how the text exists in an intertextual network, how Humbert's cryptogrammic paper chase displaces his quest for the nymphet and reproduces the reader's own desire for meaning, how the index oíPale Fire subvertslinearitybyinvokingsimultaneity , howtheincestthemeinAdareflectsthe book'sliterary narcissism. 114Reviews But Packman himself fails to follow Todorov, for Packman ignores the first of Todorov's worlds: the world of the characters. Packman glories in pacmanship; he implies that Nabokov 's works are only games (serious though thosegames may be), that the works are only selfreflexive . He ignores the humanity ofthe characters and their moral vision, so well delineated by Ellen Pifer in Nabokov and the Novel ( 1980). His discussion of Pale Fire, for instance, focuses on Gradus' gradual approach and materialization and Nabokov's play with frames— there, certainly, and important—but he ignores Kinbote's anguished loneliness and Shade's robust earthiness. He misses too Lohta's humanity. He treats Lolita's body as only a literary text, as only an object of literary desire. Yet even Humbert progresses beyond the reification of Lolita, eventually acknowledging his own monstrosity in ignoring her needs, eventually acknowledging her humanity. Packman, however, does not. He is right to point out that Nabokov is self-reflexive but wrong to imply that that is all there is...

Spatial Modeling and Deixis: Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading

Among his many novels Vladimir Nabokov singled out Priglashenie na kazn' (Invitation to a Beheading) as one that he held the greatest esteem.' He also remarked that contrast to his usual snail-paced rate of composition, original draft of Priglashenie was written in one fortnight of wonderful excitement and sustained inspiration. It is perhaps due to temporal intensity of its composition that Priglashenie is most compact, most densely written of his works, showing a compression of stylistic virtuosity and theme that might have been etiolated by a more leisurely mode of writing. Whatever reason, Priglashenie na kazn' is clearly most structurally stark and artifice-saturated of Nabokov's works.

Wrestling with Time: Some Tendencies in Nabokov's and Eliade's Later Works

Wrestling with Time: Some Tendencies in Nabokov's and Eliade's Later Works

Selected Bibliography of Nabokov's Work

Selected Bibliography of Nabokov's Work