With an electric sigh, a deep drag on foreign eclecticism,
one inhales lyricism, poeticism; this is the proverbial aesthetic bliss. A
reader of the renowned Vladimir Nabokov experiences what Nabokov himself
described as neither happy, nor sad, but a tingling contentedness after closing
a book and setting it gently down, squeezing the covers together, reveling in
this invoked catharsis. After swaying in the tides of the Russian literary
masters, (such as Chekov, Tolstoy and Pushkin) Nabokov strove to create the
same effect. And in this ardent striving, he had “written himself into the history
of Russian literature,” (Oks, 49). Nabokov’s work continues to beat on in the
same manner, inspiring, still, a wide-eyed reverence to his modern, yet lyrical
style; it continues, not to mold contemporary literature, but to encourage
artists to find what is beautiful and to transpose those holy windows into
blossoming realities.
Born in St.
Petersburg, Russia
on April 23rd, 1899, to a wealthy bourgeoisie family, young Vladimirovich grew
up amidst his father’s liberal idealism. The name Nabokov bore heavily upon
him; it had a regal, resounding effect upon the ear. His great-grandfather,
Alexander, was a full general, his great-uncle, Nikolai, an imperial page and
Decembrist. Vladimir Dmitrieyvich, Nabokov’s own father, led an active life in
politics, law, and journalism, helping to found, in pre-Bolshevik Russia,
the Kadet party. It is with this great lineage, weighing like a yolk, that the
young author set about carving out a life for himself. Correlatively, it is no
wonder why he chose to distance himself from the name by writing under the
pseudonym Vladimir Sirin for a time (Oks, 45).
Nabokov’s childhood was painted with vibrant colors,
peppered with family picnics and exploratory expeditions to catch butterflies
(one of Nabokov’s affinities he carried throughout life). When asked why he
never owned a home, Nabokov responded “that nothing short of a replica of my
childhood surroundings would have satisfied me...” (Oks, 48). It is with this
in mind that, when the family was forced into exile due to some poorly placed
political affiliations during the Bolshevik Revolution, Nabokovís works often
deal with nostalgia and sense of loss. Among these dragging years of his youth,
Nabokov spent time in Europe where he became
fluent in not only his native Russian, but English and French as well. With
this newfound education, Vladimir
translated many books that had otherwise been non-existent in Russian, such as
Lewis Carrollís Alice in Wonderland (Quennell, 18).
In the dawning of the infamous 1920s, Nabokov attended Trinity College
in Cambridge, England. It was here that he
published his first three poems and story entitled Nezhit (The Wood Spirite).
Reiterating the concept of loss, Nabokov writes in Nezhit, “It was we, Rus’,
who were your inspiration, your unfathomable beauty, your agelong enchantment!
And we are all gone, gone, driven into exile by a crazed surveyor,” (Oks, 47).
Upon graduating with honors, Nabokov moved to Berlin, Germany,
where he worked as a translator, tutor and, trivial as it is, tennis coach. At
times, Nabokov would write for emigre journals, yet his prime focus lay in
tutoring English. In Berlin,
Nabokov gained some small following; yet mostly, his works were ignored.
Because of such anonymity, poverty threatened the young writer’s efforts. In
1922, tragedy struck: Nabokov’s father was mistakenly shot by an assassin
intending to kill the former minister of foreign affairs, Pavel Milyukov (Oks,
47). Because of this startling and morose incident, Nabokov’s early work is
tainted with death, passage of time, and loss (“Vladimir...).
Shortly after Nabokov’s period of grieving, the
‘felten-blue’ (as Nabokov would applaud, having himself always coupled colors
with prefixal adjectives) clouds seemed to part and send him Vera Slonim whom
he met and married in 1923 (Quennell, 21). “TO VERA” began each book Nabokov
ever published; it immortalized his love, as all art is Ovidesque and eternal.
She was his secretary, typist, chauffer (he never learned how to drive),
proofreader, and literary agent; Vera was entirely devoted to her husband and
his craft. However, when tension mounted in Germany,
the Nabokovs, including their newly born son, Dmitri, moved to France where Vladimir met Irina Guadanini. The
relationship soon became an affair. In an ironic twist of fate, Nabokov’s novel
Laughter in the Dark (Kamera Obscura, 1931) mirrors how Vera discovered her
husband’s blunder: by way of correspondence between the man and his mistress.
The fall of Nabokov’s integrity crushed Vera, who had always held her husband above
all others. However, the couple recovered to live a life of marital adherence,
respect, and dignity.
The year 1925 brought with it a chance to emigrate to America.
France had drained the
Nabokovs’ finances severely; so, when an teaching position came crackling
through the telephone, Vladimir
did not fail to jump at the chance. It was in America that Nabokov finally felt
at home after wandering aimlessly in his “European Years” as he dubbed them. France and Germany had always seemed like
“places of exile” (Oks, 46). Nabokov soon became an American citizen, claiming
the country as his home for the next twenty years.
Upon moving to America,
Nabokov began teaching at Wellesley College and, later, Cornell University
as a professor of Russian literature. He is described with affection by his
students, saying that his love of literature occupied every lecture. In one
such instance, Nabokov became irritated by the heavily-lidded eyes of his
students or rather, of the apparent lack of enthusiasm. While delivering his
lecture, he abruptly quelled and strode to the lights, switching them all off.
“‘In the firmament of Russian literature,’ he proclaimed, “flick, ‘This is
Pushkin!í’ flick, ‘This is Gogol!’ The middle light went on, “flick, ‘This is
Chekov’, the light on the right went on.”He then strode to the back of the
classroom and ripped open the blinds, allowing a blinding stream of sunlight to
flood the lecture hall: “‘And that is Tolstoy!’ boomed Nabokov,” (Quennell,
18).
Vladimir Nabokov was a passionate advocate of detail. The
precision of description led Nabokov to exclaim, “‘Before the advent of Pushkin
and Gogol, European literature was blind,’”. In his own work, Nabokov wove, in
textual tapestries, his fascination with light and shadow, and his meditations
on human expression. Alfred Appel Jnr, a long time acquaintance of Vladimir’s,
describes Nabokov’s visual prose as being either “multicolored or
monochromatic”, emitting a “glow that is old-fashioned in more than one
way...”. The languid, flourishing description of a sunset in the
autobiographical publication, Speak, Memory (1966), attests to his love of
everything natural and beautiful. However, Nabokov’s landscapes are not mere
“pretty pictures”-- they serve a greater purpose that keynotes their maker’s
“life-long occupation with death, his ability to drawl and sometimes ease our
shared or collective eschatological panic.” Transparent Things (1972) reminds
his readers of that fact: “Using ink and aquarelle I can paint a lake-scape of
unsurpassed translucence with all the mountains of paradise reflected therein,”
the main character, Hugh Person, writes, “but am unable to draw... the
silhouette of human panic in the blazing windows of a villa,” (Nabokov...
Transparent, 119). Nabokov’s ideology seems grounded in Joseph Conrad’s preface
to The Negro of Narcissus’ : “My task which I am trying to achieve is... before
all, to make you see. That-- and no more, and it is everything,” (Quennell,
14).
Correlative to this fascination with the minute, is
Nabokov’s contemplation of patterns. Lepidopterism (the study of butterflies),
chess and crosswords were not only hobbies to occupy his brilliance, but
corroborates to his complexity and talent as a writer. “Pattern for Nabokov,”
wrote the novelist John Banville, “was the sign of the godhead. Butterflies in
particular struck him as incontrovertible proof that the universe did not occur
but was made, by a joyous yet fanatically meticulous spendthrift.” Providing
that writers are, in essence, gods themselves--creating their own
realities--Nabokov infused his work with such similarly complex patterns as he
found in the world around him. Much of the characterization that springs forth
from a Nabokovian tale consists of the success or failure to make out the
“patterns” or “structure” of the world they occupy. They seek to break free of
this illusory world to enter the world of reality. Ironically, Nabokov’s work
draws many parallels from his own history. For example, Pale Fire (1962), an
epic and narrative poem, the hero, John Slade, dies because of a misinformed
murderer. This mirrors his own father’s death. And, as mentioned previously,
Laughter in the Dark draws coincidental parallels with his adulterous
relationship with Miss Guadanini (Oks, 47).
These patterns and interwoven parables resurface time and
again throughout Nabokov’s work and help to establish his standing of genius.
Many modern writers seek to anchor their work in mythological precedence, to
have some sort of reference to literature, to incorporate obscure puns.
Nabokov’s knowledge addresses such a wide breadth that he does include these
intricacies with seamless effort. It is because of the astounding equations,
paradoxical calamities, and the poetry with which he treats historical rhetoric
that Nabokov continues to influence generations of literature.
With much the same determinism, Nabokov published the novel,
Mashenka (Mary), in 1926 and won, finally, critical acclaim. The story follows
an emigre who finds that his first love, Mary, is to arrive on the train.
However, she is married to a fellow boarder of his. He, therefore, intoxicates
the husband with every intention of meeting Mary at the train station to run
off with her. He then decides, in awakening from his nostalgia, that she will
never comply; he leaves and never sees her again. Mashenka, originally written
in Russian, marks the beginning of many of the themes that play through
Nabokov’s work such as the “uncomfortable collisions of time and memory” (Oks,
48). In the years afterward, Nabokov published many other novels in Russian
(later translated into English by Nabokov himself and his son, Dmitri). Among
them are: Korol, Dama, Valet (King, Queen, Knave, 1928), Zashchita Luzhina (The
Luzhin Defense, 1930), Kamera Obscura (Laughter in the Dark, 1931), Otchayanie
(Despair, 1936), Priglasheniya na kazn (Invitation to a Beheading,1936), and
Dar (The Gift, 1938).
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my
soul...”: so begins Nabokov’s greatest contribution to literature. Lolita was
released to the public in 1947, yet was not published in the United Kingdom or the United States until 1958 due to its
profane nature. At the heart of Lolita there is Humbert-Humbert, a middle-aged
expatriate, who suffers from a love so forbidden, so obsessive, that it
ultimately destroys him. When he becomes a tenant in American suburbia, he
consequentially falls in love with his landlady’s twelve-year-old daughter. By
way of some misfortune, the landlady dies, leaving the narrator to set off on a
cross-country torrent of rape, manipulation, murder, and deceit with his
prepubescent mistress. Lolita is described as “one of the most controversial
novels of the Twentieth-Century, in which the rhetoric of the protagonist both
captivates and repels,” (“Vladimir...).
Indeed, Humbert-Humbert, who starts his recollection as a prison-diary, is a
force to be reckoned with.
Some believe Lolita to be an allegory of the writer and his
art, “Old Europe debauching young America”, or “Young American
debauching Old Europe”. However, it was self-professed that Nabokov detested
allegories and symbols (Nabokov... The Annotated, 314). In the same way,
Nabokov also dismissed cliches, saying, in effect, “Because cliches trivialize,
betray or deny the uniqueness of the thought, memory or perception struggling
to find expression, they are finally an affront to consciousness itself,”
(Quennell, 26). Many accused Nabokov, this lover of beauty, of creating “sheer
unrestrained pornography”. While this might have some ground if the accuser
merely understands the premise of the novel, the opening line destroys this
theory as Lolita comments on the abuse of power and literature itself. The
novel is professed to be a “powerfully ironic parody of cheap mass literature”
(Oks, 50). In Nabokov’s essay, On a Book Entitled Lolita, he says, regarding
its banned nature:
“While it is true that is ancient Europe... deliberate
lewdness was not inconsistent with flashes of comedy, or vigorous satire, or
even the verve of a fine poet in a wanton mood, it is also true that in modern
times the term ‘pornography’ connotes mediocrity, commercialism, and certain
strict rules of narration. Obscenity must be mated with banality because every
kind of aesthetic enjoyment has to be entirely replaced by simple sexual stimulation
which demands the traditional word for direct action upon the patient,”
(Nabokov... The Annotated, 313).
Nabokov sought not to exploit, but to caress a very taboo
subject matter. Lolita is praised because of its poetic nature, its aural
loveliness; to quote the book itself, “You can always count on a murderer for a
fancy prose style,” (Nabokov... The Annotated, 9).
Nabokov’s influence in the modern world surfaces in many
medias. The novel, Lolita, has been translated to the silver screen by Stanley
Kubrick in 1962 with James Mason as Humbert-Humbert and Sue Lyons as Lolita. It
has also been remade recently in 1997 by Adrien Lyne with Jeremy Irons as HH
and Dominique Swain as Lolita. Lolita exists in the contemporary world as a
pop-icon of sexuality and all that is taboo.
To regress, in Montreaux,
Switzerland,
Vladimir and Vera came to rest. It was a warm day in July, 1977, as Nabokov lay
in a hospital bed, reflecting back through the wonderment of his seventy-eight
years. It was said by his son, Dmitri, that there were tears in his eyes,
brimming with the knowledge that he would never go on a quest for butterflies
again. “Death is divestment, death is communion,” wrote the authorial voice in
the opening chapter of Pnin (1957), “It may be wonderful to mix with the
landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego,” (Quennell, 32).
My reason for paying such strict attention to the life and
work of Vladimir Nabokov is directly correlated to his impact on American and
European literature. I hail his extensive knowledge, his knack for always
having the perfect word, and his fearlessness and boldness as an artist.
Nabokov’s work, Lolita in particular, creates in me, the aesthetic vibrato, the
resounding clash in my chest of memory and beauty and love and every universal
pooling of human expression. Details, I believe, are the essence of literature;
Nabokov has captured those soaring “seraphs, those misinformed, noble-winged
seraphs” on paper, never having ignored the veined hues of a butterfly’s wing.
