BETWEEN US AND ARTISTIC APPRECIATION: NABOKOV AND THE PROBLEM OF DISTORTION James M. Tonn A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY THE DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES Adviser: Olga Peters Hasty November 2011 © Copyright by James M. Tonn, 2011. All rights reserved. iii Abstract Vladimir Nabokov's view of art and life is confounded by a problem of "distortion," wherein meaning and aesthetic value are obscured when information from a complex form of experience is presented in an inadequate medium (a situation that is analogous to the projection of a three-dimensional globe as a two-dimensional map). For example, Nabokov claims that a work of literature originates in a state of mind in which the author can appreciate all parts of the work and their interconnections simultaneously; but when it is written out as a linear text, the relationships among the parts are rendered indistinct. This dissertation focuses on Nabokov's preoccupation with distortion and his interest in the possibility of glimpsing what is beyond it. Chapter one describes in detail the attributes of distortion and its use in Nabokov's work as a literary device. The second chapter conceptualizes the source of distortion as situations in which a less-circumscribed "outer" level of experience is viewed from a more circumscribed "inner" one. The remainder of the dissertation deals with Nabokov's fascination with ways of looking at things so that aesthetic value can be apprehended in spite of distortion. Chapter three discusses a compulsion among some of Nabokov's characters to overcome distortion by identifying a piece of information that lends order to what is observed. The fourth chapter addresses Nabokov's efforts to achieve "manifold awareness," a type of perception that resembles the simultaneous state of mind in which a work of literature is said to originate. This chapter also touches upon Nabokov's desire to escape from the constraints of time and space, which produce distortion by imposing distance and sequence on the events of life. The final chapter explains Nabokov's use of imagery of geometrical dimensions to depict vantage points from which multiple things may be viewed in juxtaposition with one another. Texts from iv Nabokov's entire literary career are addressed in this dissertation, demonstrating that the phenomena under discussion are a systematic concern of his work. v Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... iii Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 1 Part One: Between Us and Artistic Appreciation ......................................................................... 17 Chapter 1. Through a Glass, Darkly ........................................................................................... 18 Chapter 2. Nabokov's Outerworlds ........................................................................................... 37 Part Two: Beyond the Barricades ................................................................................................. 59 Chapter 3. Observation and Perspective .................................................................................. 60 Chapter 4. Manifold Awareness ................................................................................................ 96 Chapter 5. To Climb into the Next Dimension ........................................................................ 128 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 154 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 160 1 Introduction There is no perfect way to represent the world as a map. Every method of projecting a spherical globe into a flat representation invariably results in some distortion. The loss of fidelity that occurs when an elaborate phenomenon is projected into an unsuitable medium is an enormous concern of Nabokov's aesthetics. As I will explain, Nabokov claims that a literary work comes into being when an author perceives an "instantaneous" aesthetic entirety, but that the way a text is experienced—through the linear process of reading—obscures some of the original idea. In similar fashion, life for Nabokov is an aesthetic phenomenon (a fact that is prominently attested to by his "literary autobiography," Speak, Memory (P1966),1 a work that aims to extract the "thematic designs" from life (SM 27)).2 It too suffers from a distortion caused by projection: Nabokov suggests that life would be best perceived from a hypothetical timeless point of view, and that the linear way in which it is actually played out causes its aesthetic value3 to be obscured. A problem of distortion occurring between two qualitatively different levels of experience can be found again in Nabokov's frequent depictions of dreams and wakefulness: When a person dreams, he or she enters an "inferior" state of experience— i.e. one in which the mind is comparatively limited in its ability to interact with and organize information. From this point of view, the person perceives, but has trouble making sense of, 1 Throughout this dissertation, I indicate the original title for Nabokov's works not written in English, as well as the composition date(s). Where composition information is not available, I list the first publication date (including serialized publication), marked with the letter P. Speak, Memory is an anthology of works written as early as 1936 and published in many variations. For simplicity, I give the first publication date of the final form of the autobiography, 1966. 2 See bibliography for abbreviations of cited works. 3 I use this phrase to indicate the emotions or mental effects that are produced by art and which give art its merit (at least in Nabokov's aesthetics, which is firmly grounded in the notion of "art for art's sake"). I occasionally use the term "meaning" to describe, more generally, any type of coherence that is obscured by distortion. 2 information that trickles in to the dream from the realm of waking life. Without reaching into the Platonic suggestions of the term, I will say that Nabokov is concerned with situations in which a thing cannot be apprehended in its "ideal" or original form due to a disparity between its native level of experience and the type of experience through which it is perceived. Human beings are frequently subjected to situations of limited experience. They cannot apprehend the complete and "instantaneous" artistic whole underlying a literary text because they must read linearly; they cannot extract the aesthetic value from life because they perceive life within space and time; and when they dream, they are in no condition to make sense of waking life. Nabokov is dissatisfied with these states of affairs and searches for ways to simulate superior levels of perception in order to apprehend the aesthetic value that is evident when experience is not inhibited. In this regard Fyodor of The Gift (Dar, 1935-7) says, "I keep straining for the faraway; I search beyond the barricades4 (of words, of senses, of the world) for infinity, where all, all the lines meet" (G 341). "Barricades" are an appropriate image for those aspects of perception and physical existence that sustain the limited and distorted condition in which mortals find themselves. Nabokov, like Fyodor, longs for an absolute form of experience that is normally out of reach, in which there are no obstacles to inhibit the consciousness from its exploration of the world. The subject of this dissertation is how Nabokov conceptualizes in his work situations wherein an idea that is associated with a superior form of experience is projected, in distorted form, into the inferior form of experience to which consciousness is often confined; and how he depicts the prospect of surmounting the "barricades" of distortion in order to glimpse—or completely recover—the meaningful "original." 4 Rogatki. 3 In his lecture "The Art of Literature and Commonsense," Nabokov describes the creation of literature as an act that operates outside of the constraints of time: "the idea of sequence does not really exist as far as the author is concerned. <...>5 Time and sequence cannot exist in the author's mind because no time element and no space element had ruled the initial vision" (LL 379-80).6 He explains the pleasures of authorship to non-writers by saying, "it is the past and the present and the future (your book) that come together in a sudden flash; thus the entire circle of time is perceived, which is another way of saying that time ceases to exist" (LL 378, italics original). But Nabokov indicates that the timeless impulse that initiates art is unsuited to representation in a written work, whose format is not instantaneous but linear: Sequence arises only because words have to be written one after the other on consecutive pages <…>. If the mind were constructed on optical lines and if a book could be read in the same way as a painting is taken in by the eye, that is without the bother of working from left to right and without the absurdity of linear beginnings and ends, this would be the ideal way of appreciating a novel, for thus the author saw it at the moment of its conception. (LL 379-80) A book, of course, cannot be apprehended instantaneously like a painting. Instead, Nabokov offers "rereading" as a technique for recovering some of the "initial vision" that goes into a text: A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. <...> When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from 5 Throughout this dissertation I use angle-bracketed ellipses to indicate my omissions. Ellipses that are present in the source are reproduced without angle brackets. 6 A character in Transparent Things (1969-71) says, similarly, that he cannot write a certain book because it "would never express in one flash what can only be understood immediately" (TT 84, italics original). 4 left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. (LL 3) Nabokov compares text and painting—while mentioning the nuisance of linear, left-to-right reading—in no fewer than three7 places in his belletristic writing, suggesting that the notion of ideally apprehending a work at once, like a painting, is strongly grounded in his aesthetic philosophy.8 (An intriguing corollary to this notion is that, in Nabokov's aesthetics, the human 7 A third instance: There comes a moment when I am informed from within that the entire structure [of a work] is finished. All I have to do now is take it down in pencil or pen. Since this entire structure, dimly illumined in one's mind, can be compared to a painting, and since you do not have to work gradually from left to right for its proper perception, I may direct my flashlight at any part or particle of the picture when setting it down in writing. I do not begin my novel at the beginning. I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do not go dutifully from one page to the next, in consecutive order; no, I pick out a bit here and a bit there, till I have filled all the gaps on paper. This is why I like writing my stories and novels on index cards, numbering them later when the whole set is complete. (SO 31-2) 8 A similar sentiment is echoed when, asked in an interview, "ideally, how should a reader experience or react to 'the end' of one of your novels <…>?" Nabokov replies that "what I would welcome at the close of a book of mine is a sensation of its world receding in the distance and stopping somewhere there, suspended afar like a picture in a picture: The Artist's Studio by Van 5 mind is inadequately equipped to directly appreciate a work of literature.) Nabokov argues that both a painter and an author at first see their creation in its entirety, but that the author, due to the nature of the written form, must convert his or her vision into an inferior structure that strings out rich simultaneity into relatively lifeless linearity. Rereading is a means to counteract this loss9 and recover the author's "instantaneous" creative perception.10 The rereader, who experiences the sequential text multiple times, constructs a mental awareness of events that is freed from linearity and is therefore closer to the "initial vision" of the author. In other words, rereading is a way to mentally "negate" linearity and approach a more complete appreciation of a text. The notion that a work of art is fragmented when experienced linearly—and that this fragmentation can be overcome11 if one changes the way one looks at the work—is emblematic of the broader concern that forms the subject of this dissertation: Nabokov's attempts to Bock" (SO 72-3). Nabokov would like the reader to see the work as a whole, in an entirety that is similar to a painting—he wants the world of the book to diminish to occupy a single mental frame so it can be experienced instantaneously. 9 The fact that rereading negates fragmentation is corroborated by Nabokov's claim that James Joyce "takes a complete and absolute character, <...> then breaks it up into fragments and scatters these fragments over the space-time of his book. The good rereader gathers these puzzle pieces and gradually puts them together" (LL 217). 10 Fyodor of The Gift, one of Nabokov's most positive characters, is evidently in touch with the "instantaneous" inspiration from which a work is created, as well as the qualitatively different experience produced by reading vs. rereading: "he would skim in an instant the entire book, so that in the instantaneous mist of its madly accelerated music one could not make any readable sense of the flicking lines" (G 18) after which "he had to reread it right away <...> Now he read in three dimensions, as it were, carefully exploring each poem, lifted out like a cube from among the rest" (G 21). 11 Leona Toker posits, quite contrary to my thesis, that Nabokov and his characters actively fragment experience as an expression of "a philosophical attitude that rejects, on principle, the valorization of a holistic vision" (Tok95 125). In my opinion, what Toker takes for deliberate attempts to create or sustain fragmentation are generally expressions of Nabokov's acknowledgement of the difficulty—but not the impossibility—of overcoming preexisting distortion in order to make sense of experience. Throughout this dissertation I will, in fact, present evidence for Nabokov's persistent attempts to recover a "holistic vision" in spite of distortion.