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The Nabokov Assignment: For more information on this project and Nabokov, click here. Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 - Page 5
The Potato Elf /
The Aurelian /
A Dashing Fellow / A Bad Day /
The Visit to the Museum / A Busy Man Mary / Photograph #1 / Photograph #2
The Potato Elf, 1924 Excerpt Latterly Fred had been growing gloomy, and sneezing a lot, soundlessly and sadly, like a little Japanese spaniel. While not experiencing for months any hankering after a woman, the virginal dwarf would be beset now and then by sharp pangs of lone amorous anguish which went as suddenly as they came, and again, for a while, he would ignore the bare shoulders showing white beyond the velvet boundary of loges, as well as the little girl acrobats, or the Spanish dancer whose sleek thighs were revealed for a moment when the orange-red curly fluff of her nether flounces would whip up in the course of a rapid swirl. Analysis/Synthesis Your first burning question is probably "Why, if we are moving chronologically, and if written in 1924, is this story appearing here, after "The Christmas Story," which was written in 1928? The simple answer is that Nabokov switched a few dates around and, perhaps a little carelessly, thought this story had only been published in Rul' in 1929. It did, of course, appear in Rul' in 1929, but it also appeared in Russkoye Ekho in April, 1924, says Dmitri Nabokov, the author's son and frequent translator, and this edition's editor. So to summarize, this story has long been thought to have been written in 1929, so it was stuck in that chronological spot. Why Dmitri did that, we'll probably never know. His voice a bit thinner these days (from his operatic prime earlier in life) and his time spent sorting the loose ends of his father's estate, he probably shan't answer our request on this matter―even if we knew where to find him. Your second burning question is probably "Where have you been all this time?!" as if eons had passed. Legions of dedicated fans have informed me of their concern, the two lone viewers most of all (two―lone―I get it). Your third burning question (the second having been not so much answered as deferred) is probably "What was this story about, and was it any good?" I thank you for asking. I did rather enjoy "The Potato Elf." It was no "A Guide to Berlin" or "La Veneziana," but it had its merits. I'm answering the second question first―I'm sorry. "The Potato Elf" is about a chap named Fred Dobson. I speak not of the San Franciscan who "invented" the Dobsonian telescope for his sidewalk astronomy club meetings, but of a very short fellow―an Englishman (hence the "chap" and "fellow")―who entertains in the circus. Let me, if you would so kindly, point out that this is Nabokov's first short story set in England, a fact only a fact provided one accepts Dmitri's assertion of this work's earlier publication. (The only other story set in England, of course, is "La Veneziana," but that story is more accurately set in a castle.) Now, Dobson, being a little person, works collaboratively alongside a conjurist, Shock. "There existed also a Mrs. Shock," as Nabokov puts it. Mrs. Shock is tired of being manipulated and ignored by her sleight-of-hand/sleight-of-mind husband, so she lets the "ardent," "amorous" dwarf express his pent emotions. Fred, instantly in love, tries to tell Shock about his new paramour (the magician's very own wife) but he's too busy to notice. While the "Potato Elf," as he's affectionately called by the circus troupe, pens a letter to his beloved informing her that he's moving to the countryside to wait for her to wrap up her affairs (i.e. get a divorce), Shock is pretending to poison himself in front of his wife. Apparently he heard more than he'd let on with Fred. Now living in the country, Fred gets a letter saying that Mrs. Shock is moving to America with her husband, and that the little guy had misjudged her feelings. It stings but Fred moves on. I'm going way too fast―"It stings but Fred moves on"? What is that? The poor man has a heart attack. Nabokov describes it thus: "It was then that the first attack of angina pectoris occurred. A meek look of astonishment remained since then in his eyes. And during a number of days afterwards he would walk from room to room, swallowing his tears and gesturing in front of his face with one trembling tiny hand." So Dobson (yes, Fred, the elf, etc) has a cleaning woman and a doctor, but other than that, he's unknown in his town, Drowse. Eight years pass. Nora Shock shockingly shows up to tell Fred that―of all things―the day they'd been together, she had become pregnant. !!! Her husband, she reports is "still performing his tricks." Fred wants to meet the boy (for it's a boy, and not at all an elf or dwarf or like a potato). Nora leaves abruptly, Fred thinking that she'll contact him somehow to arrange a meeting (anonymously so that the boy won't know Fred is the father). Nabokov may appreciate what I now have to say, or he may loathe it. I prefer to think the former. I was sure that when Fred ran out to approach Nora (for he worried that he wouldn't know how to get in touch with her), he was going to find out that she had really been the conjurist, Shock himself. I don't know if this is just craziness on my part or data possibly useful for a psychological examination on my part, but I was sure of it. I wasn't following the serious tone of Nora's visit. In other words, I don't think the tone was serious enough. For when Fred reaches Nora―and by this time the whole town has seen him, all the children and church people―she tells him that her son died a few days ago. We're given the impression that Fred too has suffered another attack of "angina pectoris" and might die right there grasping the hem of Nora's skirt while he lay on the dirt path "resembling a crumpled black glove." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
By the way, if you hadn't noticed, Nabokov is all about
the neck, shoulders and elbows of women. If there is a woman described
(positively), one has a 90% chance of encountering mention of one of these
three parts. I happen to think that he prized the elbows the most, that
their fleeting nature―here now, gone then―is what attracted him so. You
can tell so much by one's elbows: the blending of three arm bones in
relative perfection, a sharpness or roundness that ultimately defines the
rest of one's body (and perhaps her personality), a roughness or smoothness,
and a position either aggressive or vulnerable. Additional Links:
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here. NOTE Mary was Nabokov's first novel. Published initially in Russian, with the title Mashenka, in 1925, it continued to hold a sentimental place in the author's heart when he revisited the work in 1970. The story is straightforward: A flighty emigrant, Ganin, plans to leave his Russian pension (boarding house) in Berlin, but has no real motivation, no purpose. Among his housemates is the full-busted Klara, the poet Podtyagin, two rather effeminate ballet dancers, the imbecilic Alfyorov and the owner of the building, Lydia Nikolaevna Dorn, a widow. The facts are thus: Klara, even though her good friend is dating Ganin, is infatuated with him; the old poet Podtyagin is eager to get his visa to go live with his niece in France; and Alfyorov is eagerly anticipating the arrival of his wife, Mary. Ganin, "powerless because he had no precise desire," insists he will break off his relationship with Lyudmila, but each time he tries he fails, and is left helpless to endure another visit. Through a random encounter with his adjunct fellow tenant, Ganin discovers that Alfyorov's wife had been Ganin's first love back in Russia. In fact, she embodied Russia for Ganin. Whatever positive was left of his memories relating to the country―it was connected to her. With a purpose (to meet Mary again and continue their love affair), Ganin quickly breaks it off with his girlfriend, and finds more motivation than he has had since he left Russia. He helps the ailing poet with his visa woes, and he settles his business to leave on that very upcoming Saturday (the day of Mary's arrival). The house has a going away party for Ganin and Podtyagin, celebrating also the fact that the dancers landed a job. Alfyorov drinks way too much, something that works to Ganin's delight since it means that he will have no competition when he arrives to pick up Mary from the train station. What differentiates a novel like Mary from one like Lolita (the author's best work, in my humble estimation), is not that the former, earlier work is devoid of the richness that embodies the latter, but that the former showed that, as he matured, Nabokov learned how to write a story whose elements meshed with an apparent effortlessness. And it's not that the Nabokov of 1955 was disjointed from his work at that point; on the contrary he was brilliantly connected to it. Mary shows a writer unsure of his connection to his fiction, but not an incompetent writer. In fact, the powerful themes of invisibility (the house), of motion (the train), of immobility (the train penetrating the stale house repetitively and Ganin being stuck thus), and of exile all excellently counterbalance an emotional love story of a man yearning to retreat to a previous stage of his life. Our empathy with Ganin results from our desire for the idyll, the romanticized notion of true love that only exists in memory, or in reflection or in imagination. But the undying love between Mary and Ganin, if we believe it to be so, is not squashed by the reality of their permanent separation. It is, after all, Mary who gives Ganin direction, and only through his four days of blissful recollection does he find a way forward and a meaningfulness in his situation and his place so far away from a home he'll never return to.
The Aurelian, 1930 Excerpt
He had spent all his life in Berlin and its suburbs; had
never traveled farther than Peacock Island on a neighboring lake. He was a
first-class entomologist. Dr. Rebel, of Vienna, had named a certain rare
moth Agrotis pilgrami; and Pilgram himself had published several
descriptions. His boxes contained most of the countries of the world, but
all he had ever seen of it was the dull sand-and-pine scenery of an
occasional Sunday trip; and he would be reminded of captures that had seemed
to him so miraculous in his boyhood as he melancholically gazed at the
familiar fauna about him, limited by a familiar landscape, to which it
corresponded as hopelessly as he to his street. From a roadside shrub he
would pick up a large turquoise-green caterpillar with a china-blue horn on
the last ring; there it lay quite stiff on the palm of his hand, and
presently, with a sigh, he would put it back on its twig as if it were some
dead trinket. Analysis/Synthesis Boy, do we have a lot to talk about. "The Aurelian," being as it is a relatively popular Nabokov story, deserves ample attention for the masses, but nobody wants the standard-order drivel that so often appears in places such as these (though never at the Nabokov Assignment, I assure you). The story, in short, is about a shop owner named Paul Pilgram (the two appellative indicators of "wandering" being, in this case, pure irony on Nabokov's part). For in reality, Pilgram goes nowhere (see excerpt above). At the same time, he dreams immensely about traveling all over the world on a lepidopterological (butterfly-related) voyage―perhaps something that could help his business, since, along with school supplies, butterfly memorabilia is what he sells. His reasons for abstaining from travel lying squarely in his head (even though pecuniary constraints are alluded to), Pilgram continues his days eagerly anticipating arrivals of pinned, spread butterflies and boxed pupae. A famous collector's widow gives Pilgram a box of "small, clear-winged moths that mimic wasps or mosquitoes" to sell on commission, and he tells her that it would likely only fetch 75 marks, whereas it is truly worth fifty times that. [Remember this plot point]. A while later, a wealthy amateur collector strolls casually into Pilgram's store, and eventually, after a little dallying, buys the clear-winged moths, giving the proprietor a huge profit. Within days the exchange is made, and Pilgram decides to go on his long-awaited trip. His wife, Eleanor, is oblivious to any of this excitement, and it's probably just as well since Pilgram has no intention of taking her along. She leaves for a wedding that evening. The ending will probably seem so bizarre to you; I'm not sure how to put it: Pilgram has a stroke and dies before leaving the shop. With that out of the way, let's go! I have two things to say, and they're remarkably simple points (yet watch how I complicate them): Point the first: Objectively speaking, this story has a "twist ending," but Nabokov's brand of this is so utterly different than anyone else's, I must explain it. Kate Chopin, for instance, and William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) are two people known for their surprise endings, but this is their breed: Person X is going along in life as a shoe salesman; everyday when X picks up a shoe, X is fearful for some peculiar reason; suddenly, on a sunny day, X is crushed to death when a giant shoe billboard falls on X's head; the end. How ironic, how funny, how potentially thought-inspiring. But Nabokov has a different technique. First of all, he's not adverse to foreshadowing. In fact, we know that Pilgram has had a stroke before (when he had bent down to remove his shoes), and that, being an older man, he is somewhat susceptible to illness and disease. Second, there is a reason other than novelty for the ending in Nabokov's case (Chopin's, too, occasionally). It is Pilgram's fear that oppresses him, that and his obsessiveness when it comes to living through other people. In many ways the latter of these two allows the former, since it breeds a complacency in his life. Nabokov, an artist, and a human being with an evident imagination, is ostensibly accusing somebody of being too imaginative, too absorbed in the lives of others. It seems a fair accusation since Nabokov was no idler; he led lepidopterological trips all over the world. It was scouring the U.S. for butterflies that he witnessed many of the locales that would appear in Lolita (1955). Nabokov may also have been challenging himself, writing, at age thirty-one, to the older Nabokov to say, "Listen, buddy: you're never too old to live life; it's when you start living through others that you also start dying." Point the second: Pilgram is despicable. Really, he is. First of all, he's a recluse who has no affection for the children that sometimes wander in his shop (for erasers, say). Next, he doesn't seem faced with a moral dilemma when he decides to rip off the widow with the expensive moth collection. Finally, he is fully prepared to leave "a helpless Eleanor, debts, unpaid taxes, a store," etc. So w h y, then, do we not hate this man? This, I think, is the essence of the story. The more we are able to relate to a character (and by "character" I mean the fundamental drive of a person, their motivation in life as it is expressed by the author), the less likely we are to hate him for his inadequacies, failings or flaws, and the more likely we are to like her for her goodness or desire to change, to become better.
There is no Point the third. Goodnight. Additional Links:
More about this story
here.
A Dashing Fellow,
(early)
1930s Excerpt
The suitcase with the swanky stickers contained (among
other meretricious articles) samples of a highly fashionable kind of
vanity-bag looking glass; little things neither round, nor square, but
Phantasie-shaped, say, like a daisy or a butterfly or a heart. Meanwhile
came the beer. She examined the little mirrors and looked in them at
herself; blinks of light shot across the compartment. She downed the beer
like a trooper, and with the back of her hand removed the foam from her
orange-red lips. Kostenka fondly replaced the samples in the valise and put
it back on the shelf. All right, let's begin. Analysis/Synthesis Dashing as this fellow, Konstantin, may be, he's really a cad. Here's the scoop. A traveler hits on (preys upon) a woman in his train car. Going out of his way to stay with her for a night, he ends up partially satisfying himself only to leave her alone fixing a meal. Did I mention that Katya withholds the possibly important detail about her father being on his death bed? That happens too. In addition to its ignominious main character, this story also has a peculiar narrative method (for more on that, see the link below). It begins in a plural first person voice (Our this, we that) and gradually fades into the third person. The last sentence of the story, however, is "And then, sometime later, we die," showing a return to the original narrative strategy. What is Nabokov telling us? What are this story's merits? Why am I framing large, ambiguous questions? Why might a writer like Nabokov find it necessary to defame a class of individuals who already have a poor reputation? Is that question any less vague? There is a scene in Domicile Conjugal (1970) in which Christine (Claude Jade) tells her husband Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud), "When you settle accounts from life in your art, it's not art anymore," (paraphrasing). My point: Nabokov isn't merely getting revenge on a shallow fellow the author spotted on a train. He's doing something grander. And if he isn't, I am. Watch how grand! I can even begin another paragraph. I keep going back to Wilde's view of art. But see, I'm reading Carver, too. That's my other, unpublished story-a-day. I read this Carver version of art, this Nabokov version of art―the whole time having Wilde in my head―and wouldn't you know I began Absalom, Absalom today; throw Faulkner in the mix and that results in one confused me. Not confused because there necessarily has to be one type of acceptable art, or even that there are certain guidelines for art (that we can all agree upon, anyway). Anybody could write a paper on "A Dashing Fellow": sure. You might talk about the symbolism or that Skaz narration at the beginning, the train episode (Nabokov loved them), or the Freud dig (Nabokov thought him a quack). But the average twenty-year-old who is surfing the net at 1:30am on a school night, what is he to glean from this story―or even this "Analysis/Synthesis"? What am I analyzing, and for heaven's sake, what am I synthesizing? Additional Links:
More about this story
here. NOTE It is, here, cropped, and there are strange, undefined, palm- or fern-shaped shadows behind the head. It is a portrait, a head shot. Nabokov's seventeen-year-old head occupies seventy-five percent of the picture. He wears a bow tie over a starched white collar. His jacket, which soon fades out of the picture, is dark, maybe black. The man himself―the boy, I guess―has a serious look, with eyes that are kind of tired or lazy or deceitful: inquisitive. They are more blank than that, though. If his eyes could have spoken, they would have said, Hurry up and take the picture, for I cannot move while you fiddle around beneath that tattered black cloth, which, in all likelihood, will let sunlight through to the negative and wash out the picture. Yes, the eyes are saying, Be done with this, but the lips, the lips are pursed. My theory has to do with his teeth. Nabokov, in a shot from the mid '20s, was having so much fun (or maybe is so confused) that he forgot to close his mouth, revealing an uneven row of top teeth; this is how I came up with the theory. So in this picture, the one from 1916, the boy has his lips closed intentionally over his teeth, granting a bold shadow on the region known as the philtrum, that indentation that separates the two halves of the maxillary labia, the fold that runs from the middle of one's top lip to the bottom of the nose. The nose is long but indistinguishable, neither pointy nor rounded. It is white, though, since the shadow lies all on the left side of his face. The perspective is largely from this side as well. As a result, his right ear is just a tiny protrusion of cartilage. His hair, dark brown, is combed over his head from the left to the right, and in a place that seems unnatural, as if it were either the wrong side, or an inch off. Eyebrows normal―almost too wide apart. The last thing of any notice (other than his skin―he has excellent skin) is his chin. It has the definite appearance of two separate bones uniting (so that there is an indentation, but not a cleft), and is broad, flattened. Maybe Nabokov lay often on his belly while reading at night, by candlelight, from such a young age that it prevented the points that sometime occur in people. Again, his look says, I am seventeen years old, and I am not a child, and I am serious, and my chin is slightly lowered to give the appearance of a shorter neck, and my lips are covering my teeth, which slightly embarrass me in photographs, and my eyes betray neither a sleepiness nor an excitement. I see no happiness in the picture. I wouldn't guess that he was happy. He is serious. He thinks, Is the picture done yet?
A
Bad Day,
1931 Excerpt
Peter sat on the box of the open carriage, next to the
coachman (he was not particularly fond of that seat, but the coachman and
everybody at home thought he liked it extremely, and he on his part did not
want to hurt people, so this is how he came to be sitting there, a sallow
faced, gray-eyed youngster in a smart sailor blouse). The pair of well-fed
black horses, with a gloss on their fat croups and something extraordinarily
feminine about their long manes, kept lashing their tails in sumptuous
fashion as they progressed at a rippling trot, and it pained one to observe
how avidly, despite that movement of tails and that twitching of tender
ears―despite, too, the thick tarry odor of the repellent in use―dull gray
deerflies, or some big gadfly with shimmery eyes bulging, would stick to the
sleek coats. Analysis/Synthesis Knock-knock stick in summertime reminds me of this Missouri holiday trip I took just before the fourth of july (capitalized in other settings―I'm well aware) during which I met this man (who happened to be my cousin, estranged for something like two-thousand-one-hundred-and-ninety days) and this boy, my cousin's brother, and hence, also my cousin. So while we played around the giant bur oak, which the country-guitar-playing Rodney swore he'd cut down some day to make himself a deck or a gazebo or a dock to float down on the little lake a quarter-mile away, while we ran down the hill and back up through the long grass, whipping our bare shins, and the short grass, tickling our open toes, the world went on, the adults spoke of something highly significant, something that would probably be discussed on the nightly news (not discussed so much as presented―not presented so much as alluded to), and the sky grew duskier and duskier until the glowbugs or fireflies (depending on your preference) began lighting up in little patches―then swarms―over here by the oak, and then down there by the path to the gravel driveway, and then right up on the porch. We three, me in the middle and insisting we remain silent when the fireworks first went off, we came to some sort of understanding that day, as if seeing someone else and hearing someone else is enough to make you more sure of who you are, and of what you are and what you think and believe. Crack, the fireworks would crack and spit up into the air from anonymous neighbors in such a rural, grassy area. We breathed heavy from the tag game―that was the point of this whole thing―and watched the assault on the sky, told the fireflies they finally had some competitors. A cousin―I don't remember which―lighted firecrackers that sprayed sparks and exploded with a sound that rattled the house's windows a hundred feet away, then lighted roman candles, glorified paper towel tubes that shot flaming cannonballs toward the direction they were pointed, while I, unadjusted to the humidity in a summer month, waved my arms like flightless chicken-wings to dry them, wipe away the moisture and dampness that was so bad my aunt ran the air conditioner all night inside; and I watched...watched the people, simple, having fun with fire, with risk, and listened to the muted sound of crying from behind me through the ajar porch door.
"A Bad Day" is about a young boy, Peter―a boy who shall
return in "Orache"―and his traumatic, though endearing and innocent,
experiences during a birthday celebration. This is the first story of the
collection that has focused on a young child. The bad day is not that bad.
It is not terrible. But from the boy's perspective, it's the worst day
imaginable, a day filled with rejection and loneliness. He is left alone
while the other children play a version of hide-and-seek. They call it
palochka-stukalochka (knock-knock stick). Peter is hiding but left
alone. An old woman finds him and hides him upstairs. He is utterly alone,
but it's not so bad, really. It's part of life. The sad part is the
remembering, Nabokov's dedication to set down the whole
ordeal―autobiographical or not―so that we relive it and our own pasts, our
own loneliness. Additional Links:
More about this story
here. The
Visit to the Museum, c.1931 Excerpt
I made an inward resolution not to carry out the
request―I could always tell him I had fallen ill or changed my itinerary.
The very notion of seeing sights, whether they be museums or ancient
buildings, is loathsome to me; besides, the good freak's commission seemed
absolute nonsense. It so happened, however, that, while wandering about
Montisert's empty streets in search of a stationary store, and cursing the
spire of a long-necked cathedral, always the same one, that kept popping up
at the end of every street, I was caught in a violent downpour which
immediately went about accelerating the fall of the maple leaves, for the
fair weather of a southern October was holding on by a mere thread. I dashed
for cover and found myself on the steps of the museum. Analysis/Synthesis A friend of the narrator's insists that a Montisert museum houses a portrait of his grandfather, and insists that the narrator, on his next visit, attempt to purchase the painting. The narrator (whom we'll call M. Narrateur) thinks this an awfully bizarre story, especially since the portrait was ostensibly painted by Leroy. M. Narrateur miraculously finds himself at the museum (perhaps hinting at the extraordinary events to follow), and finds the painting. It indeed exists. He tracks down the director at his house, and offers to buy the work, but he (the director, M. Godard) insists the museum doesn't have such a painting. They return to the museum together, and find the painting. To escape the boisterous youths who have peopled the cavernous building, they retreat through some passage with the intent to discuss the sale. M. Narrateur soon finds himself lost and alone as he wanders through room after room with strange exhibits. Then there is snow. He is in Russia again, post-revolution. The moral of the story is, apparently, don't do favors based on the insanity of others... but this is quite a unique ending. In fact, beginning with M. Narrateur's exit from reality (to which he actually returns in the last paragraph), the story becomes unbalanced. The imaginary fulcrum is immediately slod into place ("slod" being the past participle of the verb "to slide," in this instance; "slid" sounding horribly dissonant in its place) when he yells, "Enough!" and "I'm leaving. We'll talk tomorrow," and the second "part" never really manages to achieve stability. Now, this is not to say that any story that deals in the currency of unreality-by-way-of-reality necessarily has to have, word for word, the same amount of attention paid to each realm. Not so. The problem becomes expectation and foresight. We as readers build up an expectation (that is either ignored or fulfilled), and we also think back to what we have just read to see if, in some magical way, it led us to where we have been brought (or dragged) by the author. I see amazing potential in this story, and it almost excites me as much as a story I think to be flawless. What I see (but might not have the guts to tell V.N. to his face if a meeting were arranged) is a chain of magic and hope and imagination that pulls M. Narrateur back to his exiled land. If we were told anything about the narrator's émigré life or his Russian past, then such a chain―a pull―is justified. It is October, though.
A note on the date of this story. Nabokov mentions that
it was first published in 1939 in Sovremennyya Zapiski in Paris, but
Dmitri seems to have evidence that it was written in 1931. At least, that's
what I'm inferring since the author's son and translator put this story―in a
collection arranged chronologically―smack between two others written in
1931. Additional Links:
More about this story
here. A
Busy Man, 1931 Excerpt
If, however, thought Graf, there is no hereafter, then
away with it goes everything else that involves the idea of an independent
soul, away goes the possibility of omens and presentiments; all right, let
us be materialists, and therefore, I, a healthy individual with a healthy
heredity shall, probably, live half a century more, and so why yield to
neurotic illusions―they are only the result of a certain temporary
instability of my social class, and the individual is immortal inasmuch as
his class is immortal―and the great class of the bourgeoisie (continued
Graf, now thinking aloud with disgusting animation), our great and powerful
class shall conquer the hydra of the proletariat, for we, too, slave-owners,
corn merchants, and their loyal troubadours, must step onto the platform of
our class (more zip, please), we all, the bourgeois of all countries, the
bourgeois of all lands...and nations, arise, our oil-mad (or gold-mad?)
kollektiv, down with plebian miscreations―and now any verbal adverb
ending in 'iv' will do as a rhyme; after that two more strophes and
again: up, bourgeois of all lands and nations! long live our sacred
kapitál! Tra-ta-ta (anything in '-ations'), our bourgeois
Internatsionál! Is the result witty? Is it amusing? Analysis/Synthesis
What a charming little story! Don't you think it's
charming, Maxwell? I thought it fabulous how this gentleman, Nabokov, was
able to begin a story about such vague and boring subjects (death,
immortality, fear-of-death, fear-of-immortality, presentience) and end it so
concretely, so artfully. Because, as Maxwell said, there is such a turn of
humanism, of art towards the part...oh, which part Maxwell? Yes, on
the fourth page when Graf is awaiting his birthday. The notion of the
story―I mean the story itself―is fascinating: I mean, who hasn't
had faint memories of things..."recollections of recollections," I think he
put it―Nabokov put it. Graf has got this terrible memory: 33. He doesn't
know what it means, and can only figure that it is the year of his death
(and he's soon approaching). That fear he had, so mortal, so...so...what do
I want to say, Maxwell? So infinite, yes, that Graf can scarcely look
beyond it. When he hits thirty-three it's a terrible year for him, since he
thinks he may kick the proverbial bucket at any moment whatsoever. He stops
shaving―I suppose he couldn't find a safety razor, Maxwell?―and dining out.
And now, cleverly, the story is no longer a polemic, no longer some
wandering abstraction about life and loss, but instead a suspense story:
Graf has got moments to go. The poor man even decides to throw a birthday
party for himself―his thirty-fourth―as he knows he is so near this imaginary
finish line. I know, I know, Maxwell, it was a good metaphor―the imaginary
finish line. Graf, of course, doesn't die on his birthday, the prophesy
turns out false, and he's left at a new beginning. The point, as Maxwell is
interjecting, is that we have a habit of doing this: of creating false
finish lines, momentary points of death which all but require a rebirth
afterwards. But I rather think it's a part of who we are, as humans, I mean.
I can't see us not breaking life into segments, chapters, stories,
pages, paragraphs. I envision the acceptance of an ending as a chance
for a beginning. We all need beginnings―even Maxwell―and ought not waste
them. Living one's life in fear, though―that's a pretty regular
occurrence as
well, and not really a desirable one. But is fear avoidable? I don't know.
You'll have to ask Maxwell that one. Maxwell, where did you go? Additional Links:
More about this story
here.
Terra Incognita, 1931 Excerpt
The sound of the waterfall grew more and more muffled,
until it finally dissolved altogether, and we moved on through the wildwood
of a hitherto unexplored region. We walked, and had been walking, for a long
time already―in front, Gregson and I; our eight native porters behind, one
after the other; last of all, whining and protesting at every step, came
Cook. I knew that Gregson had recruited him on the advice of a local hunter.
Cook had insisted that he was ready to do anything to get out of Zonraki,
where they pass half the year brewing their von-gho and the other
half drinking it. It remained unclear, however―or else I was already
beginning to forget many things, as we walked on and on―exactly who this
Cook was (a runaway sailor, perhaps?). Analysis/Synthesis
"What a terrific story!" I shout to myself. Then, in
slight disagreement, I argue: "There were a few awkward things about it. For
instance..." but I cut myself off. "Listen for just a minute," I say, "so I
can tell you about the story." It kills me to keep quiet for any length of
time, but I know there are other people around, so I shut up. I continue. "I
see a triad: Gregson, some sort of natural leader, Cook, a definite clown
and weakling, and the narrator (Vallière), the prism through which these two
notions are refracted. What I'd like to put forth is the idea that Vallière
is, like Gregson, some sort of explorer, a scientist―probably an
entomologist―but he is also, we're told (by his relatively unreliable lips),
quite weak, and in danger of collapsing (at worst) or hallucinating (at
best). Cook, then, is an overweight bumbling fool, who, at one point,
encourages the natives to abandon the trip. Unable to keep up with the very
deserters he had just told to flee, Cook rejoins his party in a last ditch
effort at self-preservation. It's when―" "Wait, wait, wait. You've had your
ten minutes, now let me tell you how much of a waste of time this is. Cook,
you see, doesn't exist. Gregson, I imagine, is Vallière's good friend who is
eagerly waiting for him to improve in health. Cook is imagined, I think. He
is the Shakespearean fool (says the narrator), and likely exists only in
shadow, only as―" "In shadow? What are you talking about? This is
an―" Both of me rest for a minute, each half trying to remain calm to
prevent any real fireworks. "This is an adventure story," I say. "It's a
story about bug collectors trying to survive harsh conditions without the
help of guides." I shake my head like a disturbed patient. "No...no! Look at
the name of the butterflies! They're named after the narrator!" "That
doesn't mean a thing," I counter. "Well, listen. We're going to have to
agree to disagree here, because I really don't see room for compromise. I'm
not willing to budge." "Me neither," I say. I pause for a long while. "I
suppose we could be grateful for the substance that allows such
introspection, such division." "Be glad for division?―are you crazy?"
Instead of just jumping back at myself, I truly take a few seconds to think
about the answer to this question. "No. No, I'm not crazy," I say. "If
everything were as it seemed, what fun would anything be?" "You have lost
your mind," I say. "You've lost it and there's no hope for you, unless you
find someone else who is willing to pretend to be one thing while they're
really another. As far as I know, I'm the only one like that already, and
you can't find me since I'm already here. Are you following this?" I think
again. "Yes, I think so." Additional Links:
More about this story
here.
The Reunion, 1931 Excerpt
Serafim gave a wave of his spread hand, and his broad
back hunched over and vanished into the depths. Lev started walking back
slowly, across the square, past the post office and the beggar woman....
Suddenly he stopped short. Somewhere in his memory there was a hint of
motion, as if something very small had awakened and begun to stir. The word
was still invisible, but its shadow had already crept out as from behind a
corner, and he wanted to step on that shadow to keep it from retreating and
disappearing again. Alas, he was too late. Everything vanished, but, at the
instant his brain ceased straining, the thing stirred again, more
perceptibly this time, and like a mouse emerging from a crack when the room
is quiet, there appeared, lightly, silently, mysteriously, the live
corpuscle of a word.... "Give me your paw, Joker." Joker! How simple it was.
Joker.... Analysis/Synthesis The reunion. Life is made up of separations and reunions, I figure. We meet, move on, and meet again. In this case it's Lev and his brother, Serafim. In this case Lev fled Russia after the revolution, while Serafim stayed behind, and they haven't seen one another in ten years. I don't think I've ever reunited with someone after ten years. A few years, maybe. Five years. Well, there was Gloria―that was a long time. Eight years? Jasmine: eight years, too. But those were relatively inconsequential relationships, nothing like a brother-pair. This is a beautiful story―a moment story. This is the name I give to stories whose essence is a moment, the rest of the story existing only to support that moment, to enrich it. I used to (incorrectly, I now see) consider every story a moment story, but this is not the case. There are many other types of stories, but this story is a moment story, and I've included the moment above. That up there is almost all of the moment; there's a bit more after that paragraph, when Lev thinks "how Serafim, sitting in his subterranean car, might have remembered too." Lev and Serafim are brothers separated by politics and borders and economic systems. They seem only to agree on science. But they are human, are brothers. They clear their throats at the same time, awkwardly. They both fail to remember the name of the poodle that frequented their neighborhood as children. Lev remembers it after his brother leaves, but does Serafim remember too? He might have. Lev moves on and decided to go visit with friends.
I wonder how a reunion would work with someone close to
you, someone like a brother. There must exist this undying and unconditional
love between siblings, between parents and children; I think that is
Nabokov's point in this story―not so much that there is such a love,
but that we believe it, that we hope for it. We hope, on a Christmas night,
with post offices and beggar women passing, that two brothers are thinking
of the same forgotten memory―a word, a name, the name of a dog: Joker.
Additional Links:
More about this story
here.
Lips to Lips,
c.1931 Excerpt
The author was terribly impatient to plunge with his hero
and heroine into that starry night. Still one had to get one's coats, and
that interfered with the glamour. Ilya Borisovich reread what he had
written, puffed out his cheeks, stared at the crystal paperweight, and
finally made up his mind to sacrifice glamour to realism. This did not prove
simple. His leanings were strictly lyrical, descriptions of nature and
emotions came to him with surprising facility, but on the other hand he had
a lot of trouble with routine items, such as, for instance, the opening and
closing of doors, or shaking hands when there were numerous characters in a
room, and one person or two persons saluted many people. Analysis/Synthesis This story reveals a sizable piece of the Nabokov who would continue on to write Pale Fire. "Lips to Lips," it is called, after the title of a book by the same name, a fictional work written by the fictional Ilya Borisovich Tal, himself a fictional character in Nabokov's "Lips to Lips," the very same work I mentioned in the beginning of this sentence. Presumably, based on the note by V.N. to this story, many, if not all, of the characters here were composites or caricatures of real émigré writers, editors and society people. That matters little to us now. I can't think why I even mentioned it. There's no use dwelling on it. Yes!―as I was saying, the Nabokov who would write Pale Fire. Two methods of composing, Shade says.
A, the kind In "Lips to Lips" (the Nabokov story―not the novel by I.B. Tal), we see an author who pushes out a sentimental work to see his esteem rise. Unfortunately, no one will print it. An émigré journal out of France seems interested, but they sadly admit they have not the funds to print another issue. Ilya Borisovich forwards them the money to make ends meet, and they print his story (under a pseudonym, and only the prologue―which had been Chapter One in the manuscript). In this manner of serialization, the journal, Arion, could theoretically thrive long into the future on his patronage. But that method B up there...
In method B the hand supports the thought, Nabokov, in 1931, is well aware of the fascinating dualisms that can exists in texts, and between authors and readers. In reading "Lips to Lips," I found myself unknowingly prescribing a later version of his thoughts on an earlier work, retrospectively appending themes that didn't exactly exist. But I suppose it is always the commentator who has the last word. But method A is agony!
More about this story
here.
Orache, 1932 Excerpt
As Peter was on his way down, his father came out of his
study, accompanied by Colonel Rozen, who had once been engaged to the
long-dead young sister of Peter's father. Peter dared not glance at his
father and when the latter's large palm, emitting familiar warmth, touched
the side of his son's head, Peter blushed to the point of tears. It was
impossible, unbearable, to think that this man, the best person on earth,
was going to duel with some dim Enigmanski. Using what weapons?
Pistols? Swords? Why does nobody talk about it? Do the servants know? The
governess? Mother in Mentone? Analysis/Synthesis I don't know why this fascinates me, but it does. The title. "Orache." The title is a section of a poem that Peter incorrectly remembers. He thinks "or ache"―"or" as in the conjunction offering an alternative and "ache" as in "feel pain." That is well and fine. But the original title of this story, which was written in Russian, of course, was "Lebeda," a phrase distorted this way in the original: "ili bedoy." But the schoolteacher who corrects young Peter (the same boy in "A Bad Day") says it's not "bedoy," but "lebedoy." Lebedoy, lebeda, bedoy, beda. Maybe Nabokov was going over these words when he penned the beginning of Lolita. Maybe not. So, "miraculous" translation tidbit aside, "Orache" is a story about a boy who worries over his father's potential duel. In fact, we don't even learn of the encounter until young Peter does: in school, as a topic in a magazine. His father being relatively important in the Parliament, news of the duel spreads fast, leaving the poor boy frenetic and worrisome while he imagines the worst possible outcome. Peter seems uncomfortable asking about it. At the end of the story we learn what Peter learns: no one was injured in the duel. Word comes from a newspaper that Peter's schoolmates have.
Nabokov mentions in a note that this story echoes events
described in his autobiography (an autobiography of sorts), Speak, Memory.
People get all worked up thinking that these two Peters (the one here and
the one in "A Bad Day") signal an effort on Nabokov's part to write a
quasi-autobiographical novel in the early 1930s. Two years after this story
was published (in 1934), President Hindenburg died at age 87, and Hitler
assumed presidency. In November of 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was elected
president of the United States. Meanwhile, Nabokov was writing. Additional Links:
More about this story
here. Music,
1932 Excerpt
"We'll be happy forever"―what melody in that phrase, what
shimmer! She was velvet-soft all over, one longed to gather her up the way
one could gather up a foal and its folded legs. Embrace her and fold her.
And then what? What could one do to possess her completely? I love your
liver, your kidneys, your blood cells. To this she would reply, "Don't be
disgusting." They lived neither in luxury nor in poverty, and went swimming
in the sea almost all year round. The jellyfish, washed up onto the shingly
beach, trembled in the wind. The Crimean cliffs glistened in the spray. Once
they saw fishermen carrying away the body of a drowned man; his bare feet,
protruding from under the blanket, looked surprised. In the evenings she
used to make cocoa. Analysis/Synthesis I remember the Crimean waves lapping the shore, shaking jellyfish and slowing hulking men in wooden rowboats who dangle their oars, water drops falling randomly back to the sea. I think these thoughts to remind me of what I had, because what I had, in physical form, happens to be across the room, sitting with downcast eyes as she listens, musically, to Wolf play the piano. I remember when she told me everything, and when, after we were married, the sound of the rain drowned out the sound of the sea. We are now only across the room from each other, a room populated with twenty pleasant people, all listening to Wolf play something that, to me, sounds like the patter of a conversation in a strange tongue. What an uncomfortable situation! Had I only had the decency to wait before coming into the room, not tiptoed gracelessly to the seat directly behind this lupine pianist, a commanding man, no less, and one whom I might admire if I only knew how to listen. But listening is out of the question, just as that day when a westerly wind so thoroughly shook me I couldn't even remotely hear the sound of the endlessly crunching sea. I will always connect her to the water, my wife with the waves. Now, though, I can hear the sound of the piano, see the clownish mimicry of the hammers as they dance along the wooden levers whose ivory handles Wolf heatedly hits, feel the resonance of the enchanting notes that move in clumps, in bits. My ex-wife-who-left-me-for-the-man-who-spoke-of-artesian-wells stands now―I faintly hear applause, which grows louder―and she walks over to the hostess and asks to be dismissed.
But all this time, as the dew drops of sweat descended
and raced down my forehead, I thought I was being pulled by the grand piano
magnet into a place of malaise, into a world whose violent piano sounds
drown out the lulling waves of the sea and children running down and along
the beach, when in fact I should have been welcoming it, should have reveled
in the discomfort, for it truly was bliss to once again breathe the same
air, whether foul and stale from the lifeless listening bodies that
sometimes blocked my view of her, and to be compelled to sit
face-to-face some twenty feet apart. Wolf lowers the lid and my ex-wife
slides out of the room. Everything is broken and scattered. Additional Links:
More about this story
here.
NOTE Age 30. Nineteen twenty-nine. What I notice now, for the first time, is the lines and shadows of his oddly shaped ear―his left only, pictured here, as his head is slightly turned from his even more off-center body. Lacking a hanging lobe, it is largely squared at the corners, his concha fairly shallow, his helix overhanging deeply at the top, his tragus all but invisible in this grainy, over-enlarged photograph that cuts his suited body off at the breast. His suit is gray, his tie plaid, and the right side of his face is generally in shadow. There appears to be a bit of a smirk on his face, but in fact it's a suppressed smile. The photographer―yes, I can see him too, leaning forward awkwardly underneath a black square of fabric, adjusting the bellows and announcing, in his bass voice, Smile a bit, Vladimir―the photographer goads him but fails. There's a butterfly on your head, Nabokov, he says. But all we get are those two almost kind eyes, each tapering downward slightly at the opposite ends, and that narrow face that peaks in an expansive forehead (his hairline receding). He thinks, I've got better things to do, but, at the same time, I hope the picture turns out well. Perfection,
1932 Excerpt
Sometimes, as he looked at a chimney sweep (that
indifferent carrier of other people's luck, whom women in passing touched
with superstitious fingers), or at an airplane overtaking a cloud, Ivanov
daydreamed about the many things that he would never get to know closer,
about professions that he would never practice, about a parachute, opening
like a colossal corolla, or the fleeting, speckled world of automobile
racers, about various images of happiness, about the pleasures of very rich
people amid very picturesque natural surroundings. His thought fluttered and
walked up and down the glass pane which for as long as he lived would
prevent him from having direct contact with the world. Analysis/Synthesis "Although I did tutor boys in my years of expatriation, I disclaim any other resemblance between myself and Ivanov." Nabokov wrote this as a note to the story in Tyrants Destroyed (1975). It hardly seems necessary to tell the reader this because it assumes two things: first, that readers automatically associate a character in a story with its author, and second, that people would not know Nabokov well enough to see the glaring differences between he and Ivanov (despite their similar location and profession). Maybe V.N. intended some irony when he wrote the comment―I don't know. This story is about a tutor who is asked to accompany his tutee to the Baltic Sea after the boy's mother "shan't be able to go." The tutor, Ivanov, is a sheltered man; he feels congratulatory for removing his shoes at the beach. Every other inch of his skin is, to be sure, covered. In thinking back on this story from, say, the year 2040, I could imagine forgetting (despite its relative profundity) mention of Ivanov's loss of a potential son and his lover. We are told that his mistress died of a miscarriage some years back, and that David, his tutee, would be about his child's age at the time of the story. How much of a father is Ivanov to David? He is rather removed, distant. He worries over the boy, but does not have a deep connection with him. Fathers and sons... I find myself wondering about the perfection of "Perfection." I suppose it is Ivanov's rebirth, his baptism that allows him to see things anew. The wave that hits Ivanov results in him feeling "enclosed in a tight painfully cold sack." When he is pushed to the sand, miraculously, everything is "perfectly still." He had been panicking when David was sucked under the water, and now everything was peaceful even though the boy was lost. In a moment Ivanov reconciles the loss to himself. Soon the boy is standing before him, though. David is not lost. But exactly where is Ivanov? To find peace from such a tumultuous moment, he must be in a very unique place, perhaps not on the sand at all.
"Perfection" begins on page 338 of "The Stories of
Vladimir Nabokov," and ends on page 347. Excluding notes, there are 642
pages in the collection. The remaining stories are, in average, 11.259 pages
in length. In fact, the 259 seems to repeat ad infinitum. Additional Links:
More about this story
here.
The Admiralty Spire,
1933 Excerpt
Imagine the following: suppose I once took a walk through
a marvelous landscape, where turbulent waters tumble and bindweed chokes the
columns of desolate ruins, and then, many years later, in a stranger's
house, I come across a snapshot showing me in a swaggering pose in front of
what is obviously a pasteboard pillar; in the background there is the
whitish smear of a daubed-in cascade, and somebody has inked a moustache on
me. Where did the thing come from? Take away this horror! The dinning waters
I remember were real, and, what is more, no one took a picture of me there. Analysis/Synthesis If I can, in this brief space, convey even one hundredth of the brilliance of this story, then I will have succeeded in my task. It's not that, taken as a whole, it deserves a place on some arbitrary "top ten" list, but that in crafting it, Nabokov really outdid himself relative to all of the stories that precede it. The story takes the form of a letter―not a fan letter, we're told very early on. Soon we realize that it is addressed to a woman, an author who wrote a book (titled, of course, The Admiralty Spire) that proved impressionable to the letter writer (whom I'll call the narrator from now on). But just as we grow comfortable thinking of this female author, we learn that she is really a man, one named Serge Solntsev. The narrator seems to think this is a pseudonym for the female author he envisions. Point number one. Next (more or less) comes the excerpt above. He follows that with an explanation: "[Y]ou, Madam, wrote the story of my first love." So this, we now know, is the point of the letter. The narrator feels his own past has been co-opted by an author (her sex proving important later), and inappropriately so. Her mistake, he claims, is the radical distortion of the facts. He takes fault with every exaggerated description and every incomplete explanation. The backdrop of the February Revolution irritates him because, he says, "Katya and I were too absorbed in each other to pay much attention to the Revolution." The name changes (hers from Katya to Olga and his from ? to Leonid) also bother the narrator. What we are witnessing, then, is the creation of an antithetical text by virtue of its rebuttal. The Admiralty Spire (as a novel) does not exist, so its creation relies entirely upon this fuming letter. As a result, we get "The Admiralty Spire," and the conception of The Admiralty Spire. It doesn't stop there. Finally we learn that the narrator does not suspect, as author, a random female acquaintance of his first love, but Katya herself. This comes after a long, romantic and nostalgic passage that relives the collapse of their relationship and shows a man who is still, sixteen years after the fact, coping with loss. The novel he found so stirred his passion that he had to address its author as this woman he loved. "Katya, why have you made such a mess of it now?"
This is what closes the loop, though: the story of the
narrator and Katya closely mirrors one of Nabokov's own love affairs, one
prior to his marriage in the mid 1920s. So maybe it's now not merely a named
narrator (on one level), but the empathic Nabokov entering the hearts of his
past loves and acquaintances, wondering what it might be like to open a book
some random day, in some random place, and find, magically, the story of
one's youth filled with privately held and suppressed details: one's
"mirrorlike eyes reflecting the flame of the candle which on that night of
historical turbulence substituted for electric light." It's what we all
crave in a way, this connection through art. When it grows too real, though,
it can sting. Nabokov saw this. Additional Links:
More about this story
here. Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4 - Page 5
*when available and appropriate, I'll provide the
original Russian title.
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