Foster John Burt Nabokovs Art of Memory and European Modernism

1 Introduction

In the foreword to Invitation to a Beheading, Vladimir Nabokov states that 'I could never understand why every book of mine invariably sends reviewers scurrying in search of more or less celebrated names for the purpose of passionate comparison' (7–viii). In doing and then, he suggests that such comparative analysis is misinformed, even futile.^[1] Equally tin be seen in Strong Opinions, Nabokov keenly insisted that his texts should be understood neither through the lens of his life, nor his reading:

I may imagine, for example, two writers, A and B, completely different but both under a certain Proustian influence; this influence goes unnoticed by reader C inasmuch equally each of the three (A, B, and C) has understood Proust in his ain manner. It happens that a writer has an oblique influence through another writer, or that some sort of complex blending of influences takes place, and then on. One may not foresee anything in this regard. (283)

Such aversion to cryptogrammatical interpretation augments his claim that, 'Alas, I am not one to provide much sport for influence hunters' (SO 152). Yet, although the question of literary influence is indeed potentially obfuscating – what Nabokov calls 'a night and unclear thing' (ibid.) – it has value for at least three reasons. First, recognizing and identifying specific references between one text and another allows readers to theorize about both the dissemination of the before text and why the author of the subsequently text would engage with the former. 2d, such interpretative context can indicate to a broader literary context: whether, for example, it adheres to the pastoral genre or the comedic. Third, and perhaps most greatly, the human relationship between two or more authors tin can be seen every bit constitutive of texts, something articulated in T. Due south. Eliot's 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1917), Mikhail Bakhtin'due south Rabelais and His World (1965), Harold Bloom'southward Feet of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973), Jonathan Bate's Shakespeare 2 and Ovid (1994) or Katrin Ettenhuber'southward Donne'due south Augustine: Renaissance Cultures of Estimation (2011).

The introduction concentrates on the starting time two reasons described before, identifying specific references to the work of the High german philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Nabokov's piece of work, and providing an interpretative context for the book at large. In the chapters that follow, I will generally address the third reason, the broader relationship between Nietzsche and Nabokov, although some parts of my statement rely on Nabokov's direct and indirect references and allusions to Nietzschean ideas. Here, and throughout the following capacity, I illustrate a background of Nietzschean assumptions in Nabokov'due south work in gild to make sense of a number of persistent issues in the latter's oeuvre: the nature of the relationships between fine art and morality and author and reader, for example. The book therefore identifies a relationship between Nabokov'south texts and Nietzsche's, as well equally providing Nietzschean readings of Nabokov's work.

Nabokov's antipathy for the 'literature of ideas' seems to have largely deterred critics from 'any attempt to press his piece of work for seemingly distant sources in philosophy' (Karshan 2011a: 23), however, as Duncan White claims, 'Nabokov was interested in philosophy, especially early on in his career, and, similar many modernists, he was specially interested in issues of ontology and how these issues related to the creation of literary fine art' (2017: 67). Most philosophical studies of this kind have looked at the human relationship betwixt Nabokov and High german idealism – a motion derived from Enlightenment idea and concerned with distinctions between the heed and reality, aesthetics and universalized ideals. In Vladimir Nabokov and the Poetics of Liberalism for example, Dana Dragunoiu looks at the relationship between Nabokov and Kant, and the interplay between art and ethics more than broadly. Discussing Nabokov's Ada or Ardor: A Family unit Chronicle for example, she claims that 'Van's offhand reference to Kant [ . . . ] provides an incisive clue well-nigh the ethical dimension of Nabokov's piece of work' (2011: 143). She continues, 'as a professor of literature in the United States, Nabokov exasperated his own students by insisting that they familiarize themselves with the source of every allusion in a given literary work. Such meticulousness makes information technology reasonable to guess that he held himself to the same standard' (147). Dragunoiu'south fertile furrowing of Nabokov'southward seemingly offhand allusions, every bit well as hypothesizing virtually the sources of Nabokov'due south recurring interests, is adhered to in this written report, as is Leona Toker's arroyo in Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures. Authenticating her analysis through the fact that 'Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were widely read by Russian writers of the turn of the century', Toker claims that Arthur Schopenhauer can improve our understanding of Nabokov'due south fiction without seeking to position him every bit the latter'southward 'source' (1989: 7).

In Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Play, Thomas Karshan also explores Nabokov'southward links with Kant, more specifically Nabokov's conception of 3 play in relation to German idealism. He provides a thorough account of Kant'southward aesthetics, suggesting that 'its internal themes [are] replicated in Nabokov's work' (2011a: 26). Nonetheless, it is often hard to reconcile Kant's philosophy with the literary and moral outlook of Nabokov'southward protagonists and literary persona. Where Kant's categorical imperative, for example, stresses that one should deed equally if information technology were a universal law, Nabokov's works seem to privilege gratuitous-willed, democratic individuals who resist all-encompassing evaluation. Similarly, where Kant values disinterested aesthetic judgement, Nabokov, in 'Good Readers and Expert Writers', is keen to stress that, 'we ought to remain a footling aloof and take pleasure in this aloofness while at the same time we keenly bask – passionately enjoy, savor with tears and shivers – the inner weave of a given masterpiece. To be quite objective in these matters is of grade incommunicable. Everything that is worthwhile is to some extent subjective' (LL 4).^[2] In other words, Kant's philosophy is peradventure also objective to sit satisfactorily with Nabokov's art. Yet, his suggestion of a genealogical progression of influence – claiming that those who influenced Nabokov (such equally Friedrich Schiller, Nietzsche and Andrei Bely) were, in turn, influenced by Kant (ibid.) – is something that I advocate in this study past suggesting a kind of 'Nietzschean osmosis' through intermediary figures. Further, in undertaking an ethical and literary examination of a Nabokov's entire oeuvre through the various philosophical tenets promoted by predominantly one philosopher, I take a different approach with Nietzsche than either Dragunoiu or Karshan do regarding Kant.

Nabokov and ethics

Early English language criticism on Nabokov, heralded by Folio Stegner's Escape into Aesthetics: The Art of Vladimir Nabokov (1966), was bully to stress his aesthetic sensibilities; his privileging of fine art over moral engagement. Since this publication, and perhaps as a result of information technology, many studies have focused on the relationship between Nabokov and ethics. Following Ellen Pifer's Nabokov and the Novel (1980), studies such equally Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (1989), Leona Toker's Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary Structures (1989), Michael Forest'south The Wizard'southward Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction (1994) and Leland de la Durantaye's Way Is Affair: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov (2007) offering readings that position Nabokov as a 'hidden' moral author, a moral didact in disguise, whose aestheticism 4 cloaked an substantially Christian morality of virtue.^[3] In the concluding few years, at least 5 further studies have looked at the moral or philosophical aspect of Nabokov, all but two of which are mentioned earlier.^[4] My study continues this approach by looking at the question of Nabokov and ideals, but departs from them in illustrating the links betwixt Nabokov and a philosopher who questioned not only moral parameters, merely also, whether any item kind of morality is valid at all.

My approach differs in three important respects from those who take already engaged with Nabokov in a philosophical sense. Start, I brand a case for the socio-historical and literary touch of a single philosopher on Nabokov. Despite Nietzsche being directly, and indirectly, referred to on numerous occasions in Nabokov'south fiction, no major study has yet focused specifically on the relationship or addressed a comprehensive range of Nietzschean ideas.^[5] By tracing the links between Nabokov and Nietzsche through Russian Silvery Historic period writers and philosophers for instance, I show the direct relevance of Nietzsche's philosophy. By harnessing philosophy to explore and explain literary problems, I also open Nabokov studies more than widely to philosophers and cultural and literary theorists. The study uses Nietzsche'southward philosophy in order to explicate some of the most pressing bug in Nabokov'south fiction: coincidence and recurrence; reader-writer relations; Nabokov'due south haughtiness; his soliciting of a multiplicity of interpretations; and the 'otherworld'. Yet, to look merely at the attribute of socio-historical influence is, to a sure extent, to veer into literary biography, and is not my objective. Instead, socio-historical bear witness is used to buttress the application of Nietzsche's philosophical concepts to specific 'bug' in Nabokov's writing. 3rd, and possibly most chiefly, the study does not attach to a critical consensus in which Nabokov'southward apparent faults are forged, or reinterpreted, into benevolent acts. Like Maurice Couturier, I have issue with those who 'take tried to testify the angelic level of [Nabokov'due south] moral standards' (1996: 215). His troubling aspects, equally a result, are often looked at as 5 troubling rather than simply misunderstood. This in no way suggests that I am condemning Nabokov as a writer (it is impossible, and inappropriate hither, of course, to comment on the real figure).^[6] Rather, this study celebrates Nabokov for what I phone call his Nietzschean 'revaluation of values' – his questioning of customs, his formal and literary playfulness, and his enactment and surpassing of Nietzschean thought in exactly the way that the philosopher himself would have demanded.

Nietzsche, Soviet culture and the Russian Silver Age

In 1888, Nietzsche wrote to the Danish critic Georg Brandes with the promise of acquainting foreign readers with his piece of work. In spite of feeling that his own countrymen did not understand his writings, Nietzsche had higher hopes for French and Russian readers (despite his piece of work existence completely banned in Russia from 1872 until 1898). Although a few translations had appeared in print at the first of the 1890s, these were subject to errors, censorship and excision – Nietzsche'due south name, for example, had appeared as both 'Nitche' and 'Niche'. Understanding of Nietzsche's works, therefore, already difficult in modern, accurate translations, was muddied in early twentieth-century Russia through deleted passages and distorted translations (Clowes 1988: 47), well after the abolitionism of the ban in 1898.^[7] However, Nel Grillaert claims that 'the Russian censors could not completely preclude the gradual and oft coincidental permeation of Nietzsche's thoughts and works into Russian intellectual circles' (2008: 20–21). Censorship rules were relaxed when Nikolai II succeeded Aleksandr 3 in 1894, and in that location presently appeared a translation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Volume for Everyone and No I past Iuly Antonovsky in 1898, followed by translations of almost all of Nietzsche'due south books. Even so, fifty-fifty later on restrictions relaxing almost completely in 1906, no accurate and complete translation of Nietzsche'due south opus had been produced – Clowes observes that 'the but critical edition of Nietzsche was begun in 1909 by a diverseness of philosophers and writers, among them, S. L. Frank, G. O. Gershenzon, Balmont, Briusov, Belyi, and Ivanov. Only 4 volumes, The Birth of Tragedy (1912), Thoughts Out of Flavor (1909), Human, All Besides Human (1911), and The Will to Power (1910), were published before the projection was abandoned' (1988: 45–46). Early on responses to Nietzsche in Russia were non immediately favourable, however. In 1892, 6 although the article did much to disseminate Nietzsche's philosophy, the editors of Voprosy Filosofii Psikhologii only published Vasilii Preobrazhenskii'south article on Nietzsche to bear witness to Russian readers 'what strange and sick phenomena are presently being generated by a well-known trend in Western European culture'. Nevertheless, a series of articles on Nietzsche past the intellectual authority and theoretician Nikolai Mikhailovskii were to 'contribute to Nietzsche's growing popularity amongst the Russian intelligentsia' (Grillaert 2008: 24–32).

The interest in Nietzsche that these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian writers had seems to have 'permeated fin de siècle Russia at a fourth dimension when national consciousness was suffering an impasse' (Grillaert 2008: 1). At the turn of the twentieth century, 'critics of all different schools – the Marxist, V. Lvov-Rogachevsky; the historian of Russian modernism, S. Vengerov; and the religious thinker, Due north. Berdiaev – all coloured the period in Nietzschean terms as a time of "transvaluation of values" (pereotsenka tsennostei)' (Clowes 1988: i). As Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal claims, 'it was not and so much the straight influence of Nietzsche's ideas, though that was certainly found, that accounts for his connected presence in [Soviet] civilization, just the persistence, in transmuted course, of ideas and images that had go embedded in the culture earlier the Bolshevik Revolution' (1994: ii). She reveals the widespread appropriation of Nietzsche, from the artists and writers who hailed Nietzsche every bit the prophet of a new culture of art and beauty; to the intellectuals who took his 'revaluation of all values' as a philosophical rationale for self-assertion, artistic creativity, and enjoyment of life; to figures of the World of Fine art movement, such as Sergei Diaghilev, who mirrored his worship of art; to Maksim Gorky's cribbing of the Russian superman in justifying his break with Populism; to the 'God-seeking' movement that encompassed Symbolist writers, Idealist philosophers, and others; to the 'God-building' movement after the 1905 Revolution; to Futurists and Acmeists who broke away from Symbolist move, reading Nietzsche differently every bit they did so (1994: 2–6). In other words, 'familiarity with [Nietzsche'southward] basic ideas, directly and as popularized by Russian and Western artists and writers, was simply assumed' (6).^[8]

7

Nietzsche'south behavior in the Dionysian principle, individualist aesthetics and his mystical and religious dimension appealed most to writers such as Vyacheslav Ivanov, Andrei Bely and Aleksandr Blok (Grillaert 2008: 35–37). For Ruth Coates, Nietzsche had 'a powerful liberating effect on Russia's literary elite, since he gave them permission to slough off the burden of artistic responsibility for the people and pursue personal artistic goals' (2010: 187). The influence of Nietzsche on Russian Silver Age writers such every bit Ivanov, Bely, Blok, Ivan Bunin and Vladimir Mayakovsky is singled-out, arguably deriving from Nietzsche's ability to demarcate himself from conventional moralists and jolt his reader into a new awareness of moral valuation (Clowes 1988: 16). Bely's kickoff betoken of contact with Nietzsche was in 1899, with his essay 'Friedrich Nietzsche' appearing in 1911. John Burt Foster, in Heirs to Dionysus: A Nietzschean Current in Literary Modernism, claims that:

In Moscow, around the turn of the century, every bit Andrei Bely tells it in his autobiography, he experienced 'a simply crazed enthusiasm for Nietzsche' [ . . . ] Just Nietzsche too encouraged his literary ambitions: he was 'the creator of the most vivid images, the theoretic or esthetic meaning of which was revealed only through artistic emulation and not merely past following his thought . . . I saw in him . . . an artist of genius'. (1981: 24)

Clowes, in turn, observes that 'when he discovered Zarathustra in 1899 [ . . . ] Belyi was smitten with a "crazy passion" for Nietzsche' (1988: 153). Nosotros are reminded, in Petersburg, for example, of Dudkin telling Nikolai that 'Nosotros are all Nietzscheans [ . . . ] you lot too are a Nietzschean; only you volition never admit it' ([1916] 1995: 106). Bely'south 'symbolist brother', Alexandr Blok, as well had a strong connexion with Nietzsche. Clowes argues that 'for all the considerable differences between the Symbolist poets, Merezhkovsky, Ivanov, Blok and Bely shared much the same orientation in their separate responses to Nietzsche: all were fatigued to the religious-mythical attribute of Nietzsche's enquiry, his overarching vision of life and the role of human creativity in it' (1988: 116).

Nietzsche's initial reception in the anglophone world seemed just as unfavourable as his early Russian responses were, but for different reasons. For English-speaking readers, it is every bit easy to underestimate Nietzsche's influence in Russia as it is to ignore it. For when Nietzsche did penetrate the English-speaking globe, he was initially reviled for a hostile philosophy that would later become erroneously associated with Western proto-fascism, rather than valued as the aesthetic manifesto adopted past Russian symbolists.^[9] David Bradshaw, in A Concise Companion to Modernism, claims that eight Nietzsche had 'acquired notoriety as a name and reputation before making an informed touch on on the most serious and creative minds of the time. In particular, his reception suffered from pulp misrepresentation in Max Nordau'south Degeneration (translated into English in 1895), which was the first widespread source of information well-nigh him for many anglophone readers' (2003: 56). Nietzsche's initial anglophone reception was not helped by numerous negative reviews past critics such as F. C. Southward. Schiller (disagreeing with his views on race, evolution and politics) and George Santayana (in Egotism in High german Philosophy [1916], he lampoons Nietzsche's vocalisation as beingness, at times, like that of a cocky-indulgent child). This is in sharp contrast to the way in which Nietzsche was existence received in Russia but before the First World War: as a 'German Dostoevsky' and even equally a religious thinker (Rosenthal 2004: 137–41). When English-speaking writers did engage approvingly with the themes and ideas of Nietzsche, it was often in uncomfortable ways. Texts such as George Bernard Shaw'due south Man and Superman (1901), Yeats's 'The 2nd Coming' (1920) and 'Leda and the Swan' (1923), and D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love (1920) would broaden Nietzsche's readership considerably, yet perpetuate the anglophone globe's proto-fascist view of the philosopher.

Nietzsche'due south later reputation in the English-speaking world suffered greatly from the association with the rise of fascism in Germany. More than specifically, the links between Hitler and Nietzsche'due south sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche in the 1930s served to cultivate a belief that Hitler'southward ideology was built on that of Nietzsche's. Elisabeth's censoring and distorting of Nietzsche's unpublished works – his sister took over Nietzsche's estate post-obit his death – led to an uneasy association between Nazism and Nietzsche. Non but did Hitler visit Nietzsche's house on several occasions, in order to converse with Nietzsche's sister, but he as well had a bust of Nietzsche in his report, attended Elisabeth'due south funeral in 1935, and, in 1943, gave some of Nietzsche's writings to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Despite writings such equally Georges Bataille's Acéphale: Réparation à Nietzsche (Jan 1937), defended entirely to denouncing the Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche, such a link proved to be a demonizing force in the anglophone earth's estimation of the philosopher, non helped by the fact that the three books patently given to Nazi soldiers during the Second Globe War were Hitler's Mein Kampf (1925), Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930) and Nietzsche'due south Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Astore and Showalter 2005: 99). Nevertheless, in a letter of the alphabet to his sister Elizabeth dated Christmas 1887, Nietzsche declares:

Information technology is a affair of honor to me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal regarding anti-Semitism, namely opposed, as I am in my writings [ . . . ] I have been persecuted in recent times with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence sheets; my disgust with this party [ . . . ] is as outspoken as possible, simply the relation to Forster, every bit well as the after-issue of my nine former anti-Semitic publisher Schmeitzner, always brings adherents of this bellicose political party back to the idea that I must after all belong to them. (In Kaufmann [1974] 2013: 45)

Nabokov and the Russian Silvery Historic period

Although the extent of Nietzsche'due south influence on the Russian Silver Age is less well documented, the influence of Russian Silver Age writers on Nabokov is relatively well known.^[10] In The Philosophy Steamer: Lenin and the Exile of the Intelligentsia, Lesley Chamberlain claims that, 'as contemporary émigré Russians knew him, Nabokov was not so much a Western modernist every bit the last representative of the Russian Argent Age longing for that mystical Symbolist Russia he had left backside' (2006: 226). In Strong Opinions, Nabokov stated that his favourite novels of the twentieth century were James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), Andrei Bely's Petersburg (1913), Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis (1915) and the starting time half of Marcel Proust'southward Remembrance of Things Past (1913–1927) (57). Bely'south novel is past far the most marginal of these four novels, yet its position in Nabokov's canon is both testament to his respect for the Symbolist movement and notable for its placement in the Russian Silver Historic period – a highly fertile literary period straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whose major exponents included Bely, Blok, Maximilian Voloshin, Proverb Gorky, Ivan Bunin, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and Vladimir Mayakovsky. Its literature concerned the upheaval of convention, the search for transcendence in the everyday that questioned stagnant forms and vocabularies, and privileged the part of the individual in art. Brian Boyd reveals that, 'as a youth Nabokov devoured Symbolist verse rapturously', past eleven, had collected a number of Symbolist, Acmeist and Futurist poets and, by fifteen, had 'read and digested practically all of the contemporary poets' (VNRY 93). In response to Edmund Wilson's merits that no important Russian poesy had been written between 1900 and 1920 in Russian federation, Nabokov retorted that 'the "decline" of Russian literature in 1905–1917 is a Soviet invention. Blok, Bely, Bunin and others wrote their all-time stuff in those days. And never was poetry so popular – not even in Pushkin's days. I am a product of that menstruation, I was bred in that atmosphere' (NWL 246).

This early on interest in Symbolist literature increased during Nabokov's time in the Crimea betwixt 1917 and 1919, where he met the Symbolist poet Maximilian Voloshin – an acquaintance of Nabokov's male parent, V. D. Nabokov, who tutored Nabokov in the fine art of poetry and introduced him to x the piece of work and critical give-and-take of Bely (VNRY 149). Interestingly, Karshan claims that, 'like all of the Russian Symbolists', Voloshin was 'a devotee of Nietzsche'south' (2011a: 40). Subsequently fleeing Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1919 and graduating from Cambridge in 1922, Nabokov moved to Berlin alongside almost 400,000 Russian émigrés. Boyd claims that 'in 1922 and 1923 virtually every Russian writer of note, émigré or non, was in Berlin at to the lowest degree briefly: Gorky, Bely, Pasternak, Mayakovsky, Remizov, Pilnyak, Aleksey Tolstoy, Ehrenburg, Khodasevich, Tsvetaeva, Zaitsev, Shklovsky, Aldanov, Adamovich, Georgy Ivanov, and many others' (VNRY 198). It was between the 1920s and 1940s that he published predominantly under the pseudonym 'Sirin' – a word associated with the mythical Russian firebird. In Strong Opinions however, Nabokov reveals the name's connection to the Symbolist movement: 'Incidentally, circa 1910 there had appeared literary collections under the editorial championship of Sirin devoted to the and then-called "symbolist" movement, and I think how amused I was to discover in 1952 while browsing the Houghton Library at Harvard that its catalogue listed me as actively publishing Blok, Bely, and Bryusov at the age of ten' (161). This 'tickle' derived from coincidence. We can detect Fyodor acting equally raisonneur for Nabokov in The Souvenir when he mentions that he 'accepted ecstatically, gratefully, completely, without critical carpings, all the five poets whose names began with "B"' (73–74) in his early youth. These poets – who Simon Karlinsky claims are Valery Briusov, Konstantin Balmont, Alexandr Blok, Andrei Bely and Ivan Bunin (2008) – align specifically with Nabokov's reading.^[11] Barry Scherr, for instance, acknowledges the extent of Nabokov's knowledge of the Symbolists in his early on love poems, seeing Blok's imagery and vocabulary in a pair of poems in The Cluster published on his death in 1921 and noticing an epilogue from Blok in his poem 'Vstrecha' ('Meeting'), every bit well as a poem dedicated to Ivan Bunin (in Connolly 1999: 114). As Boyd observes, 'less suggestive to the English language-speaking reader merely more substantial are Nabokov'south relations in his years of European exile with friends and foes among the writers of the emigration: robust Lukash, gentle Aykhenwald, the acid and exacting Khodasevich, slippery Adamovich, envy-choked Bunin' (VNRY 4). Equally evidenced past his correspondence with figures such as Nikolai Berdiaev, Ivan Bunin and Vladimir Khodasevich upwards until 1939,^[12] Nabokov's initial tutelage nether the Nietzschean Maximilian Voloshin would go along through ongoing contact with members of the Berlin emigration who also identified heavily with Nietzsche.

11

Nietzsche and Nabokov

Although Nietzsche is cited only twice in Boyd'due south Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (1990: 76, 150), Nabokov's appointment with the philosopher appears to have been deeper than commonly idea.^[13] Alongside the family library containing copies of Untimely Meditations, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and an anthology of Nietzsche published in 1910 (Sistematicheskii katalog [1904: 104]; Sistematicheskii katalog [1911: 75), Karshan, in Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Play (2011a) also reveals that in 1918, under the tutelage of Voloshin, Nabokov 'fabricated a list of ten "books which must be read." Ane of three books crossed out, and marked as read, is Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (17n)' (7).

Effigy 1. Forepart cover of Vladimir Nabokov's notebook from 1918 entitled 'Stikhi i skhemy' ['Poems and Schemes'], in Russian. Box 10, Binder 25, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Effigy two. Inside folio of Nabokov's 'Stikhi i skhemy' ['Poems and Schemes'] notebook detailing a list of ten books, three of which (including Nietzsche'south Thus Spoke Zarathustra [76]), are scored out and marked as read. Box 10, Folder 25, Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov Papers, Manuscript Sectionalisation, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

About sixty years later on, at the end of Nabokov's life and career, Nietzsche appears in his posthumous novel, The Original of Laura (2009):^[14]

the art of cocky-slaughter

TLS 16-i-76 'Nietz[south]‌che argued that the man of pure volition . . . must recognise that that there is an appropriate time to die' (265)

That Nabokov alludes to Nietzsche but has spelled his proper name incorrectly raises some questions. Could the spelling fault, like 'Montherland' (TOOL 95), be a ridiculing technique; a 'patronizing indifference' to the supposed source?^[15] Is it just another spelling mistake among the many in the text, arguably caused past Nabokov's failing health?^[sixteen] Is it simply that 'Nietzsche' is a difficult Germanic proper noun to spell, given that it has five consonants in succession? Because that Philip Wild writes about trying not to 'die before you are ready to die' (TOOL 181), and that the latter office of the novel explicitly focuses on his existential experiment of 'auto-dissolution' (171), this reference takes on greater significance as nosotros probe further. The Nietzschean passage that Nabokov alludes to actually derives 12 from a review of Ivan Morris'southward The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Nippon in an edition of the Times Literary Supplement, dated xvi January 1976, where the latter writes, 'Nietzsche argued that the man of pure volition, the human who was properly identified with the springs of his activity and not at variance with them, must recognise that in that location is an appropriate fourth dimension to die, a time beyond which life would be only a compromise' (Scruton 1976: 48). In the context of the novel, i where Wild is intent on obliterating his body through 'luxurious suicide' (TOOL 243), Nabokov effectively harnesses what is contained in the chapter titled 'Voluntary Death' in Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: the virtuous activeness of 'dying at the right time' (97).^[17] From the explicit references to 'eternal recurrence' in his first novel, Mary, to indirect allusions in texts such equally The Defence force, Pnin and 'Ultima Thule', to his last novel, The Original of Laura, reveals Nietzsche's continuous presence throughout Nabokov'southward limerick.

14

Interpreting silence

Despite the selection of directly allusions to Nietzsche and Nietzschean idea across a lifetime of writing, Nabokov had very piffling to say directly on Nietzsche, whether as an object of hostility (such as Freud or Thomas Mann),^[xviii] or every bit a literary figure that he approved of (such as Pushkin or Gogol). Information technology is e'er dangerous interpreting silence, and I do then here tentatively. Nabokov'south silence on topics such every bit the Russian Revolution, his relationships with his brother Sergey and Uncle Ruka, and the bear upon of the Holocaust on his life should advise readers not to be automatically dismissive, even so. In ane respect, Nabokov'south stance on 'indebtedness' serves equally a prominent example of silence – in Strong Opinions, for case, Nabokov claims that 'I exercise not believe that any particular writer has had any definite influence on me' (46). Another explanation for silence, consistent with my argument, has been touched on already. Considering Nietzsche was seen past many every bit a forerunner of Nazism, and Nabokov had narrowly avoided the horrors of German fascism, it may have been that Nabokov wanted to distance himself from the Nazi'south cribbing of Nietzsche. Nietzsche's spurious links to fascism, and the fact that both Nabokov's married woman Véra and son Dmitri were Jewish, may have discouraged him from open discussion of Nietzsche in his piece of work and elsewhere.

In this respect, Nabokov's relationship with Germany, and its civilization in general, is curious. In the foreword to King, Queen, Knave, Nabokov writes that, in the late 1920s, 'I spoke no German, had no German friends, had non read a single German novel either in the original, or in translation' (vi). His claim that he could not read German enabled him to abnegate suggestions of any German influence, but this does not seem entirely true.^[19] Aged nine, and with the help of a dictionary, Boyd claims that Nabokov had gained absolute control over the European Lepidoptera in Hofmann's Die Grosschmetterlinge Europas and, between 1911 and 1914, learned German at the Tenishev School in St Petersburg (VNRY 77–87).^[twenty] Foster notes that 'German was the first foreign language into which his novels of the 1920s were translated' (2000: 212–13), while Omry Ronen reveals that Nabokov translated Goethe's 'Zueignung' from Faust (2000: 247). 15 In the introduction to Lectures on Literature, John Updike writes that, 'in 1969 he [Nabokov] told a BBC interviewer, "I do not know German and then could non read Kafka before the xix thirties" [ . . . ] two years later he told Bavarian Broadcasting, "I read Goethe and Kafka en regard every bit I also did Homer and Horace"' (xxi).^[21] Notwithstanding, in a notation in his annotated copy of his lecture on The Metamorphosis, Nabokov claims that 'in the original German there is a wonderful flowing rhythm here in this dreamy sequence of sentences' (LL 258). Such discrepancies reveal his circuitous and curious human relationship with German culture: his affection for Kafka, Rilke and Goethe (SO 165), for example, is countered by his rejection of Thomas Mann's 'asinine' Death in Venice (SO 57). Ronen, for example, claims that 'while critical of contemporary German literature, with the exception of Kafka and, perhaps, Rilke, Nabokov proceeded to invent, in his novels, a series of High german authors and literary situations' (2000: 243).^[22] Nosotros are reminded, of grade, of Fyodor's characterization of 'the German' in The Gift: 'in small-scale numbers vulgar and in big numbers unbearably vulgar', 'skittle-headed', and 'germanically ignorant' (79, 149–fifty). These, and the possible 'guilt past association' with fascism in the anglophone world, may help to explicate, in part, his silence on a figure like Nietzsche. Yet, such silence is consistent with Nietzsche's ain tactic, in the words of Michael Tanner, of practising 'a kind of systematic ingratitude towards those great figures who meant well-nigh to him, and how this is the only way of taking them completely seriously' (in EH x). In this study, I argue that Nabokov'southward silence on Nietzsche can be seen as respectful, rather than contemptuous or indifferent.

Other figures that Nabokov is explicitly hostile or seemingly indifferent towards have been catalytic in the formation of this book. One of the near interesting comparisons in this sense is the relationship betwixt Nabokov and Sigmund Freud – a figure the old refers to as 'the Viennese Quack' (BS xi) and whose lampooned presence in almost all of Nabokov's forewords to his English-linguistic communication editions was explicitly outlined every bit a dominion (Def 10–eleven). Opposed to the more fraught state of affairs of admiring someone, such as Nietzsche, (erroneously) associated with anti-Semitism, Freud's Jewish ethnic origin did not provide immunity from Nabokov's attacks. Geoffrey Green, Jenefer Shute and de la Durantaye are among those who have explored this fertile human relationship – 1 worthwhile precisely because Nabokov was 16 then loquaciously great to negate information technology.^[23] Similarly, Alexander Moudrov'south article 'Invitation to Plato's Beheading' in The Goalkeeper: The Nabokov Almanac claims that 'Plato'southward presence in Nabokov'south works is largely unexamined, in spite of the credible affinities between the two writers and the critical interest in the metaphysical aspect of Nabokov's prose [ . . . ] perhaps because Nabokov gave the impression that he wanted to discourage this line of research' (in Leving 2010: 61). Nabokov'southward dismissal – 'I hate Plato, I loathe Lacedaemon and all Perfect States' (NWL 180) – ironically illustrates his knowledge of Platonic thinking, of form. I concur that such ostensible 'roofing up' of knowledge, or influence, is worth exploring and therefore investigate the question of Nabokov'southward silence on Nietzsche. I do non claim, however, that Nabokov merely imitated Nietzsche's philosophical concepts at particular points in his career. Rather I argue that, in some instances, Nabokov extends Nietzsche's philosophy, and can be seen every bit both his model and rival. As Foster claims in Heirs to Dionysus, paraphrasing the vocabulary of Harold Bloom, 'influence involves innovation', whether this be 'revision or critique, the expansion or wrinkle of leading concepts, the absorption of motifs into new structures, and inspired misreadings or wilful failures of understanding' (1981: 19). Towards the end of this volume, for example, I argue that Nabokov rewrites or revises some of Nietzsche'due south thought in order to, in Bloom's vocabulary, 'discover an authoritative place for his creative output' (1973: 16). However, although documenting and theorizing almost the influence of Nietzsche on Nabokov is integral to this study, the relationship betwixt the ii figures is but as, if not more, of import. Where the erstwhile can arguably be reductive and aligned with the puzzle-solving element in Nabokov studies, the latter can illuminate deeper problems in literary texts. As Wood claims in The Wizard's Doubts, Nabokov is a 'sceptical modern, an heir to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (Nabokov would have hated the association, but ghosts don't e'er get to choose their company, and the connection is not arbitrary)' (170).

The range of Russian responses to Nietzsche lone – whether Blok'south aesthetic, Berdiaev'due south religious or Uspensky's metaphysical interpretations – signals the danger of assuming a unified version of the philosopher's work. Instead, I have identified specific aspects of Nietzsche'due south thought, which I argue characteristic heavily in Nabokov'south piece of work, without implying a mechanical implant of the older writer. To practice this, I accept distilled Nietzsche's project to specific philosophical tenets in order to bring cohesion to his multifarious thought. These tenets – eternal recurrence, perspectivism, transvaluation, master–slave 17 morality, the volition to ability, the Übermensch, and the otherworld – are applied to particular areas in Nabokov's work that have attracted marked uncertainty or speculation (such as the function of memory in Pnin; Nabokov's relationship with the reader; Lolita's morality; Pale Fire's authorship; the frequency of 'elevated' protagonists; and the beyond). Structurally, the 6 chapters are divided into three thematic parts: 'Nietzschean Engagements', 'Nietzschean Readings', and 'Across Nietzsche'. Part One is predominantly concerned with plotting, and extrapolating from, Nabokov's more directly points of contact with Nietzsche through engaging with the former'south relationship with both memory and his readership. Office Ii uses Nietzsche's philosophy to address two other significant bug in Nabokov studies: the moral world of Lolita and internal authorship of Pale Fire. Part Three concerns Nabokov's journeying from respectful pupil to rebellious disciple and engages with his propensity for writing about both a particular kind of protagonist and his relationship with the otherworld.

Part One, Nietzschean Engagements, opens with a chapter titled 'Eternal recurrence and Nabokov's art of retention'. Nietzsche's concept of 'eternal recurrence' has been understood both as a kind of thought experiment suggesting the verbal, endless repetition of events and as a quasi-scientific doctrine related to the possibility that the world's atoms can reconfigure in the aforementioned social club. For Nabokov, I argue, eternal recurrence is a significant business organization, an alarming and alluring paradox related to his formulation of memory. Looking predominantly at Pnin, Mary, and The Defence force, I document each novel's contact with Nietzsche and demonstrate how certain features of the texts demonstrate deep preoccupation with eternal recurrence but also heighten the event of disharmonize. The second chapter, 'The will to disempower: Nabokov and his readers', focuses on a similar combination of rapture and fear that appears to be at work in relation to Nabokov's writing and Nietzsche's concepts of 'principal–slave morality' and the 'will to power'. I appoint with a contested event in Nabokov studies – his human relationship with his readership – by illustrating the rhetorical similarity between Nabokov's essay 'Good Readers and Good Writers' in Lectures on Literature and Nietzsche's definitions of his concepts. Drawing on Bernard Reginster's interpretation of the 'will to ability' as a search for conflict in order to stimulate creativity, I look at two brusque stories – 'Recruiting' and 'The Vane Sisters' – to illustrate what I term Nabokov'southward 'will to disempower'.

Where the showtime function explores Nabokov's more directly engagements with Nietzsche, the 2nd turns to the benefits of reading Nabokov's texts through Nietzschean ideas whether he alludes to them directly or not. Following conceptually from the end of the offset role, Affiliate 3, 'Lolita's Nietzschean morality', further illuminates reader (dis)empowerment but provides a Nietzschean reading rather than specifically tracing Nietzschean allusions. Existing readings of Lolita often equate literary and moral experience, whereas my reading depends on a similar analogy but applied xviii differently. Rather than seeing Lolita as a demanding simply effective school for virtue, as some critics practise, I characterize the novel as an exercise in moral disorientation. But every bit Nietzsche's philosophical remit is to undermine moral conventions, Nabokov'south Lolita tin prove the states both how conventional reading processes and ideas on the origins of good and evil can exist undermined simultaneously. Affiliate iv looks specifically at Nabokov'southward novel Pale Fire, his well-nigh interpretively resistant novel. Ane reason for such resistance is the reader's inability to accredit internal authorship with absolute certainty; that is, to found across uncertainty who has written what in the novel'due south fictional globe. Using Nietzsche'south concept of 'perspectivism', I contend that Pale Fire can be read equally a number of different, but due eastqually valid, novels. On the surface, this might seem close to a relativist account of the text, in which no reading tin can exist considered more valid than whatsoever other. Yet, Nietzsche'south perspectivism actually allows for 'incompatible' readings to both mutually be and cantankerous-pollinate without implying critical relativism, equally well as the formation of a hierarchy of values attached to these different perspectives.

Function Iii, Across Nietzsche, opens with 'Rewriting Nietzsche'. In that location, I consider Nabokov as Nietzsche'due south rebellious disciple, engaging in dialogue with the Nietzschean 'master'. In this chapter, I engage with the similarities between Nietzsche's Übermensch – typically characterized equally a figure with 'higher' values than ordinary individuals – and the common traits constitute in many of Nabokov'south protagonists and his ain literary persona. Still, simply as Chapter 3 discusses moral disorientation, Chapter 5 explores how Nabokov frequently problematizes their Übermensch status. Ane manner in which this occurs is through Nabokov's representation of pity. While pity is incompatible with Übermensch status for Nietzsche, it is cardinal to both Nabokov'south works, such as in Curve Sinister, and, indeed, himself. In his divergence, Nabokov surpasses Nietzsche in Nietzschean fashion by presenting a modified Übermensch possessing Nabokovian vulnerabilities. Affiliate half-dozen, 'Nabokov'southward "other" World', synthesizes Nabokov's transcendent outlook and Nietzsche's materialist vision. Much has been made of the concept of potustoronnost in Nabokov's works, but almost criticism interprets this 'across' in spiritual fashion. This means that, at beginning sight, Nietzsche'due south repudiation of an 'otherworld' should be at odds with Nabokov's embracement of it. All the same, both writers demonstrate a marked preoccupation with this earth. Given an business relationship of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev's outlook in The Souvenir, I suggest that Nietzsche's materialist vision tin be combined with Nabokov's otherworldly tendencies by pointing to the 'beyond' in the everyday. Through perception's transformative capabilities, Fyodor is able to fuse the spiritual and the earthly, pointing to an 'other world' inside the cloth ane.

19

♦

As a whole, the study addresses central problems in Nabokov'due south writing that make his work perplexing, mysterious, and frequently uneasy rather than merely focusing on the literary puzzles and mysteries which, although inherent, do non necessarily define his body of piece of work. I suggest that Nietzsche's philosophy provides fresh, but not ever palatable, perspectives in which to understand these problems. Such a Nietzschean framework, in turn, illustrates that the uneasy aspects of Nabokov'southward work are not only intelligible, but can likewise offer the reader manifold rewards.

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Source: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/nabokov-and-nietzsche-problems-and-perspectives/introduction

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