Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature

Studies in Slavic Literature

and Poetics

Editors

O.F. Boele (Leiden University)

S. Brouwer (University of Groningen)
E.R.G. Metz (University of Amsterdam)
M. Rubins (University College London)
A. Rogatchevski (Arctic University of Norway)
S. Vervaet (University of Oslo)

Founding Editors

J.J. van Baak

R. Grübel
A.G.F. van Holk
W.G. Weststeijn

VOLUME 62

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sslp

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures
on Literature
Portraits of the Artist as Reader and Teacher

Edited by

Ben Dhooge
Jürgen Pieters

LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Contents

List of Contributors vii

Introduction: Reading Nabokov Teaching 1

Ben Dhooge and Jürgen Pieters

part 1
Teacher among Authors

1 Nabokov’s Reflections on ‘Proust’s Prismatic People’ 19

Yannicke Chupin

2 ‘The Author’s Pale Virgin Cheek’: Nabokov on Austen 35

Luc Herman

3 Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote: ‘A Veritable Encyclopedia

of Cruelty’ 44
Ilse Logie

4 The Beetle and the Butterfly: Nabokov’s Lecture on Kafka’s

‘The Metamorphosis’ 60
Vivian Liska

5 ‘As Flaubert Intended It to Be Discussed’: Vladimir Nabokov and

Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 75
Flora Keersmaekers

part 2
Critic among Critics

6 Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 101

Geert Lernout

7 Gogol Seen through the Eyes of Nabokov 121

Arthur Langeveld
vi Contents

8 On an Unhappy Marriage, Henry James, and Atoms: Vladimir Nabokov

Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 135
Ben Dhooge

part 3
Author among Authors

9 ‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert 167

Lara Delage-Toriel

10 Of Words and Worlds: The Role of Proust’s Aesthetics in Nabokov’s

Lectures on Literature 185
Roy Groen

11 Vladimir Nabokov on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by
Robert Louis Stevenson 199
Gerard de Vries

Afterword: (Flipping) Nabokov in the Classroom 211

Jürgen Pieters

Index 223
List of Contributors

Yannicke Chupin
is Associate Professor at Université de Cergy-Pontoise. A founding member of
the French Vladimir Nabokov Society and currently her vice-president, she is
the author of Vladimir Nabokov, Fictions d’écrivains (2009) and the co-author
of Aux Origines de Laura, le dernier manuscrit de Vladimir Nabokov (2011), as
well as the coeditor of Nabokov et la France (forthcoming). Besides writing
on ­Vladimir Nabokov, she has also published articles on Steven Millhauser,
­Nicholson Baker, Donald Barthelme and Don DeLillo.

Lara Delage-Toriel
is Associate Professor of American literature at the University of Strasbourg.
She has published two cross-media monographs, on A Streetcar Named D ­ esire
(2003) and Lolita (2009), and coedited Kaleidoscopic Nabokov: Perspectives
f­ rançaises (2009). The founding president of the French Vladimir Nabokov
­Society, she has coedited the proceedings of the society’s first conference,
Nabokov et la France (forthcoming). She has cocreated various intermedial
­artistic projects around Nabokov, including ‘Nabokov in the Classroom’ (radio
documentary, 2008), ‘A Guide to Berlin in Strasbourg’ (film documentary on
twin artists Natalia and Maria Petschatnikov, 2015) and ‘Lolita a 60 ans’ (sound-
painting project and performance, 2015); she has also composed and per-
formed two musical readings (on Lolita, 2009, on ‘Mademoiselle O’/­Chapter 5
of Speak, Memory, 2014).

Gerard de Vries
published his first paper in Russian Literature Triquarterly in 1991. He has writ-
ten many articles on Nabokov’s works, which were published in American,
French, and Russian academic journals. With D. Barton Johnson he wrote
Nabokov and the Art of Painting (2006). His most recent book is Silent Love. The
Annotation and Interpretation of Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
(2016).

Ben Dhooge
is Research Professor of Russian literature at the Department of Languages and
Cultures of Ghent University and a postdoctoral scholar at the Research Fund
Flanders. His research focuses on early twentieth-century Russian literature,
both Soviet and émigré. He has been working on Platonov’s oeuvre, the reception
of linguistic experimentation in literature in early twentieth-century ­Russian
viii List of Contributors

émigré culture, on the ‘constructivist’ journal V

­ eshch’-Gegenstand-Objet, on the
Prague literary community Skit, and on the émigré literary reception of the
Revolution and the Civil War during the interwar period.

Roy Groen
completed his PhD thesis on the moral dimension of the works of Vladimir
Nabokov in 2016 (Nijmegen University). He also published various articles on
the subjects of 19th and 20th century French literature.

Luc Herman
is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Antwerp.
His research specialisms are narrative theory (Handbook of Narrative A
­ nalysis,
co-authored with Bart Vervaeck, 2005) and the work of Thomas Pynchon
(Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon, co-edited with Inger Dalsgaard
and Brian McHale, 2012).

Flora Keersmaekers
graduated in Theater Studies and Comparative Literature at Ghent ­University
in 2008. Soon afterwards she started working on her PhD on Vladimir ­Nabokov’s
lectures on literature. During her PhD studies, she started working for the
­Belgian dance company Rosas as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s personal
­assistant. She received her doctoral degree in 2015. She is currently still work-
ing at Rosas, where she is responsible for projects related to the company’s
archives and for the general dramaturgy.

Arthur Langeveld
was Assistant Professor of Russian History and Literature at Utrecht University.
He has published on Russian Modernism and theory of translation.

Geert Lernout
is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of
­Antwerp, Belgium, and Director of the James Joyce Centre. He has published
on literature, textual studies, the history of the book and on religious texts. His
latest book is Cain: but are you able? The Bible, Byron and Joyce (2015).

Vivian Liska
is Professor of German literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish
Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. In addition, since 2013, she
is ­Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Faculty of the Humanities at The
Hebrew ­University of Jerusalem every second semester. She has published
List of Contributors ix

e­xtensively on literary theory, German modernism, and German-Jewish

­authors and thinkers. She is the editor of the book series ‘Perspectives on
­Jewish Texts and ­Contexts’ (De Gruyter, Berlin), co-editor of the Yearbook of
the ­Society for European-­Jewish Literature, and Arcadia. International Journal of
Literary Studies.
Her recent books include Giorgio Agambens leerer Messianismus (2008);
When Kafka Says We. Uncommon Communities in German-Jewish Literature
(2009), Fremde Gemeinschaft. Deutsch-jüdische Literatur der Moderne (2011)
and German-Jewish Thought and its Afterlife. A Tenuous Legacy (2017). In 2012,
she was awarded the Cross of Honor for Sciences and the Arts from the Repub-
lic of Austria.

Ilse Logie
is Associate Professor of Spanish and Spanish-American literature at Ghent
University. She obtained her PhD at the University of Antwerp and published
her dissertation on the Argentinian author Manuel Puig: La omnipresencia de
la mímesis en la obra de Manuel Puig. Análisis de cuatro novelas (2001). She has
written extensively on contemporary Argentinian literature (on such authors
as Borges, Copi, Cortázar, and Saer) as well as on translation issues.

Jürgen Pieters
is Professor of Literary Theory at the Department of Literary Studies of Ghent
University. He has edited books and journal issues on the work of Roland
Barthes, Catherine Belsey and Stephen Greenblatt. His most recent books are
Op zoek naar Huygens. Italiaanse notities (2014) and, co-authored with Jozef
and Laurens De Vos, Shakespeare. Auteur voor alle seizoenen (2016). He is cur-
rently preparing a monograph on the joint conceptual histories of ‘literature’
and ‘consolation.’
Introduction: Reading Nabokov Teaching
Ben Dhooge and Jürgen Pieters

Vladimir Nabokov’s creative laboratory continues to intrigue, as is testified by

the steady stream of scholarly publications on different aspects of his work
and personality.1 Understandably, a good deal of attention has been paid to
the author’s literary œuvre and to his explicit statements on literature and
art in the interviews he gave (compiled in Strong Opinions, for instance), in
the letters he wrote (to Edmund Wilson, of course, but also to editors like
James Laughlin (New Directions), Walter J. Minton (Putnam), Maurice Giro-
dias (Olympia Press) or George Weidenfeld (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)), and in
his justly renowned autobiography Speak, Memory. One corner of Nabokov’s
creative laboratory, however, has clearly received less attention – that corner
where Nabokov acts not as a writer of literature or as an artist with ‘strong opin-
ions’ on it, but as a teacher of literature or, more exactly, a reader of literature
who shares his strongly held views and beliefs with his students.
That is exactly the role Nabokov took up in the lectures on European and
Russian literature that he taught between 1941 and 1959, mainly at the universi-
ties of Wellesley and Cornell. In these lectures, Nabokov appears as a reader
with a peculiar, outspoken opinion on what (not) to read and how (not) to
read, a reader who wants to share his own reading experiences and strategies
in the hope of turning his audience into an assembly of ‘good’ readers, that is,
readers who can make a direct connection with the author, the ‘masterpiece’
produced by the author’s genius and the creative process leading up to that
masterpiece.2 In order to reach that goal, Nabokov shared with his students
his ideas about how entire oeuvres as well as individual fragments should be
read, imparted his convictions about what is important in a literary text or in
literature in general, gave his opinions about the value – or the lack thereof –
of alternative readings, and offered his personal appreciation of the works of
literature. Fredson Bowers rightly calls Nabokov’s approach a ‘shared informed

1 As we were preparing the typescript of this collection, (at least) two interesting additions to
the ever expanding Nabokov-bibliography were published: Alex Beam, The Feud. Vladimir
Nabokov, Edmund Wilson and the End of a Beautiful Friendship (New York: Penguin Random
House, 2016) and Brian Boyd and Marijeta Bozovic, eds., Nabokov Upside Down (Evanston, Il.:
Northwestern University Press, 2017).
2 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, ed., with an introd. Fredson Bowers (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 382.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_002

2 Dhooge and Pieters

experience,’3 one in which the professor, as Nabokov put it himself, demanded

of his students, in equal measure, ‘the passion of science and the patience of
poetry.’4 As Bowers explains, Nabokov ‘relied heavily on quotation and inter-
pretive narrative selected to make intelligible the feelings his students should
have as they read, the reactions that should follow the course of the feeling
that he was attempting to direct, and the creation of an understanding of great
literature based on alert and intelligent appreciation instead of on what he
regarded as sterile critical theory.’5 ‘Nabokov didn’t “teach” novels,’ one of his
former students recalled, ‘he gazed at them with such joyful and tender devo-
tion that they became for us what they already were for him – “shimmering
prisms.”’6
The chronology of Vladimir Nabokov’s teaching career will be well-known to
most Nabokovians, but at the beginning of a volume that deals with the output
of that career we think the trajectory that Nabokov himself described as lead-
ing ‘from lean lecturer to Full Professor’ deserves to be briefly r­ ecapitulated.7
The very onset of what Brian Boyd has called the author’s ‘American Years’ was
to a great extent determined by Nabokov’s teaching prospects. Indeed, as the
subtitle of the first half of the second volume of Boyd’s biography (‘Professor
Nabokov’) makes clear, the entire span of Nabokov’s time in the us is marked
by his academic career. In the autumn of 1939, Nabokov, who was then liv-
ing in Paris with his wife and son, received an invitation to teach a summer
course on Russian Literature at the University of Stanford.8 He immediately
began to write to several Russian émigrés in the United States (among them
Tolstoy’s daughter Alexandra) to secure affidavits that could help him and his
wife to obtain a visa.9 A great deal of energy also went into attempts to secure
an exit permit from France. As Nabokov was making preparations for the final
leg of the westward journey that had begun with leaving Russia in 1919, the
­country became increasingly vulnerable to a German invasion. Paris finally fell
on 14 June 1940, just over two weeks after Vladimir Nabokov, Véra, and Dmitri
had arrived in New York aboard the Champlain, a ship that had been chartered

3 Fredson Bowers, introduction to Lectures on Russian Literature, by Vladimir Nabokov, ed.,

with an introd. Fredson Bowers (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 7.
4 Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: Vintage, 1990 [1973]), 7.
5 Bowers, ‘Introduction,’ 6.
6 Ross Wetzsteon, ‘Nabokov as teacher,’ in Nabokov. Criticism, Reminiscences, Translations and
Tributes, eds. Alfred Appel, Jr. and Charles Newman (Evanston, Il.: Northwestern University
Press, 1970), 246.
7 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, xv.
8 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian Years (New York: Vintage, 1993 [1990]), 511.
9 Boyd, Russian Years, 514.
Introduction: Reading Nabokov Teaching 3

by a Jewish rescue organization. The Nabokovs arrived in the us on 28 May,

‘in the lilac mist of a May morning,’ as Vladimir Nabokov was later to recall.10
What little teaching experience Nabokov had as he set foot on American soil
was derived from language tutoring mainly, even though he had also taught
boxing and tennis, as Véra told Martin Amis in 1981 (‘And prosody, prosody.’11).
Both in Berlin and in Paris he had given private English lessons and soon after
his arrival in New York he took up teaching courses in Russian. He gave his first
actual university lecture in February 1941, to an audience in Wells College in
New York State, where his cousin Nicolas Nabokov had been teaching m ­ usic
since 1936. Wells College was located just north of Ithaca’s Cornell, where
Nabokov would finish his teaching career seventeen years later. After little
over a month, he gave a series of lectures on Russian literature at Wellesley,
a liberal arts college for women just outside Boston. Apparently, the invita-
tion for Wellesley was in part thanks to cousin Nicolas.12 Judging on several
comments by actual students, Nabokov made a most charming impression on
his ­Wellesley audience – one that he obviously felt no need to deny – but he
also clearly came very well prepared. As he later remarked, with characteristic
hyperbole no doubt, he had sailed to the us bringing with him some two thou-
sand pages of lecture notes on the literature of his homeland.13
In April 1941, in the aftermath of his successful first bout at Wellesley,
­Nabokov spent some time translating into English a number of poems by
Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tyutchev, among others, in preparation of one of the
two courses that he would be giving in Stanford later that summer.14 Just be-
fore he left for Stanford, Nabokov received the news that Wellesley was willing
to offer him a one-year-contract of writer-in-residence for the upcoming year,
a position that would also involve giving some lectures in the field of compara-
tive literature. Nabokov jumped at the opportunity and accepted the position.
He took off for Stanford on 26 May, by car, with one of his Russian-language
pupils, Dorothy Leuthold, chauffeuring the Nabokovs across the us. After an

10 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 54.

11 Martin Amis, Visiting Mrs. Nabokov and Other Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993),
118.
12 Brian Boyd, ‘Envelopes for the Letters to Véra,’ in Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Véra, ed. and
transl. Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd (London: Penguin, 2014), xxxvi.
13 Boyd, Russian Years, 521; see also Hugh McLean, ‘Lectures on Russian Literature,’ in
The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York &
­London: Garland Publishing, 1995), 258; and Robert Roper, Nabokov in America. On the
Road to Lolita (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 47.
14 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years (New York: Vintage, 1993 [1992]), 27.
4 Dhooge and Pieters

e­ xtensive butterfly hunting trip,15 the party arrived in Palo Alto on 14 June, ten
days ­before the beginning of Nabokov’s two Stanford courses, one on R ­ ussian
literature, the other on ‘The Art of Writing.’16 As the unpublished lecture notes
for the latter course suggest, it was then and there that Nabokov began to
­develop some of the critical notions which he would later explore more fully in
the published lectures that by now we have come to see as Professor N ­ abokov’s
major output.17
The official title of the position that Nabokov assumed in Wellesley in the
academic year 1941–1942 was ‘Resident Lecturer in Comparative Literature.’
‘[T]his post suited Nabokov far better than any university position he later
held,’ Brian Boyd believes, if only because in Wellesley, professionally s­ peaking,
Nabokov ‘was quite on his own.’18 He only had to deliver six public lectures
in that academic year (three in October and three in January),19 apart from
appearing as guest lecturer in a few classes on modern literature and partici-
pating in a number of social events. The rest of his time he could spend on
writing and translation. The authors and topics that he lectured on were to
become central to the Nabokov canon in the decade and a half that would
­follow: P­ ushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, but also Cervantes’
Don Quixote, the novel that upon his arrival in the us he had proposed to adapt
for the stage for Mikhail Chekhov’s Connecticut theatre company.20
In the course of his first year at Wellesley, Nabokov began to pay weekly
visits to the nearby Museum of Comparative Zoology in Harvard, where he
was given the opportunity to rearrange the university’s butterfly collection. At
first an unpaid job, this soon turned into a research fellowship that came with
a stipend. The stipend was annually renewed until 1948, the year Nabokov left
Wellesley for Cornell. It is probably fair to say that during his Wellesley years
Nabokov spent more time on American lepidoptery than he did on Russian
literature, even though the final months of 1942 were devoted to a lecture tour
that took Nabokov first to the South of the us (South Carolina and Georgia),
then to the Midwest (Chicago and St. Paul), and finally to Virginia. Several let-
ters to Véra bear witness to Nabokov’s adventures, since he was travelling on his
own.21 In the course of his Wellesley-years Nabokov closely studied ­Harvard’s

15 Roper, Nabokov in America, 47–54.

16 Boyd, American Years, 29; Roper, Nabokov in America, 57.
17 Bowers, ‘Introduction,’ 5.
18 Boyd, American Years, 35.
19 Roper, Nabokov in America, 74.
20 Boyd, American Years, 23.
21 Nabokov, Letters to Véra, 460–84.
Introduction: Reading Nabokov Teaching 5

magnificent butterfly collection, a time-consuming task that resulted in four

major scholarly publications, among which his famous monograph on North
American specimens of the Lycaeides.22
During his first years at Wellesley, Nabokov’s teaching responsibilities were
limited to a number of Russian language classes that did not ask too much
preparation – as his wife put it, Nabokov was ‘Extracurricular Instructor in
­Russian,’ the classes in question not being formally part of an academic pro-
gram.23 In the course of those years, between teaching and studying butterflies,
as it were, Nabokov managed to finish his book on Gogol (published in 1944),
the volume of translations of poems by Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tyutchev
(published as Three Russian Poets in 1944) that, like the Gogol book, was com-
missioned for New Directions by James Laughlin, as well as the first novel that
he wrote in the u.s., Bend Sinister (completed in 1946, published in 1947). In
the early years at Wellesley, Nabokov also started to work on Speak, Memory,
which was ­published in 1951, the American version under the title of Conclusive
Evidence.
It was only in the Fall semester of 1946 – after a number of unsuccessful job
applications for Berkeley, Vassar, and Harvard24 – that Nabokov was given the
opportunity to teach a curricular course on Russian literature (in translation)
at Wellesley. The preparations for the lectures that made up the course – parts
of which would later be included in Fredson Bowers’ edition of the Lectures on
Russian Literature – involved a close collaboration with Véra. As Stacy Schiff
notes, Mrs. Nabokov’s help in rewriting the lecture notes that Nabokov had
brought aboard the Champlain in his voyage to the us was instrumental in
their final success: not only did she take care of dates and biographical details,
but she also prepared much of the compositional groundwork on which her
husband could develop the personal style that made his lectures so memo-
rable to many of those present.25 In contrast to his language classes, the texts
for these lectures were fully written out, although Nabokov managed to deliver
them as if he was finding the very words right then and there.26

22 Brian Boyd, ‘Nabokov, Literature, Lepidoptera,’ in Nabokov’s Butterflies, eds. Brian Boyd
and Robert Michael Pyle (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 10; see also Kurt Johnson and
Steve Coates, Nabokov’s Blues. The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius (New York:
­McGraw-Hill, 1999), 8.
23 Stacy Schiff, Véra. Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Random House, 2000 [1999]), 125; see
also Boyd, American Years, 77.
24 Boyd, American Years, 89, 113.
25 Schiff, Véra, 129; Boyd, American Years, 109.
26 Charles Nicol, ‘Teaching,’ in The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E.
Alexandrov (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1995), 707.
6 Dhooge and Pieters

In the academic year 1947–48, Nabokov taught the same three courses as in
the previous year: Elementary Russian, Intermediate Russian, and the course
on Russian literature in translation, in which he now famously began to rate
the authors he lectured on, Tolstoy being awarded an A-plus and Dostoyevsky
a C-minus.27 1947 was also the year in which he began to take notes for the
novel that would eventually become Lolita. In the autumn of that same year
­Nabokov received a letter from Morris Bishop, asking him whether he would be
interested in becoming Cornell’s new Associate Professor of Slavic Literature.
He first used the invitation as a way of trying to secure tenure at Wellesley, but
when this failed Nabokov accepted Bishop’s offer. The Nabokovs moved from
Cambridge, where they had been living for the past six years in their apart-
ment at 8 Craigie Circle, to Ithaca, where they arrived on 1 July 1948. At Cornell,
Nabokov no longer had to bother about Russian language courses and he could
finally devote his teaching time to literature and literature only. Apart from two
survey courses on the history of Russian literature and a seminar (usually given
at his home to a very small group of students) on a more specialist topic of his
choice (to give some examples: Russian Poetry, 1875–1925 in 1949; the work of
Pushkin in 1950 and The Modernist Movement in Russian Literature in 1951),28
he was also expected to teach a course on European Fiction. However, that
course only materialized in the Fall semester of 1950 after some pressure and
once it had become clear that his courses on Russian literature attracted only
relatively small groups of students.
Nabokov’s predecessor for the Cornell course on Masterpieces of European
Fiction, Literature 311–12, had been Charles Weir, whom Nabokov remembered
as ‘a sad, gentle, hard-drinking fellow who was more interested in the sex life
of the authors than in their books’ – hence the course’s nickname ‘Dirty Lit.’29
The Cornell course is no doubt the one that brought Professor Nabokov the
most fame. Starting with a registration of around 150 in its first year, by the end
of Nabokov’s Cornell years, the great books course, as Brian Boyd puts it, ‘had
become the most popular academic option on campus.’30 As John Updike’s in-
troduction to the Lectures on Literature makes clear, several students (among

27 Boyd, American Years, 115.

28 Boyd, American Years, 137, 143, 171; see also Morris Bishop, ‘Nabokov at Cornell,’ in N
­ abokov.
Criticism, Reminiscences, Translations and Tributes, eds. Alfred Appel, Jr. and Charles
­Newman (Evanston, Il.: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 235.
29 Nabokov quoted by John Updike in his ‘Introduction’ to Lectures on Literature, by Vladimir
Nabokov, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1980), xxiii.
30 Boyd, American Years, 172.
Introduction: Reading Nabokov Teaching 7

them Updike’s wife) vividly remembered years later not only what Nabokov
had said about the books he lectured on but also the ways in which he said it.
In the first few years of giving this memorable course, Nabokov still discussed
a considerable amount of Russian short stories and novels – by Pushkin, Gogol,
Tolstoy, Chekhov, and even Dostoyevsky. Gradually, however, the Russian mas-
ters had to give way to their European counterparts: Austen, Dickens, Flaubert,
Joyce, Kafka, and Proust.
Nabokov’s literary canon, then, was clearly limited to works of the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries. However, when in the Spring term of
1952 he was invited to Harvard to replace Harry Levin for a course on ‘Epic and
the Novel’ (in addition to teaching Mikhail Karpovich’s two courses on R ­ ussian
­literature), he had to teach Don Quixote as well as five other novels that Levin
had subsumed under the course’s title. While both Andrew Field and Brian
Boyd suggest in their biographies that Nabokov was not very ­enthusiastic about
the prospect of having to teach Cervantes,31 Harry Levin likes to r­emember
­Nabokov’s ‘thorough and conscientious’ preparation for the entire course and
the Don Quixote-lectures in particular.32
Upon his return to Cornell in the autumn of 1952, Nabokov applied for un-
paid leave for the Spring semester of the next year, during which, with the
help of a Guggenheim fellowship, he embarked upon the famous (and much
­debated) annotated translation of Eugene Onegin that would take until 1964 to
finally materialize. Later in 1953, he put the finishing touches to his manuscript
of Lolita and published the first chapter of Pnin in the New Yorker. On 19 April
1954, he gave two lectures at the University of Kansas, where he first talked
about Tolstoy and then about ‘Art and Commonsense’ (the topic of the essay
that concludes Fredson Bowers’ edition of the Lectures on Literature).33 The
final years of his time in Cornell – he taught his last class on 19 January 195934 –
were marked first by the search for an American publisher for Lolita (the first
edition being published by the Parisian firm of Maurice Girodias, O ­ lympia
Press) and then the effects of the book’s quick rise to fame. The ­financial
­success of the novel was such that its author could afford to give up on what
he had been doing for the past eighteen years: talking about books that were
written by others. The Nabokovs left Cornell for New York toward the end of

31 Andrew Field, The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov (London: Futura Publications, 1988),
239; Boyd, American Years, 213.
32 Harry Levin, ‘Lectures on Don Quixote,’ in The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov,
ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1995), 227.
33 Nabokov, Letters to Véra, 498–99.
34 Roper, Nabokov in America, 244.
8 Dhooge and Pieters

February 1959, but Vladimir Nabokov only resigned formally in September of

that year, about a week before the couple’s first return to Europe.
Except for the lecture on Gogol (part of his 1944 book on the author),
­Nabokov’s lectures were never meant to appear in print, at least not in the form
that was delivered in the classroom. He apparently considered for some time
to turn some of his teaching materials into a book. However, as Brian Boyd
writes, Nabokov finally decided against that plan in the Spring of 1972, when
on rereading his notes, he found them ‘chaotic and sloppy.’35 Still, a selec-
tion of the teaching materials was published, resulting in four different book-
publications, three of which were edited and commented upon by Fredson
Bowers, the lectures on Ulysses being presented in facsimile.36 Despite the fact
that Bowers’ editions are far from complete and ‘contain many puzzling omis-
sions, misreadings, spurious improvements, and even sheer editorial inven-
tions’ in Boyd’s words,37 they do give us a good idea of Nabokov’s classes on
literature and hence of this specific corner of Nabokov’s creative laboratory.
Nabokov’s lectures have been discussed not only in the introductory mate-
rials to Bowers’ editions and in other publications that focus primarily on their
­biographical context, they have also received a considerable amount of a­ ttention
in studies dealing with Nabokov’s literary oeuvre as a whole. In these ­studies, the
emphasis is generally on Nabokov the writer, not the teacher.38 ­Passages from
the lectures are often used as illustrations of this or that element of Nabokov’s
peculiar conception of literature – his dogma of ‘the tyranny of the author,’ as
Maurice Couturier coined it for instance,39 or his views on the presence of mim-
icry in reality. Quite rarely, however, specific attention is paid to the lectures as
such.40 The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov, for instance, lacks a chapter on

35 Boyd, American Years, 173.

36 See under ‘Nabokov’ in the bibliography that follows this introduction.
37 Boyd, American Years, 173n; see also McLean, ‘Lectures on Russian Literature,’ 259.
38 Examples include: Boyd, American Years, Chapters 7 (‘Russian Professor: Cornell, 1948–1950’
(129–48)) and 9 (‘Teaching European Fiction: Cornell, 1950–1951’ (166–98)); Gavriel
­Shapiro, ed., Nabokov at Cornell (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); Leland de la
Durantaye, Style is Matter: the Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2007), passim; Marijeta Bozovic, Nabokov’s Canon: From Onegin to Ada (Evanston,
Il.: Northwestern University Press, 2016), 99–113.
39 Maurice Couturier, Nabokov ou la tyrannie de l’auteur (Paris: Seuil, 1993).
40 We are focusing here on scholarly publications. Nabokov’s Lectures have been the subject
of reviews and essays by, among others, Martin Amis, John Bayley, Zadie Smith, and John
Updike: Martin Amis, ‘Lectures,’ in The War against Cliché. Essays and Reviews 1­971–2000,
id. (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001), 249–51; John Bayley, ‘The Novelist as Pedagogue.
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Russian Literature,’ in Selected Essays, id. (Cambridge:
Introduction: Reading Nabokov Teaching 9

the lectures, which, judging by the collection’s index, are not even taken to be
part of the author’s Works.41 There are, of course, some scholarly ­discussions on
the different series of lectures. In the Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov,
Joseph Frank, Harry Levin, and Hugh McLean give a good survey of the contents
of the different lectures (both taken as a whole and separately) and talk at length
about their structure and their peculiarities, as well as their flaws and virtues.42
The Garland Companion also has chapters on Nabokov’s relationship to specific
authors whose works he taught and whose influence on his own writing was
formative: Flaubert, Gogol, Kafka, Joyce, and Proust, to name only those. These
chapters refer to Nabokov’s lectures at some length, as does Charles Nicol in his
chapter on ‘Teaching.’
The present volume does not aim to focus on the context of the lectures,
nor on their relation to Nabokov’s literary œuvre and views or on the contents
and structure of the lectures, even though these aspects will of course crop
up occasionally. Rather, the contributors to this volume try to bring to the
fore ­Nabokov as a reader and teacher of literature. What kind of reader does
Nabokov appear to be in his teaching? Does he develop a particular, idiosyn-
cratic method of reading? Are there any ‘traces’ of other ‘readers,’ any specific
literary critics or theorists of the time that he refers to or makes use of? How
does Nabokov handle his sources? Do the writers, works, and fragments he
chooses to discuss tell us anything about Nabokov’s own art? Or does it work
the other way round: is it Nabokov’s own authorship that determines which
writers, works, and fragments he picks out for a class discussion or that guides
the interpretations he offers? Do the lectures give us any clues as to the inter-
pretation of Nabokov’s own works and to his poetical views?43 Do the lectures
conform to Nabokov’s own artistic principles? And are Nabokov’s methods and

Cambridge University Press, 1984), 166–75; Zadie Smith, ‘Rereading Barthes and Nabokov,’
in Changing my Mind. Occasional Essays, ead. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2009), 41–56;
John Updike, ‘An Introduction to Nabokov’s Lectures’ and ‘The Fancy-Forger takes the
lectern,’ in Hugging the Shore. Essays and Criticism, by id. (New York: Knopf, 1983), 223–36
and 237–43.
41 Julian W. Connolly, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
42 Joseph Frank, ‘Lectures on Literature,’ in The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed.
Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1995); Levin, ‘Lectures
on Don Quixote’; McLean, ‘Lectures on Russian Literature.’
43 As Marijeta Bozovic puts it, with specific reference to Nabokov’s lectures on Proust and
Joyce: ‘They reveal something about their subjects, but far more about Nabokov’s tastes.’
Bozovic, Nabokov’s Canon, 100.
10 Dhooge and Pieters

findings still relevant for a present-day reader or a student of literature? These

are the questions that are central to this volume in which other professional
(and professorial) readers of literature take a closer look at Nabokov’s reading
and teaching practice.
We have grouped the contributions in three thematic sections. The first
group of contributions – ‘Teacher among authors’ – focuses chiefly on how
Nabokov approaches the literary texts that he selected for his lectures. Does he
have any original insights to offer? What is the value of his contribution from
today’s point of view? Do we see possible tensions between Nabokov’s actual
reading practice and the critical dogmas that he hopes to instil in his students?
Can we point out instances where Nabokov seems to ‘betray’ his own aesthetic
convictions and objectives as they are expounded both in the lectures and else-
where? If this were the case, then how should we interpret those instances?
In ‘Nabokov’s Reflections on “Proust’s Prismatic People,”’ Yannicke ­Chupin
has a closer look at Nabokov’s lecture on Proust, which focuses primarily on
the characters of A la recherche du temps perdu. First, Chupin shows how
­Nabokov, who explicitly refers to earlier studies on Proust, emphasizes that
Proust’s characters are exclusively fictional and by no means related to reality –
a point of view which is close to Nabokov’s own conception of literature and
which is thematized in his own œuvre. Chupin also points out where Nabokov
and Proust converge and diverge in their views on how literature and reality
are (not) connected and whether Nabokov lives up to his own principles. She
further discusses Nabokov’s analysis of Proust’s ‘prismatic’ technique of char-
acterization, which would become a key point of attention in later studies on
Proust, and how Nabokov’s particular attention for this characteristic of Proust
relates to his own œuvre and views on literature.
Luc Herman focuses on Nabokov’s approach to Austen, the only female
­writer in Nabokov’s lectures whom he included (and praised) for her literary
craft, more specifically her use of ‘structure.’ In his article ‘“The Author’s Pale
­Virgin Cheek”: Nabokov on Austen,’ Herman argues that Nabokov ­systematically
­patronizes Austen in his lecture for reasons of gender. For Nabokov, A­ usten is a
virtuous writer, but also – or even first and foremost – a female writer. H
­ erman
shows that this bias can be seen not only in his peculiar attitude towards the
novel’s contents, plot, characters, and style, but also in N
­ abokov’s misreading
of an episode which leads him to equate Austen – not Austen the narrator, but
Austen the writer – with the novel’s main heroine, while this ­attitude is also
reflected in Nabokov’s reductive image of Austen.
Ilse Logie gives a thorough analysis of Nabokov’s take on Don Quixote in her
chapter ‘Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote: “a veritable encyclopedia of cruel-
ty.”’ Logie argues that in this lecture series Nabokov does not live up to his own
Introduction: Reading Nabokov Teaching 11

rules on how to read literature ‘correctly.’ Instead of a reading of Cervantes’

novel that does not take into account the social and historical background of
the work of literature or the biography of its author, focusing solely on the
literary text itself and the author’s intention, Nabokov offers a highly per-
sonal, ­biased, and moralizing reading in which even verisimilitude becomes
a point of attention. Nabokov’s reading is primarily centred on the cruelties
in the ­novel, which he finds unethical, while he ignores the novel’s parodic
and ­grotesque nature. This inconsistency in the process of reading is, as Logie
shows, partly related to Nabokov’s cultural taste but also to his own literary
and historical context. Remarkably, Nabokov seems to be very aware of all this
as he downsizes the results of his analysis which contradict his initial state-
ment that Don Quixote is a chaotic and unbalanced novel. The fact that the first
modern novel has a lot in common with Nabokov’s own bestseller, on which
he was working at the same time, leads Logie to suggest that Nabokov’s selec-
tive and biased reading of Don Quixote is intentional and can be considered
‘as a first step towards a paradoxical and utterly personal form of rewriting’ of
Cervantes’s novel towards Lolita.
In ‘The Beetle and the Butterfly,’ Vivian Liska focuses on Nabokov’s lecture
on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis.’ The lecture is generally considered one of
the weakest, on account of its incongruities, contradictions, and the i­ nstances
where Nabokov betrays his own principles and criteria. Liska proposes to
read these actual flaws ‘as symptoms of Nabokov’s own unsettling encounter
with Kafka’s story.’ Nabokov, writes Liska, approaches the story in three dif-
ferent roles: as a teacher, who shares his views on literature in general; as a
storyteller, who retells the story; and as an enchanter. The latter’s function
evolves throughout the lecture, from inviting the audience to be touched and
disturbed by Kafka’s novel at the beginning of the lecture to neutralizing this
line of thinking and substituting it by a very different, even opposite approach
to the novel at the end of the lecture. This transition, Liska shows, is directly
connected to Nabokov’s reading of Kafka’s novel, i.e. to the effect reading it
has on him, and explains – or even determines – the lecture’s unevenness and
inconsistency.
In ‘“As Flaubert intended it to be discussed”: Vladimir Nabokov and Jean
Rousset on Madame Bovary,’ Flora Keersmaekers confronts Nabokov’s findings
on Flaubert’s most famous novel with those of another critic who appears to
have similar views on Flaubert and his novel, Jean Rousset. As Keersmaekers
argues, Nabokov’s peculiar conception of literary communication is remark-
ably similar to the one proposed by literary critics and theorists inspired by
phenomenology, such as Rousset. Nabokov and Rousset have a common goal
in reading: an utter and complete identification with the consciousness of the
12 Dhooge and Pieters

author. The confrontation of both critics’ readings of Madame Bovary offers

new insight into Nabokov’s idiosyncratic reading method.
The second group of contributions – gathered under the heading ‘­Critic
among critics’ – focuses its attention on the extent to which Nabokov used –
or did not use – studies by other scholars on literary history, specific ­writers,
and/or specific literary works. The articles in this section aim to get a b­ etter
picture of the materials and sources Nabokov probably read and/or used
when preparing his lectures. In ‘Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses,’ Geert ­Lernout
sheds light on the secondary literature Nabokov used for his classes on Joyce
and points out how he relates to it and whether he always mentions his
sources. Additionally, Lernout indicates which parts in Nabokov’s detail-
oriented analysis can be considered real ‘discoveries’ or original insights
into Joyce’s novel and his literary technique and which are instead question-
able for Joyce scholars today. Finally, Lernout focuses on Nabokov’s teaching
method – its merits and flaws – and ends with a few thoughts on how the
lectures on Joyce may be useful for understanding Nabokov’s own literary
production.
Arthur Langeveld examines Nabokov’s only lecture which actually made it
into print in his lifetime: his lecture on Nikolai Gogol, published in elaborated
form as Nikolai Gogol in 1944. In ‘Gogol seen through the eyes of N ­ abokov,’ Lan-
geveld identifies the sources Nabokov uses without giving them due credit, but
also indicates where Nabokov makes a truly original contribution to our un-
derstanding of Gogol’s œuvre. Additionally, Langeveld argues that the Gogol
monograph is not a regular biography or critical work, but ‘non-fiction with a
strongly fictional basis’ or non-fiction in which the author – just like in his own
œuvre – plays games with the reader and draws nearly as much attention to
himself as to the central subject of the monograph.
Ben Dhooge discusses the most explicitly compiled lecture by ­Nabokov –
on Anton Chekhov. The lecture contains several references to other readers of
Chekhov – some hidden, other explicit; some crystal clear, other puzzling. To
get insight into Nabokov’s critical laboratory – i.e. to find out which sources
Nabokov was acquainted with, what critical writings he considered (un)im-
portant, and to what extent his analysis is actually original or idiosyncratic –
Dhooge takes a closer look at Nabokov’s biography of Chekhov, as well as his
comparison of Chekhov with Henry James and some of Nabokov’s own insights
that nonetheless remind us of other critics of Chekhov. Additionally, Dhooge
argues, a close analysis of Nabokov’s sources shows how Nabokov relates to
other critics and critical movements. This is particularly pertinent in the case
of Chekhov, as when Nabokov was composing the lecture – between the first
Introduction: Reading Nabokov Teaching 13

draft and its later reworking – the former’s status as a canonical writer was
still under construction and was following very different paths in the differ-
ent scholarly communities Nabokov had access to. The lecture on Chekhov,
Dhooge argues, bears marks of that canonization process and its underlying
conflicting traditions.
The third group of contributions – ‘Author among authors’ – concerns the
relationship between Nabokov and the authors whose work he selected to
teach in class. Are there any similarities between the authors, literary works,
and fragments Nabokov selects for his lectures and his own poetics, novels, and
preferred literary techniques? Does Nabokov thematize certain elements he
discerns in other writers? Are the elements that Nabokov concentrates on in
his analyses in anyway related to his own art? If so, does that affect his selection
and, hence, interpretation? And, consequently, does Nabokov r­ecognize his
own poetics in others, or does he rather impose them on the works of others?
In ‘“Do Dogs Eat Poppies?”: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert,’ Lara Delage-
Toriel takes up these questions with regard to Flaubert. According to ­Delage-
Toriel, Nabokov’s goal as a teacher of literature is ‘to illuminate the l­etters of
other writers’ and to draw the student’s attention to their craft. Hence his focus,
among other things, on details and accurate translations. The choice for includ-
ing Flaubert’s Madame Bovary in his lectures and his illuminating ­approach to
it are in many ways directly related to the affinity Nabokov felt with Flaubert,
an affinity which to a large extent was the result of shared views on literature.
Delage-Toriel points out, however, that in guiding his students through ­Flaubert,
Nabokov often not just fails to offer any real analysis, but also emphasizes his
own interpretation of Madame Bovary which is not always true to the facts and
sometimes downright biased in how it is directly related to his own art.
In his contribution ‘“Do not Interrupt Me”: The Role of Proustian ­Aesthetics
in Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature,’ Roy Groen broadens the existing discus-
sion of Proust’s role in Nabokov’s œuvre from his novels to the l­ectures – not
just the lecture on Proust, but Nabokov’s lectures in general. Groen looks
in the opposite direction, focusing not on how Nabokov’s views on litera-
ture ­affect his reading of other writers, but on how other writers’ literary
works have affected Nabokov’s own view on literature. According to Groen,
­Nabokov’s most pertinent emphasis on the self-sufficiency of the literary
masterpiece and the equally pertinent disregard for the social and moral
­implications of any work of literature, in particular, can be related to an
aspect of Proust’s aesthetics which figures prominently in A la recherche du
temps perdu: the idea that the real world and the world created in literature
are disconnected.
14 Dhooge and Pieters

Gerard de Vries analyses Nabokov’s approach to Stevenson’s The Strange

Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. De Vries demonstrates that Nabokov, who in his
­lecture speaks very positively about Stevenson’s novel and style, actually mis-
reads and misrepresents the novel and does not live up to his own principles of
reading. First of all, Nabokov largely ignores the author’s intention (the novel
as an allegory) and the historical facts that served as i­ nspiration for the novel.
Nabokov also adds several layers to the story that it initially lacks – themes,
motifs, characteristics of the protagonist, plot elements, interpretational lev-
els – and blames the author for certain flaws that actually are not flaws at all
but rather reflect Nabokov’s own artistic preferences. De Vries s­ uggests that
Nabokov is so much taken in by just one aspect of Stevenson’s novel – to wit,
the transformation theme, which Nabokov also incorporates in his œuvre but
brings to a higher level in The Eye and Lolita – that he ­misreads the rest of
the novel and even projects his own ideas and preferences on it. Nabokov’s
enthusiasm, however, shrinks quickly: in the lecture on Kafka, Nabokov is no
longer thrilled by the transformation theme and instead discusses Stevenson’s
shortcomings for the first time.
At the end of this introduction, we would like to take the time to acknowl-
edge the invaluable support that we have been given by a number of people
in the course of the production of this volume. The origins of this book go
back to a project that was generously funded by Ghent University’s ‘Special
­Research Fund’ and that ran from 2009 to 2013. The project, supervised by
Jürgen ­Pieters, not only resulted in Flora Keersmaekers’ PhD (‘The author as
reader. Ideas about literature and reading method in Vladimir Nabokov’s lec-
tures on literature’ (2015)), it also involved the organization of an international
conference on Nabokov’s lectures at the Royal Academy in Brussels, convened
by Flora Keersmaekers, Sophie Levie, and Jürgen Pieters. Some of the contribu-
tions in this book were presented in a first draft version at the occasion of this
conference. Sophie Levie and Flora Keersmaekers were not only involved in
the p­ lanning of the conference but also in the earlier phases of this volume’s
production. Dries Vrijders provided editorial assistance in an early phase of
that all too lengthy process. We want to thank the contributors to this book,
not only for the kind patience they have shown in the course of the book’s
protracted genesis, but also for the generosity with which they have been will-
ing to share their expertise. We would also like to thank Aleid Fokkema for her
invaluable editorial assistance and the two anonymous reviewers whose com-
ments on an earlier version enabled us to improve the quality of this book. At
Brill, Masja Horn has been a patient help in the long process of this collection’s
delivery, while Saskia van der Knaap provided excellent editorial assistance.
Introduction: Reading Nabokov Teaching 15

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Amis, Martin. Visiting Mrs. Nabokov and Other Essays. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.
Amis, Martin. The War against Cliché. Essays and Reviews 1971–2000. London: Jonathan
Cape, 2001.
Bayley, John. Selected Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Beam, Alex. The Feud. Vladimir Nabokov, Edmund Wilson and the End of a Beautiful
Friendship. New York: Penguin Random House, 2016.
Bishop, Morris. ‘Nabokov at Cornell.’ In Nabokov. Criticism, Reminiscences, Translations
and Tributes, edited by Alfred Appel Jr. and Charles Newman, 234–39. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1970.
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993a [1990].
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years. New York: Vintage, 1993b.
Boyd, Brian. ‘Nabokov, Literature, Lepidoptera.’ In Nabokov’s Butterflies, edited by Brian
Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle, 1–31. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
Boyd, Brian. ‘Envelopes for the Letters to Véra.’ In Letters to Véra, by Vladimir Nabokov,
edited and translated by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd, xxi–li. London: Penguin,
2014.
Boyd, Brian and Marijeta Bozovic, eds. Nabokov Upside Down. Evanston, Il.: Northwestern
University Press, 2017.
Bozovic, Marijeta. Nabokov’s Canon: From Onegin to Ada. Evanston, Il.: Northwestern
University Press, 2016.
Connolly, Julian W., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Couturier, Maurice. Nabokov ou la tyrannie de l’auteur. Paris: Seuil, 1993.
De la Durantaye, Leland. Style is Matter. The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2007.
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Frank, Joseph. ‘Lectures on Literature.’ In The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov,
edited by Vladimir E. Alexandrov, 234–58. New York, London: Garland Publishing,
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Johnson, Kurt and Steve Coates. Nabokov’s Blues. The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary
Genius. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999.
Keersmaekers, Flora. De schrijver als lezer: literatuuropvatting en leesmethode in
­Vladimir Nabokovs colleges over literatuur. PhD Thesis, Universiteit Gent, 2015.
Levin, Harry. ‘Lectures on Don Quixote.’ In The Garland Companion to Vladimir N ­ abokov,
edited by Vladimir E. Alexandrov, 226–34. New York, London: Garland Publishing,
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16 Dhooge and Pieters

McLean, Hugh. ‘Lectures on Russian Literature.’ In The Garland Companion to ­Vladimir

Nabokov, edited by Vladimir E. Alexandrov, 258–73. New York, London: Garland
Publishing, 1995.
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by A. Walton Litz. Bloomfield Hills: Bruccoli Clark Publishers, 1980b.
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 part 1
Teacher among Authors

∵
 chapter 1

Nabokov’s Reflections on ‘Proust’s Prismatic People’

Yannicke Chupin

Abstract

Nabokov’s lecture on Proust reveals his marked interest in the French novelist’s unique
sense of characterization. Nabokov first insists on the exclusively fictional nature of
Proust’s characters, which is a point often debated. The first part of this chapter tries to
clarify Nabokov’s position on the subject. Surprisingly ignoring the remarkable linguis-
tic identity of Proust’s characters, Nabokov’s attention then exclusively focuses on the
visual, varying and fragmentary perceptions to which Proust’s characters are submit-
ted in the novel. The professor’s partial analysis, which relies on the use of a complete
set of optical imagery, testifies to his strong interest in what he calls a ‘literature of the
senses’ among which sight is crucial. ‘I do not think in any language. I think in images,’1
he once famously declared; and his lecture on Proust, which illuminates the prisms
developed by Proust’s characters, also reveals his own bias as a novelist.

Marcel Proust once confided in a letter to his friend Antoine Bibesco the intense
efforts exacted by the creation of characters: ‘One hundred novel c­ haracters
[…] require that I give them a body like those shadows who want Ulysses to
let them drink a little blood to be brought to life.’2 Besides the elaboration of
plot and structure, the role of a novelist is to give life to the heroes and many
figures that people his novel. As Nabokov remarked in his lecture on the first
part of Proust’s novel, Proust’s is no small task since his novel includes at least
two hundred of them.3 Part of the 311–312 class on European fiction at Cornell,
this lecture covers various aspects of literary analysis such as narration, struc-
ture and style; yet one remarks Nabokov’s particular and repeated attention to
Proust’s technique of characterization. Reflections on the developments and

1 Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: Vintage, 1990), 14.

2 Marcel Proust, Lettres de Marcel Proust à Bibesco (Lausanne: Clairefontaine, 1949), 132, my
translation.
3 Nabokov uses the calculations proposed by Derrick Leon in his introduction to Marcel Proust:
Derrick Leon, An Introduction to Marcel Proust, his Life, his Circle and his Work (­London:
­Routledge and Kegan, 1951), 170.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_003

20 Chupin

twists of plot offered by the appearances of major and secondary characters

abound and testify to Nabokov’s keen interest in those he calls ‘Proust’s pris-
matic people.’4
Proustian characterization is usually analysed along two main axes. C ­ ritics
have first noted how Proust’s main characters are defined through their
­singular use of language.5 But they are also usually considered through the
prism of Proust’s ‘point of view technique,’ to use French critic Jean-Yves
­Tadié’s expression. Tadié shows how Proust’s characters depend on the nar-
rator’s and other characters’ perception of them.6 Surprisingly neglecting the
strong linguistic identity of Proust’s characters, Nabokov’s analysis focuses
almost exclusively on how they appear to other characters. Throughout his
­lecture, he reflects on the varying and fragmentary perceptions to which they
are submitted, referring to the notion of mask to further describe their elusive-
ness. Before exploring Proust’s singular approach to characters, Nabokov first
insists on their e­ xclusively fictional nature – a point often debated.7 The first
part of this ­chapter tries to clarify Nabokov’s position on the subject. I will
then seek to explore the meaning of Nabokov’s particular interest in Proust’s
characterization and see how it combines with his own perception of creation
as a novelist.

Characters and Keys

The first thing Nabokov makes clear in his lecture is that Proust’s novel should
not be reduced to a roman à clef. Although its structure might have features
associated with a long chronicle, the characters he invented are no more
to be compared with real life individuals than Flaubert’s or Jane Austen’s.
­Nabokov’s emphasis on the point is all the stronger as Marcel Proust’s own
position was ambiguous. In his correspondence, the French writer frequently
pointed out the keys he used to define his creatures. Since the publication of
In Search of Lost Time, critics have looked for analogies between characters
and individuals,8 but, as Tadié remarked, ‘the list of information provided by

4 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 208.
5 See Gérard Genette, Figures 1 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966), 223–93.
6 Jean-Yves Tadié, Proust et le roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 34–60.
7 See next section: ‘Characters and Keys’.
8 See Antoine Adam, ‘Marcel Proust et le problème des clés,’ Revue des Sciences Humaines 1
(1952): 49–90 and George Painter, Proust (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965).
Nabokov’s Reflections on ‘Proust’s Prismatic People’ 21

the artist himself on his models is very long.’9 Proust also declared that there
was ‘not a single character who is a real person in disguise’ in his book and
was offended when people tried to associate a real person with one of his
creatures.10
A remark by Laure Hayman, who thought Odette de Crécy was ­modeled
after her, provoked from the author the following reaction, whose tone
­anticipates Nabokov’s strongly opinionated remarks about ‘bad readers’ and
critics: ‘I pointed […] at the stupidity of high society people who think that
a person can thus appear in a book. Alas! […] You read my work and you find
some ­resemblance between you and Odette! It’s enough to despair of writings
books!’11 The two essays on Proust Nabokov explicitly refers to in his lecture,
a French study by Arnaud Dandieu and an English essay by Derrick Leon,
both insist on the fact that the characters in this novel are not to be related to
real people. And yet Leon is as ambiguous as Marcel Proust, for in a chapter
­devoted to ‘The chief characters of the book, their derivations and develop-
ment,’ he also provides an extensive list of keys relating to either characters’
personal attributes or to relationships between individuals:12

We know, too, that Oriane de Guermantes’s wit was modelled almost

exclusively upon that of Mme Strauss, just as her beauty, her taste in
clothes, her manner of dressing her hair, and various features of her char-
acter, were derived from, among others, the Comtesse Greffuhle and the
Comtesse Adheaume de Chevigné: […] that Robert’s affair with Rachel
was based on the liaison of one of his friends with Louisa de Mornand:
that much of Mme de Villeparisis’ conversation was derived from that of
Mme de Beaulaincourt, and that the style and good looks of the Duc de
Guermantes were drawn from the Comte d’Hausonville, as the famous
Courvoisier bow was copied from that gentleman’s wife.13

Nabokov himself knew well who such or such a character could have referred
to in Marcel Proust’s life, as some of his novels show. Ada or Ardor contains a
harsh critique of Proust’s character Albertine expressed by Van’s professor of
French literature. The professor thinks that Albertine, as a female character
based upon a real-life male character, lacks in verisimilitude:

9 Tadié, Proust et le roman, 61.

10 Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. vi (London: Vintage Books, 2000 [1927]), 191.
11 Marcel Proust, Correspondance générale (Paris: Plon, 1935), vol. v, 223, my translation.
12 Leon, An Introduction, 228–63.
13 Leon, An Introduction, 231.
22 Chupin

[he] maintains that there is a grave philosophical, and hence, artistic,

flaw in the entire treatment of the Marcel and Albertine affair. It makes
sense if the reader knows that the narrator is a pansy, and that the good
fat cheeks of Albertine are the good fat buttocks of Albert. It makes none
if the reader cannot be supposed, and should not be required, to know
anything about this or any other author’s sexual habits in order to enjoy
to the last drop a work of art.14

The excuse for the relative failure of Albertine as a character is thus to be

found in the author’s biography. The same criticism will be vented by Charles
­Kinbote in Nabokov’s own novel Pale Fire. The critic claimed that ‘Proust’s
rough masterpiece [was] an absurd, rubber-and-wire romance between a
blond young blackguard (the fictitious Marcel), and an improbable jeune fille
who has a pasted-on bosom, Vronsky’s (and Lyovin’s) thick neck, and a cupid’s
buttocks for cheeks.’15 Thus two characters in Nabokov’s novels, both profes-
sors of literature, admit that their appreciation of a literary work depends on
the ­biographical knowledge they have about the French author. As a profes-
sor, however, Nabokov is not interested in explaining the clues to his students
even though the reference to Albertine being in reality a certain ‘Alfred’16 could
elicit a smile from his audience. The only key Nabokov provides in his lecture
is about ­Bergotte, who, Nabokov says, bears some affinities with the French
writer Anatole France, but he then quickly declares against identification: ‘but
on the whole, Bergotte is a complete creation of Proust.’17
As a teacher, Nabokov stands in sharp contrast to Charles Weir, who taught
Class 311–32 at Cornell before him. Weir, Brian Boyd reports, was ‘more inter-
ested in the sex life of authors than in their books,’ a trend that had caused
the course to be nicknamed ‘Dirty Lit’ by the students.18 Nabokov, by contrast,
could well be considered a fervent disciple of Proust’s anti-Sainte-Beuvism.
In a series of essays written in 1908 and 1909, Proust attacked the methods
of the famous mid-19th century French critic and writer Charles-Augustin

14 Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor, a Family Chronicle (New York: Vintage International,
1969), 169.
15 Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (New York: Vintage International, 1962), 162. See Boyd’s
­detailed analysis of this issue: Brian Boyd, Ada online, accessed May 15, 2017, http://www
.ada.auckland.ac.nz/ (168.31–169.14).
16 The character of Albertine is generally thought to have been modelled on Alfred
­Agostinelli, who was Proust’s driver.
17 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 230.
18 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1991), 168.
Nabokov’s Reflections on ‘Proust’s Prismatic People’ 23

S­ ainte-Beuve, who held that appreciation of a literary object was derived from
a thorough knowledge of its author’s biography.19 Aside from a rapid synopsis
of the author’s life and death dates and a few historical landmarks, Nabokov
most of the time abstains from connecting fictional elements to facts belong-
ing to the author’s life. If In Search of Lost Time is a ‘treasure hunt’ as he phrased
it in the introduction of his lecture, the hunt is certainly not to find the keys to
the people pictured in the gallery.
Nabokov’s strong denial of the roman à clef genre is to be observed in the
recurrence of his negative definitions of the novel. The first pages of the lecture
contain a series of them that act as preliminary warnings: ‘One thing should be
firmly impressed upon your minds: the work is not an autobiography’ [‘not’ is
underlined in the manuscript]; ‘the narrator is not Proust the person, and the
characters never existed except in the author’s mind. Let us not therefore go
into the author’s life.’20 A few pages further on, Nabokov reiterates his warning:
‘It is not a mirror of manners, not an autobiography, not a historical account.’21
To emphasize his point further, he evokes the possible connections between
the narrator and Marcel Proust, before repudiating them: ‘At this late point,
then, one might be tempted to say that Proust is the narrator, that he is the
eyes and the ears of the book. But the answer is still no.’22 More surprisingly,
­Nabokov’s reading also entirely excludes the historical and social reality of
In Search of Lost Time: ‘The world [of this novel] itself, the inhabitants of that
world, are of no social or historical importance whatever,’23 Nabokov declares,
words that are very close to those that Kinbote, a fictional character himself,
utters in Nabokov’s Pale Fire: ‘Proust’s rough masterpiece [is] a huge, ghoulish
fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people
in any historical France.’24
Such emphatic statements – or typically ‘Nabokovian overstatements,’ as
­Rivers calls them in a paper centering on Proust and Ada25 – are not e­ ntirely jus-
tified. As Rivers argues, ‘[t]here are many ways in which [Proust’s novel] is firm-
ly rooted in its time and place, ways in which, in fact, it ­cannot be ­understood
without explicit knowledge of that time and place.’26 The critic gives s­ everal
examples, such as the crucial division of characters into D ­ reyfusists and

19 Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Gallimard, 1954).

20 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 208.
21 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 210.
22 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 210.
23 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 208.
24 Nabokov, Pale Fire, 162.
25 J. Edwin Rivers, ‘Nabokov, Proust, Ada,’ French American Review 1 (1977): 179.
26 Rivers, ‘Nabokov, Proust, Ada,’ 179.
24 Chupin

­anti-Dreyfusists, which is indeed decisive to the structure of Time ­Regained.27

But Nabokov’s overstatements may be connected with his own irritation when
readers of his novels equated a fictional character with someone in his life.
Was Pnin modelled after Nabokov’s émigré colleague at Cornell, Marc S­ zeftel,
as Galya Diment has argued in a two-hundred page study?28 The question is
of great interest to biographers and literary historians but has none for strictly
literary studies. Unlike Proust, Nabokov was never a­ mbivalent on the s­ ubject
and refused to provide any keys in his interviews or correspondence. Instead,
he would vehemently refute the arguments ­advanced by certain ­critics who
wished to explore the genesis of characters in his work. The example of Ada
Veen, sometimes considered to have been modeled on Véra, is a case in point.
John Updike was severely rebuked for making the analogy: ‘I do get ­annoyed
when people I never met impinge on my privacy with false and vulgar
­assumptions – as for example, Mr. Updike, who in an otherwise clever article
absurdly suggests that my fictional character, bitchy and lewd Ada, is, I quote,
“in a dimension or two, Nabokov’s wife.”’29 As Brian Boyd reports, Nabokov
also sent an angry and public letter to Matthew Hodgart, who had written a
review of Ada for the New York Review of Books, and objected ­‘violently to your
­seeing in reunited Van and Ada (both rather horrible creatures) a picture of my
­married life. What the hell, Sir, do you know about my married life? I expect a
prompt apology from you.’30
However, in spite of his adamant refutation of any connection between
reality and fiction in his reading of Proust, Nabokov does sometimes lapse
into a Sainte-Beuviste reading of the French novel. His strong defence against
­biographical reading does indeed falter when he evokes the reason why Proust,
via the narrator of In Search of Lost Time, would often compare characters with
paintings. Observing that ‘the narrator or Swann often sees the physical appear-
ance of this of that character in terms of paintings by famous old masters,’ the
professor provides two reasons for this striking feature.31 The first derives from
the idea that for Proust, ‘art was the essential reality of life.’32 Such ­references
emphasize the artistic environment that surrounds the characters. A ­ ccording
to Tadié, this is not some innocent or pedantic mania but a conscious way for
Proust to transform characters into images, so that his sentences and phrases

27 Rivers, ‘Nabokov, Proust, Ada,’ 179.

28 Galya Diment, Mniniad (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1997).
29 Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973), 146.
30 Boyd, Ada online, 568.
31 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 228.
32 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 228.
Nabokov’s Reflections on ‘Proust’s Prismatic People’ 25

become close to Carpaccio’s paintbrush.33 The second reason ­Nabokov pro-

vides is ‘of a more private kind,’ as he himself says. It refers to the author’s
masked homosexuality:

In describing young men he disguised his keen appreciation of male

beauty under the masks of recognizable paintings; and in describing
young females he disguised under the same masks of paintings his sexual
indifference to women and his inability to describe their charm.34

This explanation is typical of what Proust would denounce in Against

S­ ainte-Beuve; that is, observing a work of art through the prism of the ­artist’s
­biography. The idea, which belittles Proust’s creativity, is also rather un-­
Nabokovian as it undermines the autonomy of novelistic creation. Douglas
Fowler has pointed out that ‘homosexuality [is] always an aspect of sterility
and monstrosity in Nabokov’s world’35 and Rivers argues that this rather un-
convincing argument about the character of Albertine derives from Nabokov’s
general hostility to homosexuality.36 Let us add that in his lecture on Joyce,
Nabokov finds it important to underline that Bloom’s sexuality, which he
deems insane and complicated, is strictly heterosexual – ‘not homosexual, as
most of the ladies and gentlemen are in Proust.’37

Characters and Prisms

Proust’s characters cannot be given a key for the simple reason that, just like
harlequins and their multicolored clothing, they are made from the various
aspects of different individuals: ‘There are no keys for the characters of this
book; or if there are, there are eight or ten for a single character.’38 Proust
points here to an important feature of his work, that is, the manifold and ever-
changing aspects of his characters. In his linear reading of the French novel,
Nabokov often refers to the multiplicity of points of view which contribute to
Proust’s creation of his subjects, a singular technique which he compares with
Joyce’s:

33 Tadié, Proust et le roman, 99.

34 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 228.
35 Douglas Fowler, Reading Nabokov (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 114.
36 Rivers, ‘Nabokov, Proust, Ada,’ 196n30.
37 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 287.
38 Tadié, Proust et le roman, 64.
26 Chupin

Joyce takes a complete and absolute character, God-known, Joyce-known,

then breaks it up into fragments and scatters these fragments over the
space-time of his book. The good reader gathers these puzzle pieces and
gradually puts them together. On the other hand, Proust contends that
a character, a personality, is never known as an absolute but always as a
comparative one. He does not chop it up but shows it as it exists through
the notions about it of other characters. And he hopes, after having given
a series of these prisms and shadows, to combine them into an artistic
reality.39

The comparison is relevant first because of the two authors’ affinities. Ulysses
was published in 1922, the year when Proust died. In both works, characters
are still granted a civil status, social features and habits, but are not introduced
as they used to be until the end of the previous century, along the lines of
a full-length portrait. The notion of multiplicity has at that time superseded
the ­concept of the old stable hero and yet it has not destroyed the unity and
coherence of characters. Nabokov indeed emphasizes the dialectic at work
­between multiplicity and unity in both writers’ techniques of characterization.
In Joyce’s novel, a god-like master first fully designed his characters and then
scattered information for the reader to gather from the pages. As the reader
puts the pieces together, the apparent fragmentation ultimately gives way to
a coherent portrait. The author, about whom Joyce famously argued that he
should be ‘like the God of creation, remain[ing] within or behind or beyond or
above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, paring his fingernails,’
progressively reveals the personality of his characters to the reader.40
Just like Joyce, Proust does not provide the reader with a complete portrait of
every major character he introduces in his work. What the French critic A ­ rnaud
Dandieu has insisted upon, and which Nabokov repeated to his s­ tudents, name-
ly that In Search of Lost Time, was ‘an evocation, not a d­ escription of the past’
is also true of characters.41 They are ‘evoked’ rather than d­ escribed, through
the eyes of a narrator sometimes himself relaying someone else’s point of view.
There lies the important difference between the Irish and the French writer’s
techniques of characterization. In Proust’s novel, the creation of characters
relies on a complex use of points of view. Each subject is observed through a
series of encounters relayed by the narrator. Every new encounter or new piece

39 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 217.

40 James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992
[1916]), 242.
41 Arnaud Dandieu, Marcel Proust: Sa révélation psychologique (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1930), 19.
Nabokov’s Reflections on ‘Proust’s Prismatic People’ 27

of narrative in which the character appears unveils a new aspect of his person-
ality, which undergoes constant change through time and hardly ever remains
true to the first impression conveyed.
In his linear reading of the first part of the novel, Nabokov refers to three
characters whose definition is dependent on the points of view of other
­characters, which most of the time are conflicting. First focusing on the intro-
duction of Swann, Nabokov insists on the various and discordant social dis-
tinctions associated with the man. ‘His Combray friends, the narrator’s family
[…] think of him only as the son of the family’s old friend, the stockbroker’42
and the narrator’s great aunt sees him through the prism of his relationships
with ‘demi-monde’ ladies or ‘courtesans.’43 Yet, outside the provincial town of
Combray, Swann is ‘a man of fashion, an exquisite Parisian greatly in vogue
in the highest society,’ of which the narrator’s family has no clear concep-
tion.44 The same dichotomy of perception is to be found about M. Vinteuil,
who is known in Combray as ‘a vague crank dabbling in music,’ while his music
is ‘­tremendously famous in Paris.’45 The introduction of Odette, Swann’s wife,
is subjected to a similar treatment. As Nabokov observes, she first appears as
‘an anonymous earlier recollection of Marcel,’ ‘a young woman in a pink silk
dress, a cocotte, a lady of light morals, whose love may be bought for a dia-
mond or a pearl.’ Nabokov pursues: ‘It is this charming lady who is going to
become Swann’s wife, but her identity is a secret well-kept from the reader.’46
This ‘secret kept from the reader’ is close to the notion of ‘mask’ that ­focuses
Nabokov’s interest throughout his lecture: ‘Proust is intensely interested in
the various masks under which the same person appears to various other
persons,’47 he remarks. ‘The fact that reality is a mask should not disturb us
in Proust,’ he observes further.48 Nabokov thus foregrounds the fact that the
unity of a character does not rely on the stability of its personality, but on the
artistic imprint that derives from the superposition of multiple points of view.
The paradox is that, rather than obstructing the reality of each character, each
­series of masks superimposed on each character helps build their identity:
‘Proust contends that a character, a personality, is never known as an absolute
but always as a comparative one. [He shows it] as it exists through the notions

42 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 216.

43 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 216.
44 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 216.
45 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 231.
46 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 228.
47 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 231.
48 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 228.
28 Chupin

about it of other characters. And he hopes, after having given a series of these
prisms and shadows, to combine them into an artistic reality.’49
This peculiar feature of Proust’s aesthetics seems to have come to him ­rather
late. Proust, who received a classical literary education and closely studied the
poetics of Stendhal and Flaubert’s oeuvre, first had to fight against a natural
tendency to provide extensively developed portraits of his characters on their
first appearance. His childhood correspondence, Tadié remarks, testifies to
his talent as a portraitist and his first novel Jean Santeuil shows a treatment
still close to that of La Bruyère’s portraits in his Caractères and from Balzac’s
later full portraits.50 It is only after he had completed Jean Santeuil that he
found his way to a more complex approach to characters. In a chronicle pub-
lished in 1903, he is about to describe the charm of a princess as she welcomes
her guests during an evening party, but then changes his mind: ‘Why should
I analyze the charm of her manner? I would rather try to make you feel it by
showing you the princess as she receives her guests.’51 The technique is part
of the general trend that favors ‘showing’ characters at the expense of merely
‘telling’ about them, but instead of merely dramatizing his subjects and let-
ting his readers see for themselves, Proust collects the various reactions to the
Princess’s ­discourse and gestures, so that her personality is refracted in the nar-
rative exclusively through the way it appears to other characters. This feature is
one that Nabokov maintains is exclusively specific to Proust’s writing. ‘Proust
is a prism,’ he writes in the introduction to his lecture and his characters are
‘prismatic’ people. Nabokov’s enthusiasm for Proust’s optics is not surprising.
The French novelist’s refracting technique is very similar to the one explored
in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, where the narrator describes Sebastian’s
style in his first novel entitled The Prismatic Bezel: ‘It is as if a painter said: look,
here I’m going to show you not the painting of a landscape, but the painting
of different ways of painting a certain landscape, and I trust their harmonious
fusion will disclose the landscape as I intend you to see it.’52 The same idea of
multiple perspectives ultimately disclosing the artistic singularity of the object
depicted is to be observed. The Prismatic Bezel also works as a mise-en-abyme
of what takes place in the general structure of Nabokov’s novel, which attempts
to portray ‘the real life’ of a character by gathering the various and sometimes
conflicting impressions he has left on his environment and relatives. As we
know, the ‘real’ life of Sebastian Knight is thus never really disclosed and the
narrator ultimately fails to grasp Sebastian’s secret.

49 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 217.

50 Tadié, Proust et le roman, 87.
51 Marcel Proust, Chroniques (Paris: Gallimard, 1936), 15, my translation.
52 Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1941), 79.
Nabokov’s Reflections on ‘Proust’s Prismatic People’ 29

Indeed, the result of this prismatic approach to characters is that, unlike

what takes place in Joyce’s novel, characters can never be known. Proust is
not interested in the ‘secret’ identity of Swann’s future wife, or let us say that
there is no such thing. Proust refuses to penetrate the essence of his characters
and presents them only through the imprint they leave on their relatives, a
point that is also congruent with Nabokov’s own conception of character as
it is ­developed in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. The mask formed by the
superimposition of various filters on a character’s face also appears as a strong
defence against the scrutiny of a character’s soul. In his lecture on Proust,
Nabokov suggests that the role of the novelist is not to reveal the essence of
characters. While Joyce prepares the sequence of disclosures that will reveal
the soul of his characters, Proust prepares the various masks worn by his.
This notion of mask is an image the French writer himself referred to when
discussing his novel. In the very last pages of the final volume, the narrator, who
is about to set out to his long writing project, deems it necessary ‘to prepare
[…] the hundred different masks that ought properly to be attached to a single
face, if not only because of the different eyes which look at it and the different
meanings which they read into its features.’53 Masked characters thus never
reveal more than what a single observer could seize at one given moment, and
since sight is a constantly evolving sense, all characters have multiple faces.
This characteristic accounts for the general impression of a ‘shimmering book’
as Nabokov calls it, in which characters are constantly subjected to the inter-
mittence of variegated perspectives: ‘throughout this shimmering book there
are many other examples of these changing values in human relationships.’54
Resulting from such an aesthetics, a most striking feature of Proust’s ­novel
is that relationships between characters, or the simple way they view one
­another, may crumble at any moment. One such dramatic moment, analyzed
by Nabokov, is the scene when the narrator comes face to face with Madame
de Guermantes, whose name had long evoked in his mind a dreamy world of
ancient history. ‘My disappointment was immense,’ the narrator reports, who
finds it hard to see the image formed in his imagination and the image of the
real person coincide.55 Such moments are numerous in Proust’s novel. They are
part of Proust’s ‘preparing’ his characters by ‘masking’ them, as he explained in
a letter to his publisher: ‘And characters are well-prepared from the very first
volume. I mean that they will do in the second volume exactly the opposite of
what was expected from them in the first one.’56

53 Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. vi, 448.

54 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 231.
55 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 235.
56 Léon Pierre-Quint, Proust et la stratégie littéraire (Paris: Corrêa, 1954), 39.
30 Chupin

Characters and Time

As Nabokov points out, characters are not only submitted to the multiplicity
of other characters’ points of view but to the variability of perception through
time. M. Legrandin is introduced as a civil engineer but will prove to be ‘a man
of letters, as it gradually will appear through the book, the most perfect speci-
men of vulgar snob.’57 The maid Françoise’s ‘cruelty to chickens and to people’
is slowly revealed,58 and Charlus, first introduced as a character belonging to
the world of Odette, will ‘develop later into the greatest portrait in literature of
a homosexual,’ Nabokov observes.59
Nabokov thus gives several examples of the numerous ‘revaluations’ of char-
acters in the novel. They are usually brought about through the composition
of short scenes disclosing a new aspect of their personality. A case in point is
that of the narrator’s eavesdropping on Vinteuil’s daughter and ­Albertine. The
scene is slightly flawed according to Nabokov, for the eavesdropping ­motive
is too recondite a device to work properly, but it serves to introduce ‘the long
­series of homosexual revelations and revaluations of characters […] and pro-
duces such changes in the aspects of various characters.’60 Nabokov also directs
his students’ attention to the dramatic change of the narrator’s perspective
on a major character, Swann, who suddenly stops being the ‘Combray Swann’
to ­become Gilberte’s father. At the end of Swann’s way and in the following
volumes, the protagonist only appears as related to Gilberte and ­becomes a
marginal character. Significantly, his death will only be alluded to.61 In the
structure of the work, his disappearance from the narrative forms yet another
concrete evidence of the passing of time.
All of Nabokov’s remarks point to the dynamics of Proust’s characteriza-
tion. The appearance of a character in the novel is always completed by fur-
ther encounters which slightly or greatly modify the reader’s first impression.
­Characters are never seen as static or stereotypical. At the time when ­Nabokov
prepared this lecture, he was also deeply engaged with the composition of
Lolita and it is interesting to compare his study of Proust’s characters with a

57 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 227, 232.

58 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 232.
59 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 234.
60 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 232.
61 ‘She had even mentioned the Verdurin’s name in the course of a visit of condolence which
she had paid to Mme Swann after the death of her husband.’ Marcel Proust, In Search of
Lost time, vol. iv (London: Vintage Books, 2000 [1921–22]), 310.
Nabokov’s Reflections on ‘Proust’s Prismatic People’ 31

passing reflection from Humbert as he receives a letter from the widower John
Farlow who has just married a very young Spanish girl and is about to travel
to India. Such an unexpected turn of events startles Humbert, who realizes he
wrongly imagined his friends and relatives to be as stable as novel characters
usually are:

I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the
stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader’s mind […].
We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular
person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to
our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates
we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical
[…]. I knew his wife had died but I certainly expected him to remain,
throughout a devout widowhood, the dull, sedate and reliable person he
had always been.62

Humbert’s remark reveals his old-fashioned conception of character as a stock

and unchanging type. As a belle-lettriste who came to America to compile a
‘manual of French literature for English-speaking students’ he should know
better, for such developments abound in Proust’s long novel.63 As Nabokov
­reminds his students, all characters are submitted to numerous changes, a phe-
nomenon that is famously exploited in the final volume. Therefore, the masks
worn by the characters do not only result from the multiple views of various
observers but from the multiple changes brought by time itself. Ultimately, all
images superimpose and add to the depth of the character. As Gérard Genette
pointed out, the effect of time in Proust’s work is to constantly transform their
reality, their faces, their bodies so that they become palimpsests:

Time does not only transform personalities, but also faces, bodies, even
places; its effects take roots on space (this is what Proust calls ‘incorporat-
ed time’) and to create a blurry image whose lines overlap thus ­forming a
palimpsest that is sometimes unreadable and always equivocal.64

Is the image formed by those many lines unreadable as Genette argues?

­According to Nabokov, Proust’s combination of ‘prisms and shadows’ u
­ ltimately

62 Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (New York: Putnam’s, 1958 [1955]), 265.

63 Nabokov, Lolita, 16.
64 Genette, Figures 1, 51, my translation.
32 Chupin

reveals the ‘artistic reality’ of characters.65 The identity of these elusive

­phantoms is thus not defined through the immutable elements that crop up
at each mention of them but more precisely through the ever-renewed quality
of the artist’s view of them. Their reality is thus always refracted. As N
­ abokov
pointed out in the beginning of his analysis, the world Proust ­offers is a ‘world
in retrospect’ and his entire work shows that reality can never be approached
directly. This notion of a fragmented and refracted reality is c­ ongruent with
Nabokov’s own. In both writers’ oeuvre, reality is no absolute ­notion. It is
instead a ‘very subjective affair’ as Nabokov said to a bbc ­interviewer to
whom he offered to define the notion as ‘a kind of gradual accumulation of
information;’66 a definition that emphasizes the unfixed quality of the concept
and helps us understand Nabokov’s particular interest in Proust’s shimmering
characters, whose reality is throughout the reading more and more perceptible
but never arrested on the page.

Conclusion

Proust famously wrote in the second volume of his work that ‘every person is
destroyed when we cease to see him; after which his next appearance is a new
creation, different from that which immediately preceded it, if not from them
all.’67 The passage foregrounds the intensely visual qualities of Proust’s char-
acterization and its elusiveness, two points strongly emphasized by Nabokov’s
lecture. His attention is not only exclusively focused on the visual quality of
Proust’s poetics and characterization but also relies on the use of a complete
set of optical imagery, such as ‘focal shifts,’ ‘prisms,’ ‘reflections,’ which illus-
trate the scholarly analysis of this masterpiece of the 20th century. ‘Proust is a
prism,’ Nabokov declares early in the reading, encouraging his students to read
In Search of Lost Time through a ‘special Proustian crystal,’ for ‘it is through this
prism that we view the beauty of Proust’s work.’68
Offering a thorough analysis of the most important features of Proust’s
novel, Nabokov surprisingly ignored the strong linguistic identity and the
voices of Proust’s characters. His English-speaking students might have had a
difficult time appreciating the many voices, accents, and mannerisms of each

65 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 217.

66 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 10.
67 Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. ii (London: Vintage Books, 2005 [1919]), 575.
68 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 210.
Nabokov’s Reflections on ‘Proust’s Prismatic People’ 33

c­ haracter. But Nabokov’s partial analysis testifies to his strong interest in what
he calls a ‘literature of the senses,’ among which sight is crucial. ‘I do not think
in any language. I think in images,’ he famously declared and his lecture, which
testifies to his own bias as a novelist, clearly illuminates the prisms of Proust’s
words.69

Literature Cited

Adam, Antoine. ‘Marcel Proust et le problème des clés.’ Revue des Sciences Humaines
1 (1952): 49–90. Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years. Princeton:
­Princeton University Press, 1991.
Boyd, Brian. Ada online. Accessed May 15, 2017. http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/,
1992–2017.
Dandieu, Arnaud. Marcel Proust: Sa révélation psychologique. Paris: Firmin-Didot,
1930.
Diment, Galya. Mniniad. Washington: University of Washington Press, 1997.
Fowler, Douglas. Reading Nabokov. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974.
Genette, Gérard. Figures 1. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966.
Joyce, James. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992
[1916].
Leon, Derrick. An Introduction to Marcel Proust, his Life, his Circle and his Work. ­London:
Routledge and Kegan, 1951.
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1941.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. New York: Putnam’s, 1958 [1955].
Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage International, 1962.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Ada or Ardor, a Family Chronicle. New York: Vintage International,
1969.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Strong Opinions. New York: McGraw Hill, 1973.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by
John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Painter, George. Proust. London: Chatto & Windus, 1965.
Pierre-Quint, Léon. Proust et la stratégie littéraire. Paris: Corrêa, 1954.
Proust, Marcel. Correspondance générale. Paris: Plon, 1935.
Proust, Marcel. Chroniques. Paris: Gallimard, 1936.
Proust, Marcel. Lettres de Marcel Proust à Bibesco. Lausanne: Clairefontaine, 1949.
Proust, Marcel. Contre Sainte-Beuve. Paris: Gallimard, 1954.

69 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 14.

34 Chupin

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. Vol. II, Within a Budding Grove. London: Vintage
Books, 2005 [1919].
Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. Vol. IV, Sodom and Gomorrah. London: Vintage
Books, 2000a [1921–22].
Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. Vol. VI, Time Regained. London: Vintage Books,
2000b [1927].
Rivers, J. Edwin. ‘Nabokov, Proust, Ada.’ French American Review 1 (1977): 173–97.
Tadié, Jean-Yves. Proust et le roman. Paris: Gallimard, 1971.
 chapter 2

‘The Author’s Pale Virgin Cheek’: Nabokov

on Austen

Luc Herman

Abstract

In the lecture on Jane Austen, Nabokov’s negative judgments about structural aspects
of Mansfield Park are clearly enhanced by the fact that Austen is a woman. What is
more, Nabokov’s patronizing attitude toward female authors leads him to an inter-
pretive mistake. When Austen’s protagonist Fanny condemns a play for its dangerous
­morality, Nabokov all too rapidly decides that Austen disapproves as well. As it hap-
pens, there is no reason at all why Fanny’s reaction (in free indirect discourse) should
coincide with the author’s, but Nabokov is only too happy to let his image of the char-
acter overlap with that of the author. When discussing Austen’s famous irony, Nabokov
describes one of her ironic sentences as ‘the dimpled sentence, a delicate ironic dim-
ple in the author’s pale virgin cheek.’ As a pale virgin, occasionally capable of ­delicate
ironic comment, Nabokov’s Austen embodies Fanny’s innocence and finesse, and so
they simply must think the same about the potential performance of an allegedly scan-
dalous play.

Teaching the literary canon to undergraduates is a difficult assignment. At

­Cornell in the 1950s, Vladimir Nabokov was entrusted with ‘Literature 311–312:
Masters of European Fiction.’ When preparing the syllabus for the course,
Nabokov asked Edmund Wilson for advice on the English writers to select.
It turns out he accepted Wilson’s suggestions (Austen and Dickens), but not
­before putting up some resistance in one of the letters to his friend: ‘I dislike
Jane, and am prejudiced, in fact, against all women writers. They are in another
class.’1 Rereading Mansfield Park at Wilson’s subsequent instigation convinced
Nabokov that, despite his outspoken misgivings as to her gender, Austen was fit
for a career in his league of Masters after all. Judging from the Austen lecture,
she probably owed her place among the big boys thanks to the importance, in

1 Quoted by John Updike in his introduction to Lectures on Literature, by Vladimir Nabokov, ed.
Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), xxi.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_004

36 Herman

­ ansfield Park, of ‘structure,’ which Nabokov defined on a note in his ­Austen

M
folder as ‘the composition of a book, a development of events, one event caus-
ing another, a transition from one theme to another, the cunning way ­characters
are brought in, or a new complex action is started, or the various themes are
linked up or used to move the novel forward.’2 This almost endearing defini-
tion of ‘structure’ legitimises what Nabokov seems to have enjoyed a great deal
in front of his students – retelling the story, and, in the process, setting himself
up for long quotations, which he presumably delivered in an entertaining and
stimulating way. The pragmatic motivation of Nabokov’s basic concept does
not prevent him from being consequent in his application of ‘structure’ as a
hallmark of literary mastery. When the story of Mansfield Park takes the youth-
ful heroine, Fanny Price, back to the lowly family she was born into, and she
becomes relatively isolated from the other main characters, professor Nabokov
does not hesitate to scold Austen for ‘that dismal feature of e­ ighteenth-century
English and French novels, information conveyed by letters.’3 He is even more
outspoken later on: ‘this letter-writing business is a shortcut of no very great
artistic merit.’4 One way of coping with the task of teaching the canon is to
assume a position of authority, and for Nabokov, this solution may have come
naturally, because he simply delights in passing literary judgment left and
right. In the lecture on Austen, no matter what Brian Boyd has to say about
it in his monumental Nabokov biography,5 this ­patronizing attitude is clearly
enhanced by the fact that Austen is a w­ oman. The result is no less than a reduc-
tive reading that could have been easily avoided if ­Nabokov had not been so
enthralled with an image of Jane Austen as a virtuous and yet discreet female
author.
When considering the sequence of chapters in Mansfield Park about the
preparations for a performance of Lovers’ Vows (an adaptation of Das Kind
der Liebe (1791) by August von Kotzebue), Nabokov first prepares the relevant
quotation by suggesting that, while Austen may not have selected the play
­because she ‘thought it a particularly immoral one in itself,’ it is ‘clear that she
disapproves’ of the fact that it will be acted at Mansfield Park.6 Then he sum-
marises her supposed reasons for condemnation as follows: ‘These ­objections

2 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 16.
3 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 48.
4 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 52.
5 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1991), 185.
6 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 34.
‘The Author’s Pale Virgin Cheek’: Nabokov on Austen 37

[­Austen’s] are never specified, but they undoubtedly play a major part in
­Fanny’s distress when she reads the play.’7 And after the quotation to illustrate
this distress, Nabokov’s students heard the following comment: ‘There is no
reason to suppose that Jane Austen’s sentiments do not parallel Fanny’s.’8 The
double negative could be interpreted as a small sign of doubt, but there is
­nothing elsewhere in the lecture on Mansfield Park to prevent me from stat-
ing that Nabokov apparently felt the need to equate the reaction of the main
character to the staging of a play with the attitude of the author. How bad a
mistake is this equation? Or (let’s not be too harsh too quickly) is it perhaps an
interpretive move that must be seen in its historical context and should there-
fore not be construed as evidence of a second-class reading?
Das Kind der Liebe by Kotzebue was adapted in 1798 by Elizabeth Inchbald.
Later on, in a preface, Inchbald explained her motives for altering various
­aspects of the original, whose ‘unfitness for the English stage’ she had r­ ealized
immediately when reading a bad literal translation to prepare her text for
the Covent Garden Theatre.9 In both versions, the basic plot is the same. In
­Nabokov’s retelling, it ‘turns on the fortunes of Frederick, the illegitimate son
of Baron Wildenheim, and his mother’s waiting maid, Agatha Friburg.’10 Read-
ers can imagine most of the melodramatic developments here, including the
happy end, so let me immediately zoom in on the action involving the baron’s
only daughter, Amelia, and her tutor, the reverend Anhalt. Amelia rejects an
aristocratic suitor so that her true love for Anhalt will be seen to conquer all,
and Inchbald has the following comments on her demeanour:

The part of Amelia has been a very particular object of my solicitude and
alteration: the same situations which the author gave her remain, but
­almost all the dialogue of the character I have changed: the f­ orward and
unequivocal manner in which she announces her affection to her lover, in
the original, would have been revolting to an English a­ udience: the ­passion
of love, represented on the stage, is certain to be insipid or disgusting,
­unless it creates smiles or tears: Amelia’s love, by Kotzebue, is indelicate-
ly blunt, and yet void of mirth or sadness: I have ­endeavoured to attach
the attention and sympathy of the audience by ­whimsical ­insinuations,
rather than coarse abruptness – the same ­woman, I ­conceive, whom the

7 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 34–35.

8 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 35.
9 Elizabeth Inchbald, Lovers’ Vows (s.l.: Bibliolife, 2008 [1798]), 10.
10 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 32.
38 Herman

author drew, with the self-same sentiments, but with manners adapted to
the English rather than the German taste.11

In the Kotzebue original, Amelia’s ‘coarse abruptness’ comes down to the

fact that, in Act Three, Scene Three, she ventures a direct ‘Ich liebe Sie’ to the
­reverend when he brings up the unwanted suitor; quickly goes on to say ‘Sie
will ich heiraten’ after he has described marriage; and ends up putting her
hand on his heart to check out the degree of his aristocracy, a test he has in
fact slyly programmed by assuring her, ‘Das Herz adelt,’ over and over again.12
In ­Inchbald’s adaptation, the scene is much shorter and Amelia is much less
­direct. She r­ enders her affection for the reverend Anhalt explicit by saying her
heart confirms the respect her father has told her to have for him as her tutor,
and she also says that he has already taught her love, going on to quote some of
the tedious lines about it he has used in the German original. Both in Kotzebue
and Inchbald, Amelia announces she will propose to her father that she and
Anhalt get married.
In Mansfield Park, the possibility of staging a play comes up after the arrival,
in chapter 13 of Volume One, of Mr. Yates, who has been part of an aborted
production of Lovers’ Vows at another country seat. Edmund Bertram, who as
the second eldest son at Mansfield is destined to become a reverend, is very
much against it, not only on moral grounds, but also because that kind of com-
motion would be against the wishes of his father, Sir Thomas, who is away on
business in the West Indies. Fanny, who is already in love with Edmund (while
he is developing a crush on Mary Crawford, another visitor to the area), tries
to be supportive of his attitude when she has a few moments alone with him.
She suggests that those who want to act might not be able to settle on a specific
play. But to no avail, they end up choosing Lovers’ Vows, of course, and Fanny
becomes witness to a long discussion about the distribution of the parts, dur-
ing which one of the daughters of the house describes Amelia as an ‘odious,
little, pert, unnatural, impudent girl.’13 At the end of chapter 14, Fanny has a
chance to acquaint herself with the play. The following reaction, which is the
one Nabokov quotes at length, is clearly focalized through her:

Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through [the play] with an
e­ agerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that
it could be chosen in the present instance – that it could be proposed

11 Inchbald, Lover’s Vows, 10–11.

12 August von Kotzebue, Das Kind der Liebe (Leipzig: Paul Gotthelf Kummer, 1791), 91–98.
13 Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (London: Penguin Books, 2003 [1814]), 127.
‘The Author’s Pale Virgin Cheek’: Nabokov on Austen 39

and accepted in a private Theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her

in their different ways so totally improper for home representation – the
situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by
any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could
be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused
as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Edmund would certainly
make.14

This quotation led Nabokov to make his point about Austen’s moral attitude
toward the play, but what is more, in his copy of Mansfield Park, he added a
note to this paragraph, saying ‘And she [Fanny] is quite right. There is some-
thing obscene in Amelia’s part.’15 It is difficult to come up with a definitive
interpretation of this note, but I see no reason not to take it at face value. That
Nabokov should use the strong adjective ‘obscene’ to describe the forwardness
of Amelia’s character – it is nothing more than that, especially in I­nchbald’s
­adaptation – is at least remarkable and, if we venture into biography, per-
haps an indication of just how keen Nabokov was, in the context of teach-
ing literature, on the idea of keeping down the members of the opposite sex.
­Remember, in this connection, the ‘other class’ to which he wanted to relegate
female ­authors in the letter to Edmund Wilson. The part of Amelia seems to
have something o­ bscene for Nabokov because it allows a woman to hold the
reins. And would you believe it, moral mayhem will ensue. In Nabokov’s words,
the play ‘is going to be an orgy of liberation’16 for a wrongful attraction ­between
two actors, one of whom is already engaged. Only Fanny, who eventually gives
up her resistance and accepts a small part, will restore order. As Nabokov puts
it: ‘Her innocence entering the fray scatters the devils of ­flirtation and ­sinful
passion.’17 This is wishful thinking on Nabokov’s part, since it is really the
­return of Sir Thomas that puts an end to the project of performance.
With her subservience, passivity, virtue, occasional distress and adoration
of Edmund, the character of Fanny must have appeared to Nabokov as an ideal
come true, and my point is that he seems to have been only too happy to let
this character image coincide with an antiquated image of the author Jane
Austen. Maybe they even reinforced each other. Indeed, although Nabokov
was lecturing at a time when Austen was becoming ‘the subject-of-choice’18

14 Austen, Mansfield Park, 128; Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 35.

15 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 35.
16 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 36.
17 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 37.
18 Claire Harman, Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World (Edinburgh: ­Canongate,
2009), 228.
40 Herman

for many critics and emancipating from a writer with a confined outlook to an
author with a degree of ideological sophistication and narrative strategies to
match, he had obviously not yet caught up with this development. Maybe he
had not seen the relevant publications (by Queenie Leavis, Lionel Trilling and
even his already mentioned friend Edmund Wilson, among others) or maybe
the old image of Jane Austen as a virtuous spinster sitting quietly in the corner
to write her dainty comedies of manners served his own visions of male gran-
deur so well that he was simply convinced she had to dislike Lovers’ Vows just
like Fanny.
So, how bad a mistake is this equation? It is in fact not a mistake at all if one
holds the defendable opinion that everybody is entitled to his or her own inter-
pretation. If Nabokov needed a moralistic, ‘pharisaical’ Jane Austen19 to match
his view of Fanny as a moral center of the text, then let him have it, even if this
suggestion could be construed, with hindsight, as morally reprehensible. ­Given
the dominance of New Criticism in the usa at the time of the lectures, clear
statements about authorial intention such as this one by Nabokov could even
be considered a bold and courageous move. Still, in an academic environment
ideally given to the exchange of testable ideas, venturing one’s point without
bringing in any evidence, which is indeed what Nabokov does, becomes prob-
lematic. I would say it turns into a real mistake in this same academic environ-
ment if the point can be dismissed on the basis of arguments that relate to the
text in an acceptable way. And well, these arguments are not hard to find.
In my view, Mansfield Park does not allow for Nabokov’s equation or, for
that matter, any one-sided statement about Austen’s morals. The novel fea-
tures a narrative situation in which statements about characters and events
on the part of the narrator vary with passages focalized through the characters,
mostly through Fanny. These passages regularly take the form of what at the
time was a type of consciousness evocation that was only just coming into its
own, free indirect discourse. As critics (e.g. Dorrit Cohn20) have come to real-
ize, free indirect discourse does not automatically spell sympathy on the part
of the narrator, it can just as well suggest the exposure of a character’s negative
points. The focalisation through Fanny when she reads the play, in other words,
does not automatically mean the reader has to think that the narrator agrees
with her.
Looking at the novel as a whole, the narrator of Mansfield Park is much less
visible than in eighteenth-century novels with omniscient narration, but he

19 Edmund Wilson, ‘A Long Talk on Jane Austen,’ in Classics and Commercials: A Literary
Chronicle of the Forties, id. (New York: Noonday Press, 1967), 199.
20 Dorrit Cohn, Transparent Minds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 116–26.
‘The Author’s Pale Virgin Cheek’: Nabokov on Austen 41

or she does speak out in the first person on a few occasions. At one point the
reader is assured that Fanny would not be able to entirely resist the interest
of a courtship by a handsome and entertaining man if she wasn’t already in
love herself.21 Elsewhere in the novel, the narrator underlines Fanny’s relief
when it becomes clear this same man will not be confronted with the dismal
spectacle of her first family having dinner: ‘I believe, there is scarcely a young
lady in the united kingdoms, who would not rather put up with the misfortune
of being sought by a clever, agreeable man, than have him driven away by the
vulgarity of her nearest relations.’22 The final chapter opens on the narrator’s
first-person summary of what has gone before as ‘an odious subject,’23 but the
overall point about the narrator in Mansfield Park must be that he or she does
not go beyond the occasionally fancy expression of common sense, which is a
far cry from moral indignation.
Even if a reader decides to interpret the narrator’s relative neutrality as a
sign of alignment with the main character, this obviously does not have to
mean the author would have to feel the same. Austen can easily be thought
to have put in the commotion surrounding the play to render Fanny’s petty
moral framework even more explicit, allowing the reader not only to chuckle
at her protagonist’s blockage when it came to fun and games, but also to enjoy
the titillation felt by most other characters on this occasion. Nabokov does not
even distinguish between author and narrator in the Austen lecture. He could
perhaps be forgiven for that because early nineteenth-century readers did not
distinguish between these two agents either in the case of third-person narra-
tion, but, certainly from a current academic vantage point, this lack of distinc-
tion adds to the poverty of his remarks on Austen, co-determined as they are
by a reductive author image.
There is another clue as to Nabokov’s Austen image in the short section
about style toward the end of the lecture, where he discusses her famous i­ rony.
Symptomatically, Nabokov calls this irony ‘delicate,’ and he even goes on to
recuperate it in a telling metaphor: ‘We may call [this ironic sentence] the
dimpled sentence, a delicate ironic dimple in the author’s pale virgin cheek.’24
The metonymical displacements that make up this metaphorical formulation
are revealing. As a pale virgin occasionally capable of delicate ironic com-
ment, Nabokov’s Jane Austen embodies Fanny’s innocence and finesse, and so
it is only logical that they should share negative thoughts and feelings on the

21 Austen, Mansfield Park, 214.

22 Austen, Mansfield Park, 374.
23 Austen, Mansfield Park, 428.
24 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 59.
42 Herman

intended performance of the ‘scandalous’ play that is Lovers’ Vows. ­Austen’s

­delicacy, by the way, is also at the heart of the explanation when Nabokov
­returns to her at the beginning of his lecture on Dickens. He sarcastically avows
‘a certain effort’ had to be made ‘in order to join the ladies in the drawing room’
when dealing with Austen, and proudly reminds the class of the fun they had
‘with her delicate patterns, with her collection of eggshells in cotton wool.’25
A strong example of Nabokovian condescension, this passage returns to the
notion of ‘structure’ that had enabled Austen’s membership in the canon, but
only to belittle it. When the pale virgin does patterns, apparently they are very
fragile, nothing like the good stuff Nabokov finds in her male colleagues.
Needless to say, my effort to figure out Nabokov’s image of Jane Austen has
itself involved a view of Nabokov, which has no doubt been determined by
my general acquaintance with professors, my knowledge of some of them in
particular, my own experience that the work of Jane Austen (apart maybe from
Northanger Abbey) can be a drag, my realisation that Nabokov introduced his
wife to the students as his ‘assistant,’ my sensitivity (as a result of work on the
notion of the implied author)26 to statements about authors based on their
novels, and, last but maybe not least, a variety of elements I am not sufficiently
aware of to add them to this enumeration. Since this book on Nabokov’s lec-
tures will find its way to an academic audience, I need to hope that my ­Nabokov
is also based on testable evidence, of which I would of course like to say that it
is staring us in the face.

Literature Cited

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. London: Penguin Books, 2003 [1814].

Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1991.
Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Harman, Claire. Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World. Edinburgh:
­Canongate, 2009.
Herman, Luc, and Bart Vervaeck. ‘The Implied Author: A Secular Excommunication.’
Style 45/1 (2011): 11–28.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. Lovers’ Vows. S.L.: Bibliolife, 2008 [1798].
Kotzebue, August von. Das Kind der Liebe. Leipzig: Paul Gotthelf Kummer, 1791.

25 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 63.

26 Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck, ‘The Implied Author: A Secular Excommunication,’ Style
45/1 (2011): 11–28.
‘The Author’s Pale Virgin Cheek’: Nabokov on Austen 43

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by

John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Updike, John. Introduction to Lectures on Literature, by Vladimir Nabokov, edited by
Fredson Bowers, introduction by John Updike, xvii–xxvii. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1980.
Wilson, Edmund. Classics and Commercials: A Literary Chronicle of the Forties. New
York: Noonday Press, 1967.
 chapter 3

Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote: ‘A Veritable

Encyclopedia of Cruelty’1

Ilse Logie2

Abstract

In this article, I analyse Nabokov’s idiosyncratic interpretation of Cervantes’ Don

Q
­ uixote as it appears from his posthumously published Lectures on Don Quixote. Unlike
most other critics, Nabokov emphasises the cruelty of the novel. I also reflect on the
influence of Cervantes’ novel on different aspects of Nabokov’s Lolita. Finally, I evalu-
ate to what extent Nabokov applies his own views on reading to his own interpretation
of Don Quixote. This is clearly not fully the case. My suggestion is that Nabokov’s read-
ing of Cervantes’ novel was actually a preliminary step towards the rewriting of Don
Quixote that resulted in Lolita.

Nabokov as a Reader

In the opening essay of his Lectures on Literature, entitled ‘Good Readers

and Good Writers,’ Vladimir Nabokov argues for an unprejudiced reading
­approach, centering on the text as an autonomous work of art: ‘We should
­always ­remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world,
so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as
­possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connec-
tion with the worlds we already know.’3 In accordance with this method, which
is very similar to close reading, extra-literary factors can only begin to play a
part in the interpretation process after the above-mentioned first phase has
been completed, since only then is it legitimate to inquire how a self-contained
creation relates to the outside world. Literature, and certainly fiction, Nabokov

1 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. Guy Davenport (San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 52.
2 This contribution was originally written in Dutch and translated by Paul Vincent.
3 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 1.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_005

Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote 45

also asserts, is not a source of documentary knowledge about towns, historical

periods or natural phenomena. Writers who really matter lift the world off its
hinges and reshape it in such a way that something completely new emerges
from the existing constituents, as in a kind of Big Bang that spawns new galax-
ies: ‘The material of this world may be real enough (as far as reality goes) but
does not exist at all as an accepted entirety: it is chaos, and to this chaos the
author says “go!” allowing the world to flicker and to fuse. It is now recombined
in its very atoms, not merely in its visible and superficial parts.’4
In order for the ideal reader envisaged by Nabokov to be able to bring that
new world to life, he or she must be equipped with a capacity for ‘impersonal
imagination’ and ‘artistic delight.’ In other words, it is not sufficient for readers
to dive into the text feet first, or to identify passionately with the characters.
Quite the opposite: it is better for them to keep a degree of distance and to
exhibit a measured combination of enthusiasm, patience and m ­ eticulousness.
Only then, and after careful re-reading, will they be able to fathom the inter-
connection of the various layers of a text, because an excess of empathy or
emotion forms an obstacle to a true understanding of structure or suitable
attention to style. As a result Nabokov emerges as coercive, normative, and
all in all very focused on authorial intention. The fact is that the ultimate
­intention of the detailed unravelling of a text is an almost phenomenologi-
cal ­penetration into the consciousness and the mind of the writer (not as a
­biographical person, but as a creative demiurge), who in this way keeps a firm
grip on the hermeneutic orchestration of the whole process.
Nabokov’s view of reading – an almost obsessive quest for the ‘original
meaning’ of a literary text, in which the reader’s creative activity is subordi-
nated to that of the author – is an extension of his view of translation, which
was discussed by Flora Keersmaekers, among others.5 In translating, for exam-
ple, Pushkin’s ­Eugene Onegin, Nabokov tries to find an exact equivalent for the
cognitive meaning of the original. Aesthetic considerations are outweighed
by loyalty to Pushkin, and Nabokov regards his translation more as a didac-
tic tool designed to lead to a better understanding of the source text than as
an autonomous literary achievement. Of course, such ideas are problematic,
if only because they drastically oversimplify the great complexity of textual
­interpretation. After all, to what extent is an author’s intention knowable, and
in what way can a reader get inside a writer’s head? Are these not hypotheti-
cal (re)constructions, which are by definition the product of the interaction

4 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 2.

5 Flora Keersmaekers, ‘“Readable, Indeed!” Nabokovs keuze voor de “letterlijke” vertaling,’
­Filter. Tijdschrift over vertalen, 18 (2011): 64–70.
46 Logie

between text and reader? This is particularly true of famous novels in world
literature, the interpretation of which has taken on a life of its own, such as
Don Quixote by Miguel de ­Cervantes, published in two volumes in 1605 and
1615 respectively. Nabokov devoted a series of lectures to the book, which were
published in a separate volume, and which in this chapter I propose to exam-
ine more closely. How can one separate what is demonstrably contained in the
text from the subsequent image of the anti-hero Don Quixote that has arisen in
the reception process and that inevitably shimmers in the background of each
new reading – a phenomenon that Nabokov characterises tellingly as ‘a literary
hero losing contact with the book that bore him?’6
In his celebrated story ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,’ Jorge Luis
Borges7 suggested that it is far more valid to assume that the opposite process
takes effect: the novel does not possess an archeologically retrievable mean-
ing that can be reconstructed by an ideal reader; rather, each reader brings
his or her own Don Quixote to life by projecting cognitive and affective asso-
ciations onto the text that resolve themselves into an interpretation, which in
retrospect proves to have been contained in the original as a potential layer
of meaning. Don Quixote is one of those rare all-embracing novels in which
everyone can find something to their taste, and which can be read equally
well as a soap avant la lettre, as a cross-section of sixteenth-century Spain in
which, for example, the expulsion of the moriscos is satirised, as the portrait
of a Utopian doomed to failure, or as a rich source of metafictional virtuosity.
But Nabokov, headstrong as ever, clings stubbornly to his view and denies the
virtually endless polysemy. Still, precisely because his belief in a ‘true’ meaning
is so absolute, he nevertheless succeeds in foregrounding interesting aspects
of the work. He tries to scrape off the layers of varnish, free the book from the
long shadow cast by that ‘afterlife’ and return to the source. But inevitably he is
guilty of inconsistencies in the process, for although his aim may sound noble,
it is unattainable, since no one reads in a vacuum, least of all a reader who is
himself a writer.

The Lectures

For four years before the publication of his own Lolita (1955), Nabokov, at that
time a lecturer at Cornell University, made an intensive study of Cervantes’
Don Quixote, in preparation for a series of six lectures on the world-renowned

6 Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, 112.

7 Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths. Selected Stories and Other Writings (London: Penguin, 2000),
62–71.
Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote 47

book that he delivered in 1952 at Harvard, where he replaced his colleague

Harry Levin on a temporary basis in the subject ‘Humanities 2.’ Significantly,
this was not a spontaneous initiative of Nabokov himself, but a suggestion of
Levin’s, who considered Cervantes a logical starting point for a course of the
development of the modern Western novel. It was followed by other lectures in
which Nabokov did select the topics himself. They dealt with modern l­ iterature
(Austen, Dickens, Flaubert, Joyce, Kafka, Proust, Stevenson) and masterpieces
of Russian literature (Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky).
All the lectures, including that on Don Quixote, were published after his death
in 1977.
In the remainder of this chapter I will test Nabokov’s lectures on the Q
­ uixote
against the views he himself proclaimed, in the essay ‘Good Readers and Good
Writers.’ It will soon become clear that these are to some extent rhetorical
and provocative, so that it is impossible not to infringe them. Nor should we
­forget that we are dealing with lectures, and that Nabokov also wanted to wow
his students. In consequence, he is not averse to some grandstanding, regu-
larly using didactic tricks, or larding his argument with anecdotes, such as the
one about King Philip iii standing on the balcony of his palace looking at a
young student who was sitting under an oak tree laughing uncontrollably: ‘The
king remarked that the fellow was either crazy or was reading Don Quixote.’8
A ­courier confirms that he is correct: the book the student was reading was
indeed Don Quixote. This leads Nabokov to wonder what could provoke such
ebullient joy in Philip’s gloomy world, and then to answer his own question
with a long list of cruelties, beginning with the innkeeper in Chapter 3 who
allows a bewildered madman to sleep in his inn in order to mock him and
have his other guests ridicule him. There follows a whole catalogue of physical
and mental torments, since, as we shall see, Nabokov bases his interpretation
precisely on that cruelty. At other moments the lecturer gives his students a
helping hand: in order to show them how it was possible for Don Quixote to
mistake windmills for giants, he explains what a revolutionary novelty those
mills were in the seventeenth century, and even draws a windmill with all its
components on the board, to present things more graphically.9
As is clear from the posthumous Lectures on Don Quixote, edited by
­Fredson Bowers and published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1983, Nabo-
kov p­ repared himself thoroughly for his task. For example, he made a sum-
mary with an a­ ccompanying commentary of each chapter of Cervantes’ work,

8 Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, 53.

9 ‘Nabokov’s rendering of a seventeenth-century windmill’ in Nabokov, Lectures on Don
­Quixote, unnumbered page following the title page.
48 Logie

which takes up over a hundred of the 219 pages of the Lectures, and copied
out what he regarded as the most interesting quotations. This method accords
with his rule that careful reading always implies thoroughness, as opposed to
the uncritical parroting of what a host of previous commentators have written.
The loving way in which Nabokov retells the whole plot, on the other hand, is
at odds with his critical interpretation of the book: anticipating what follows,
we could regard this appendix as an interesting symptom of the paradoxical
fact that Nabokov, who shows himself a dispassionate lover of Don Quixote, is
­inspired, for example in Lolita, by what he has previously decried. The e­ dition
is in a­ ddition illustrated with facsimiles from the folder containing Nabokov’s
original notes, which have been preserved (Bowers has even included frag-
ments subsequently deleted by Nabokov). The two forewords, by Fredson
Bowers and Guy Davenport respectively, explain that for this course Nabokov
based ­himself on the English translation by Samuel Putnam of 1949, published
by Viking and later reprinted in the ‘Modern Library’ series of R ­ andom House.
However, his personal copy of that translation has been lost. We also learn
that Nabokov initially planned in the six lectures to develop only the theme
of ­‘victories and defeats,’ but finally took a different course, reserving the vic-
tories and defeats for the last lecture, as a kind of bonus on top of what had
preceded. After a short ‘Introduction’ in which Cervantes’ work is contextu-
alised, in the second lecture Nabokov introduces the two main figures, Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza (‘Two Portraits: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza’).
In Lecture 3, ‘Structural Matters,’ he analyses the novel’s structure, which he
dismantles like an engineer. Lectures 4 and 5 are thematic, dealing with deceit
and c­ ruelty in Don Quixote (‘Cruelty and Mystification’) and ‘The Chroniclers
Theme, Dulcinea and Death.’ As was said previously the series concludes with
a sixth ­lecture, devoted to ‘Victories and Defeats,’ followed by a succinct con-
clusion. The ­detailed summaries, ‘Narrative and Commentary Part One’ and
‘Narrative and Commentary Part Two,’ bring the book to a conclusion.
The first lecture, on the context, structure and reception of the Quixote,
­immediately sets the tone for all six. In it, Nabokov admits to having little
­affinity with the book and to disagreeing with the assertion that it is the ‘best
novel of all time.’ Apart from compositional criticism (the novel is unbalanced,
incoherent and bristles with inserted stories that are far too long), Nabokov
formulates serious moral objections to its cruelty: ‘Both parts of Don Q ­ uixote
form a veritable encyclopaedia of cruelty. From that viewpoint it is one of
the most bitter and barbarous books ever penned.’10 He speaks of gratuitous
cruelty and returns to it at length (in Lecture 4), condemning it because, he

10 Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, 52.

Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote 49

argues, Cervantes uses it primarily out of opportunism – for the amusement

of his simple readers. As is well known, Don Quixote, driven mad by reading
too many chivalrous romances, is constantly made ridiculous and is constantly
receiving good hidings. Nabokov finds this offensive, and builds his arguments
against the novel around that reaction.
His interpretation of the Quixote as a bitter and barbaric book departs from
the current view of Cervantes’ novel as comic, although there is considerable
variation in the degree to which the book is considered humorous, depending
on the period at which this classic work is being judged. Cervantes’ contem-
poraries, at any rate, were thoroughly amused by the weird antics of the mad
knight. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a sea change:
German idealistic philosophers like Schelling no longer saw Don Quixote
as a deranged individual defending his absurd view of the world against the
rest of mankind, but as a heroic fighter against the external superficiality of
things. Space was created for serious allegorical interpretations (such as those
of Miguel de Unamuno (1905) and José Ortega y Gasset (1914), who distilled
from it the essence of Spain and a remedy for all Spain’s ills respectively), or
readings, like that of Milan Kundera, in which irony was central.11 Nabokov is
therefore going a step further and foregrounding almost exclusively the dark
side of Don Quixote.12
In Lecture 4, as has been said, Nabokov focuses at length on this ubiquitous
cruelty. He propounds his theory on the ‘enchanters’ and the way in which they
finally emerge as the tormentors of Don Quixote. Three kinds of enchanters
pursue the unfortunate Don Quixote: the knight himself (through his a­ ddiction
to chivalrous romances), Sancho Panza, who has concocted the story that Don
Quixote’s beloved Dulcinea has been transformed by evil spirits into a strapping
farmer’s daughter, and outsiders like the Bachelor of Arts Sanson Carrasco, who
plans to cure Don Quixote of his chivalrous d­ elusion by disguising himself as
a knight and jousting with him; or the duke and duchess, who on the contrary
try to make him persist in that delusion by ­orchestrating the most improbable
adventures. In Volume 1 the ordeals are ­predominantly ­physical (beatings and

11 Miguel De Unamuno, Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho (Madrid: Cátedra, 1988 [1905]); José
Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote (Madrid: Revista de Occidente en Alianza
­Editorial, 1981 [1914]); Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (London:
­Penguin, 1981 [1979]).
12 Nabokov is not the first to focus on the violence that abounds in Don Quixote; the Span-
ish novelist and essayist Ramón J. Sender, taking a Marxist view, had preceded him: see
­Patrick Collard, ‘A portrait of Cervantes as “A learned Sancho Panza.” The Quixote in
Ramón J. Sender’s thought before the Civil War,’ in International Don Quixote, eds. Theo
D’Haen and Reindert Dhondt (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2009), 33–53.
50 Logie

broken bones); in the second volume the abuse ­endured by the nobleman and
his squire is more psychological. Incidentally, in 1614 an ­apocryphal sequel
to Don Quixote had appeared, written by the mysterious author Avellaneda.
­Cervantes’ feathers were ruffled and he gave priority to finishing his own ­second
volume, which appeared a year later and in which he launches a devastating
attack on the forger. His characters have meanwhile read the first volume,
and some of them the spurious sequel too, so that ­Cervantes’ second volume
contains reactions to both. He confronts his characters with the caricatures of
themselves (to which they have been ­reduced by ­Avellaneda), and corrects, at
the request of readers, the careless slips in Volume 1. Most characters in the
second volume play along with Don Quixote, and stage events that strength-
en the hero in his conviction that the vocation of knight errant is enjoying a
golden age – two obvious examples are the dukes of Villahermosa and Sanson
Carrasco. These second-degree limitations provide wonderful episodes, such
as Don Quixote’s fictitious ascension into heaven and Sancho Panza riding
the wooden horse Clavileño, but it is precisely these passages that Nabokov
finds most offensive and that lead him to compare Don Quixote’s trials with
the various stages of Christ’s passion on the basis of such elements as Jesus’
red cloak, or his crown of thorns. On the other hand, there are definitely also
moments when Nabokov is generous in his praise of Don Quixote, for ­example
when he calls Avellaneda’s spurious version a cheap cardboard ­cut-out, lacking
the dreamlike charm and pathos of the original.
Nabokov takes this moralising interpretation even further. He rejects, for
example, the suggestion that Cervantes wrote his book to warn readers against
the pernicious influence of the chivalrous romance, since the seventeenth-
century author commits the same errors that he criticises in those chivalrous
romances. In Nabokov’s view, Cervantes’ discussion of the chivalrous romance
is simply an alibi for the writing of his own book – as a continuation of the
tradition he professes to be dismantling. In this he takes issue, on rather
­slender grounds, with influential specialists such as Martín de Riquer, who
in the section ‘Propósito del Quijote’13 from his introduction to Don Quixote,
adduces the ideological importance of Cervantes’ rejection of the romances
of ­chivalry as proof that he is siding with the humanists, who took the view
that the ­romances of chivalry were an implicit invitation to indulge in sen-
suality as well as a potential source of confusion with historical works and
hence with reality. When Nabokov argues that the violence in Don Quixote is
mainly designed for the amusement and edification of Cervantes’ readers, he is

13 Martín de Riquer, introduction to El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, by Miguel

de Cervantes Saavedra (Barcelona: Planeta, 1996), xxxi–xlv.
Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote 51

again wide of the mark: Ruth El Saffar and others have shown, referring to the
­inserted story of Marcela and Chrysostom, that violence was an intrinsic fea-
ture of the pastoral romance.14 It is surprising that it should escape ­Nabokov,
himself with an acute sense of irony, that Don Quixote is first and foremost
parodying chivalric romances, and that by definition parody has two sides:
Cervantes is definitely warning readers about the pernicious influence of the
chivalric romance, but at the same time he pays it extensive attention, and so
smuggles all its irresistible ingredients into his own book. In fact, according to
Linda Hutcheon, parody is always partly an inverted tribute.15 For that matter,
Cervantes parodies not only the theme of the knight errant. Don Quixote is a
veritable repository in which all the literary trends of the time are mocked: the
pastoral (in, for example, the inserted story of Chrysostom and Marcela) or the
picaresque (Gines de Pasamonte), each of which is only palatable if punctu-
ated with sufficient jokes.
Yet Nabokov does not go very deeply into the nature of the violence that
forms the main thread of his argument. As Kundera rightly states in his e­ ssay
The Art of the Novel, we are here dealing with a definite paradigm shift.16
­Cervantes’ work introduces a world in which ideals clash with reality. Don
­Quixote is the only one who fails to realise that the world of knights and noble
ladies has gone for ever. The chivalric romances that Cervantes presents are the
last throes of the epic period, with its fixed rules and absolute idealism. ­Violence
in Don Quixote no longer operates according to medieval epic rules. Precisely
because the modern age, of which Don Quixote is one of the first fruits, under-
mines the exclusive universal meaning of the past, it brings greater f­reedom.
But as a result violence also increases, and from then on it is of a different order:
no longer the logical and coherent expression of a ­self-contained code or divine
providence, but something that issues from the individual’s right to choose.
The epic hero never has to account for his cruel behaviour, because it fits into
a well-circumscribed framework; the contradictory modern character on the
other hand does have to do so, because morally he is constantly on thin ice
and it is no longer clear what degree of violence is justified. In Cervantes, the
irony and the confusion are already noticeable. In Don Quixote, the incongru-
ity of old customs is expressed in practices such as ­penitence: whereas in the
epic period that penitence helped rehabilitate the heroes of old, here it loses
its meaning and becomes absurd. This new relativism in perspective and this

14 Ruth El Saffar, Beyond Fiction: The Recovery of the Feminine in the Novels of Cervantes
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
15 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody (New York: Methuen, 1985).
16 Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel (New York: Harper Perennial, 1996).
52 Logie

changed context explain much of the barbaric effect that Nabokov observed,
but whose mechanisms he fails to explain satisfactorily.
The fact that Nabokov lays so much stress on the cruelty of the book is
­undoubtedly linked to various extra-literary factors. To begin with, his ­personal,
aristocratic taste, which had no affinity with the broad slapstick that charac-
terises so much of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza’s adventures. ­Nabokov’s
penchant for refinement – for him a concept like ‘popular culture’ was a con-
tradiction in terms – also explains why he is not very impressed by Sancho
Panza, whom he presents one-sidedly as a clown, although he does observe
that his character develops in the course of the novel and that he even tran-
scends himself (for example, during his short-lived phoney governorship of
the island of Barataria). He calls the novel ‘primitive’ and still heavily i­ ndebted
to the picaresque novel, which was directed at a ‘simple audience,’ from which
he dissociates himself. Because of that personal aversion, ­Nabokov is often
­unjust to Cervantes, because he is judging him by anachronistic criteria, which
is remarkable for someone who is so keen on the concept of ‘original meaning.’
Such an appreciation, ultimately grudging, stands in stark contrast to that of
Lukács, who dubbed Don Quixote the ‘first great novel of world literature,’ in
which the modern subject gives expression to his nostalgia for the lost unity
of the epic, or Foucault, who called it the first modern novel.17 But Nabokov’s
origins are also a factor; his contrary reading is a reaction to the prevailing
­Soviet interpretations of Don Quixote, which highlighted either the realism or
the militant idealism of the protagonist as if he were a kind of precursor of
Lenin.18 An important exception to this is Bakhtin, who in his study of Rabelais
placed Cervantes’ work in the context of carnival-inspired popular culture, a
culture that is apparently cruel, but at the same time also very liberating, since
it undermines the prevailing hierarchies.19 Finally, we have to see Nabokov’s
severe condemnation of Don Quixote as unethical partly against the back-
ground of the exile of the author, who in 1940 had fled the ­European conflagra-
tion. At the time when he was preparing his lectures he was still traumatised
by the Second World War, which helps explain why the crude jokes and allu-
sions to medieval methods of torture have very little attraction and why he is

17 Georg Lukács, The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of
Great Epic Literature (London: Merlin Press, 1971 [1916]), 103; Michel Foucault, Les mots et
les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 60–64.
18 Ludmilla B. Turkevich, Cervantes in Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950).
19 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 16,
266, 275.
Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote 53

unable to ­appreciate fully the grotesque streak in Don Quixote. Moreover, the
course of his own life obviously made him a fervent defender of Anglo-Saxon
culture, which led him to state that Cervantes was dwarfed by the figure of
Shakespeare.20
Be that as it may: with these elements in the back of our minds we ­cannot
help observing that Nabokov is clearly refuting his own premise. While he
expressly refuses to involve Cervantes’ political, religious and moral ideas in
his interpretation, neither does he focus exclusively on the text and autho-
rial intention as that is embodied by the text. In addition, the rejection of all
­autobiographical components in the novel means that too much weight is g­ iven
to the character of Don Quixote, who is after all only one facet of the whole,
with whom Nabokov explicitly sympathises and whom he finds ­superior to his
creator, being so pure and unselfish. In any case it is a fact that ­Nabokov only
partly realises his stated ambition to sweep away an icon that had gradually
acquired a life of its own separate from the literary text. In this he is implic-
itly conceding Borges’ point, by confirming that even the most highly-trained
reader interprets within the intellectual framework of his own age. Not even
dear old Don Quixote escapes this: after the horrors of Nazism, we can no
longer confront the violence to which he repeatedly falls victim with an open
mind.
Nabokov also contradicts himself on a number of other points. Having first
reiterated his thesis that literature must under no circumstances be just an
­insipid copy of reality, and that Cervantes’ work is first and foremost a ‘fairy
tale,’21 he observes almost immediately afterwards that the descriptions of
Spanish geography and village customs do not accord sufficiently with histori-
cal reality.22 He reproaches Cervantes for deficiencies in local descriptions,
which are pure fiction, and for the fact that his characters derive directly from
Italian pastoral romances, with the result that the account given in Don Quixote
of seventeenth-century Spain is as accurate as ‘Santa Claus is true and typical
of the twentieth-century North Pole.’23 True, Cervantes’ settings and characters
derive more from literary tradition than from Spanish reality, but it is strange
that Nabokov of all people should use this argument, without realising that
the country evoked by Cervantes is not the real La Mancha, but an imaginary
region that exists only in the head of Don Quixote.

20 Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, 7–8.

21 Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, 1.
22 Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, 4.
23 Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, 4.
54 Logie

When Don Quixote finally dies and repents, he becomes what Nabokov
wanted him to be all along: the equal of King Lear.24 In the sixth and final
lecture, which deals with the theme that was originally to be the main core of
the lectures – ‘Victories and Defeats’ – Nabokov gives an extensive analysis on
the battles fought by Don Quixote, and awards him points as if on the score
board in a tennis match. Nabokov reaches the conclusion that, contrary to
what is commonly assumed, Don Quixote wins as frequently as he loses. This
is striking, and also calls into question his own view of the book as a chaotic
and unbalanced whole. Is it because this subtle balance conflicts with his own
sweeping statements that Nabokov consigns this strictly factual inventory to
the background, as a kind of appendix, instead of making it an essential part
of his interpretation? This is certainly the hypothesis of Timo Berger.25 And is
this the reason why ultimately he makes the key theme of his reading ‘cruelty,’
despite the fact that it is not supported by this ‘score board’?

Lolita: Variation on a Theme

It is generally accepted that Nabokov’s thorough reading of Don Quixote

­influenced the writing of his novel Lolita, published in 1955.26 According
to N ­ abokov scholars Robert Alter and Kenneth Krabbenhoft, it cannot be a
­coincidence that John Ray, author of the prologue to Humbert Humbert’s
­story, finishes his text in November 1952, immediately after Nabokov com-
pleted the ­series of lectures on Don Quixote in Harvard.27 The question of
­influence is a tricky one: Katherine Kunce is extreme in her views and talks of
direct imitation.28 Other authors, like Nicholas Round, question this dogma-
tism.29 Round rightly argues that with archetypes that have over time become
as ­familiar as ­Falstaff or Don Quixote ‘availability’ is a more suitable concept

24 Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, 8.

25 Timo Berger, ‘Vladimir Nabokov, autor del Quijote,’ in Lectores del Quijote 1605–2005, eds.
Sarah de Mojica and Carlos Rincón (Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2004), 219.
26 According to Nabokov specialists, Pnin and Pale Fire are also both thematically and techni-
cally indebted to Don Quixote. In the short scope of this chapter I prefer to focus on Lolita.
27 Robert Alter, Partial Magic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975); Kenneth
­Krabbenhoft, ‘Don Quixote and Lolita,’ Atlantis 18/10 (1996): 213–27.
28 Catherine Kunce, ‘“Cruel and Crude”: Nabokov Reading Cervantes,’ Cervantes: Bulletin of
the Cervantes Society of America 13/2 (1993): 93–104.
29 Nicholas G. Round, ‘Toward a Typology of Quixotisms,’ in Cervantes and the Modernists.
The Question of Influence, ed. Edwin Williamson (London: Tamesis Books, 1994), 9–28.
Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote 55

than ­‘appropriation.’ In ­general terms, Lolita can be seen as a reworking of Don

Q
­ uixote. We find a s­ imilar kind of attitude to the relationship between fiction
and reality,30 an equally substantial dose of irony (the irony that Nabokov had
previously overlooked in his interpretation of Don Quixote) and a considerable
degree of cruelty. But it ­is ­obvious that Cervantes could never have inspired
Nabokov if his themes had not meshed with Nabokov’s own hobby horses, as
summed up by Guy ­Davenport in his ­introduction to the Lectures: ‘the ­other
as the self,’ ‘the generative power of d­ elusions,’ ‘the interplay of sense and
obsession.’31
In his article, Krabbenhoft lists the principal common characteristics of the
two protagonists (both in their own way lucid and insane) as their obsessional
erotomania, their paranoia and the tension between illusion and disillusion.32
In both cases, the adoration of the beloved has its roots in the complex con-
cept of courtly love. At first sight there is a world of difference between the
high-minded Don Quixote who mistakes the farm girl Aldonza Lorenzo for the
ravishing Dulcinea, and with whom everything takes place in his head, and
the calculating cynic Humbert, who without batting an eyelid wants to father
a daughter on ‘his’ twelve-year-old Lolita, whom he would in turn be able to
abuse. If Don Quixote’s adoration does not have deleterious consequences
for the object of that adoration, things are of course very different for Lolita,
since Humbert’s mistaking of the real Dolores Haze certainly causes havoc for
the girl who lies in bed at night sobbing in order to escape his clutches. This
leads Nabokov to a degree of violence, both physical (abduction, rape) and
psychological, that is many times more extreme. In addition, let us not forget
that Humbert writes his self-defence in prison while awaiting sentence after
confessing to the murder of Clare Quilty, Lolita’s ‘liberator.’ Nor would he have
baulked at doing away with Lolita’s mother too, but that proved unnecessary
since she died in an accident out of pure astonishment.
Despite the differences there are also important similarities. For example,
Humbert’s love for Lolita (Dolores, not coincidentally a Spanish name) ulti-
mately derives from his sublimated love for the young girl Annabel (inspired
by Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel) and is certainly also based on a process of
­idealisation, since in reality Lolita is a rather vulgar, gum-chewing, ten-a-penny

30 Michael Scham, ‘Don Quijote and Lolita Revisited,’ Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes
S­ ociety of America 26/1 (2006): 81.
31 Guy Davenport, introduction to Lectures on Don Quixote, by Vladimir Nabokov, ed.
­Fredson Bowers, introd. Guy Davenport (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), xvii.
32 Krabbenhoft, ‘Don Quixote and Lolita.’
56 Logie

teenager, worlds removed from the image that Humbert has created of her.
In any case, both Don Quixote and Lolita are basically about love rather than
sex, a love that is the result of obsessive projection and that society sees as
unorthodox.
At first sight, the violence in the two books seems of a different order. Unlike
Humbert Humbert, Don Quixote is predominantly self-denying, although in
his Lectures Nabokov precisely shows that Cervantes’ (anti-)hero, intoxicated
with Dulcinea, also inflicts violence on innocent victims, so that he can after
all be called a precursor of the pathological Humbert.33 Krabbenhoft says of
this: ‘I would argue on the contrary, that the importance of Nabokov’s lectures
lies in the fact that they are the first interpretation of Don Quixote to cred-
it fully the disruptive effects of Don Quixote’s violence on the world around
him.’34 Despite his harsh criticism, Nabokov saw very clearly this black side of
Don Quixote, which may appeal to the late-twentieth-century reader, just as
the ­Enlightenment reader saw in Don Quixote a rationalist defender of a ­pagan
­Arcadia, or readers in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century pre-
sented Don Quixote as a passionate defender of the oppressed.35 ­Krabbenhoft
­suggests that Nabokov saw in this mix of erotomania, paranoia and violence
the prefiguration of his own brainchild, ‘a perfect analogue of the novel in
which he would explore the boundaries of private obsession and public art
and exemplify his view of literature as a game that brings reality into focus,
rather than the other way round.’36
The final scene of Don Quixote also shows similarities to that of Lolita: both
protagonists repent. They are aware that they have pursued an illusion and
that their enterprise has failed. It begins to dawn on Don Quixote during the
complex episode that takes place in the cave of Montesinos; he achieves full
realisation only on his deathbed. For his part, Humbert Humbert confronts
reality as he enters the living room of the by now married and heavily pregnant
Lolita. Only then does he realise that he really loved this woman. Don Quixote
fails as a knight errant, since he never succeeds in freeing Dulcinea from the
spell. As an ironic, twentieth-century reply to Don Quixote, Humbert Humbert

33 Some affinity with Nabokov’s view can be seen in the relevant essay in Anthony Cascardi,
The Bounds of Reason: Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Flaubert (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986).
34 Krabbenhoft, ‘Don Quixote and Lolita,’ 226.
35 For an overview of the reception, see Howard Mancing, Don Quixote: A Reference Guide
(Westport, Conn. & London: Greenwood Press, 2006), Chapter 7.
36 Krabbenhoft, ‘Don Quixote and Lolita,’ 226.
Vladimir Nabokov on Don Quixote 57

can only have Lolita all to himself by abducting and coercing her. He finally
dies in prison a few days before his trial begins.
Furthermore, both Don Quixote and his later variant are unreliable narra-
tors, since they suffer from melancholia and paranoia. In both cases, in fact,
with good reason, since they are actually being pursued by Sanson Carrasco
(Don Quixote) and Clare Quilty (Humbert Humbert). This brings us to s­ triking
analogies in narrative structure in the two books, which use complex n ­ arrative
devices and are grafted onto the convention of the discovered manuscript,
to give the story, which is after all about mentally disturbed characters,
a ­semblance of authenticity. The complicated network of narrators that
­Cervantes establishes is mentioned as early as Chapter 8 of Volume One. Here
we learn that the a­ ccount of Don Quixote’s adventures cannot be complet-
ed since the rest of the story is missing. By the next chapter, this setback has
­already been remedied: as if by a miracle in a busy shopping street in Toledo
the narrator buys for a pittance a manuscript by the Moorish historiographer
Cid Hamete Benengeli, in which the adventures of the celebrated knight
are continued. Cid, a spokesman intended to guarantee the authenticity of
­Cervantes’ book, is of course an invention and in addition a Moor, from whom
Spanish Christians would not expect much veracity. Moreover, the narrator
himself has had to have the manuscript translated by a chance interpreter. All
these agencies are derivatives of Cervantes who plays them off against each
other at will and so undermines his own quest for authenticity: every narra-
tor is unreliable, and the reader must decide for him- or herself. Something
similar happens in ­Lolita: the versions of the lawyer Clarence Choate Clark,
the editor John Ray and ­Nabokov’s ­afterword, which since the second edition
has ­become an ­integral part of the novel, filter the information provided by
Humbert ­Humbert. The creation of the publisher John Ray, who explains in a
preface that Lolita has a moralising bias since the novel can help ensure that
future generations of American ­children grow up in a safer environment, is as
transparent a device as Cervantes’ resorting to Cid Hamete Benengeli, and is
neutralised by ­Nabokov’s own afterword, in which any ethical pretension is
dismissed in favour of the aesthetic pleasure that reading the novel is ­intended
to provoke. For the two works also share this: they have a strong meta-­literary
content, and teem with artistic references. Whereas Don Quixote appeals
to i­llustrious predecessors from the romances of chivalry such as A ­ madís de
Gaula, Humbert expressly identifies as a writer with a tradition with anteced-
ents such as Dante hymning Beatrice or Petrarch worshipping his Laura. One
can wonder, therefore, whether and to what extent refined artistic evocations
can compensate for the immoral nature of a story.
58 Logie

Conclusion

To summarise, we can say that Nabokov’s iconoclastic and intensely ­personal

reading highlights important and neglected facets of Don Quixote, but also
­exhibits some hiatuses, imperfections and blind spots. For example, he r­ emains
completely oblivious to the humour and irony of Cervantes’ work. His view of
the composition is ambivalent: he is forever saying that the book is chaotic, but
in his final lecture he is forced to qualify this.
On closer examination, the operation that Nabokov has carried out as a
reader can be seen to consist of a dual and contradictory thrust: on the one
hand, he wanted to free Don Quixote from earlier interpretations which were
more concerned with the historical context and with the author’s biography
than with the work itself; on the other hand, in so doing he created his own
Don Quixote, which ran counter to that of literary tradition, and was closely
connected with his own work, personality and period. According to special-
ists, Nabokov’s Don Quixote must be read principally as a precursor to some
of his own protagonists, including Humbert Humbert from Lolita, who is cer-
tainly a match for Don Quixote in cruelty. It follows that the partial nature of
Nabokov’s reading is probably connected with the fact that from the outset,
consciously or unconsciously, it was carried out with specific intentions, and
that some unexpected views in the Lectures on Don Quixote, which look very
much like misreadings, fall into place if they are regarded as a first step towards
a paradoxical and utterly personal form of rewriting. And so we realise that the
wheel has come full circle: since Nabokov’s act of reading is inextricably bound
up with his act of writing, even though the latter is expressly kept out of the
picture in the programmatic pronouncements with which he defines his own
reading poetics.

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Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Berger, Timo. ‘Vladimir Nabokov, autor del Quijote.’ In Lectores del Quijote 1605–2005,
edited by Sarah de Mojica and Carlos Rincón, 301–26. Bogotá: Pontificia ­Universidad
Javeriana, 2004.
Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths. Selected Stories and Other Writings. London: Penguin,
2000.
Cascardi, Anthony. The Bounds of Reason: Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Flaubert. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986.
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Collard, Patrick. ‘A portrait of Cervantes as “A learned Sancho Panza.” The Quixote in

Ramón J. Sender’s thought before the Civil War.’ In International Don Quixote, edited
by Theo D’Haen and Reindert Dhondt, 33–53. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2009.
Davenport, Guy. Introduction to Lectures on Don Quixote, by Vladimir Nabokov, edited
by Fredson Bowers, introduction by Guy Davenport, xiii–xix. San Diego: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
De Riquer, Martín. Introduction to El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, by
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, xvii–lxxx. Barcelona: Planeta, 1996.
De Unamuno, Miguel. Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho. Madrid: Cátedra, 1988 [1905].
El Saffar, Ruth. Beyond Fiction: The Recovery of the Feminine in the Novels of Cervantes.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Foucault, Michel. Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris:
Gallimard, 1966.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody. New York: Methuen, 1985.
Keersmaekers, Flora. ‘“Readable, Indeed!” Nabokovs keuze voor de “letterlijke” vertaling.’
Filter. Tijdschrift over vertalen, 18 (2011): 64–70.
Krabbenhoft, Kenneth. ‘Don Quixote and Lolita.’ Atlantis 18/10 (1996): 213–27.
Kunce, Catherine. ‘“Cruel and Crude”: Nabokov Reading Cervantes.’ Cervantes: Bulletin
of the Cervantes Society of America 13/2 (1993): 93–104.
Kundera, Milan. The Art of the Novel. New York: Harper Perennial, 1996.
Kundera, Milan. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Penguin, 1981 [1979].
Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of
Great Epic Literature. London: Merlin Press, 1971 [1916].
Mancing, Howard. Don Quixote: A Reference Guide. Westport, Conn. & London:
­Greenwood Press, 2006.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by
John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Don Quixote, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction
by Guy Davenport. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
Ortega y Gasset, José. Meditaciones del Quijote. Madrid: Revista de Occidente en
­Alianza Editorial, 1981 [1914].
Round, Nicholas G. ‘Toward a Typology of Quixotisms.’ In Cervantes and the M ­ odernists.
The Question of Influence, edited by Edwin Williamson, 9–28. London: Tamesis
Books, 1994.
Scham, Michael. ‘Don Quijote and Lolita Revisited.’ Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes
Society of America 26/1 (2006): 79–101.
Turkevich, Ludmilla B. Cervantes in Russia. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.
 chapter 4

The Beetle and the Butterfly: Nabokov’s Lecture on

Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’

Vivian Liska

Abstract

In his lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis,’ Vladimir Nabokov introduces his audi-
ence to his own views on beauty, his understanding of the relationship between reality
and fantasy and his dismissal of symbolizing approaches to art in general and Kafka’s
stories in particular. Commentators of Nabokov’s lecture have pointed out incongrui-
ties between these theoretical reflections and his actual reading of Kafka’s story and
have accused Nabokov of a ‘lack of sensitivity’ in his discussion of crucial aspects of
Kafka’s art. The contradictions in Nabokov’s lecture, the excessive quoting and para-
phrasing of Kafka’s text and the narrow, radically formalist conclusion are indeed strik-
ing. However, rather than considering these aspects of Nabokov’s lecture as mere flaws,
one can regard them as an effect of Nabokov’s unsettling encounter with the force of
Kafka’s story.

Vladimir Nabokov’s lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis,’ one of his most

­famous and contentious Lectures on Literature,1 invites a reading along the
lines of a pattern underlying many of Kafka’s stories: A man who relies on his
stability and self-possession is confronted by a troubling creature. He tries to
ward it off by any means at his disposal, but it eludes his efforts to control the
situation. The man denies, up to the end, that the creature has any effect on
him. The ­intensity of his resistance belies these claims, however, and conveys
a ­profound insecurity that assumes a life of its own and cannot be reversed
or curtailed. It becomes evident that the man’s initial solidity, along with his
sense of any stable reality, was never more than an illusion. Variations of this
­encounter ­occur throughout Kafka’s work, from his early ‘Description of a
Struggle,’ ­written ­between 1903 and 1907, to the final stories, written shortly
before his death in 1924. In ‘The Worry of the House Father’ (1919), Odradek,

1 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 251–83.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_006

Nabokov’s Lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ 61

a small and mobile toy-like spool, shakes the confidence of the pater ­familias,
who tries in vain to remain the master of his house. Infected by Odradek’s
­constitutive instability, the father, without admitting it, loses his autonomy and
control. In ‘The Top,’ written between 1917 and 1923, a philosopher, ­observing
a children’s toy, finds himself unable to grasp the object and ends up becom-
ing a spinning top himself. The balls in the story about the elderly bachelor
­Blumfeld as well as the old mole-like animal of ‘In our Synagogue’ (written
in 1922) trigger disturbances that disrupt all that is solid, resist all efforts at
­control, but ultimately open up self-enclosed spaces and moribund lives.
In ‘Conversation with the Supplicant,’ one of Kafka’s early stories ­(written
around 1909), an initially confident and established protagonist becomes
­unnerved by the dark and fearful visions recounted to him by a strange f­ igure.
The story stages a dialogue in which the complacent first-person narrator
­encounters a spectral man who is ecstatically gesticulating and praying in a
church. This uncanny figure challenges the narrator to forego his illusions and
face the insanity that lurks behind the façade of normality. The supplicant
gradually infects his interlocutor with his own fundamental existential and
­ontological angst, which leads to a moment of accord in which the two men
find common ground. Encouraged by the narrator’s acquiescence, the suppli-
cant, wishing to share his sense of the world with his interlocutor, describes
a series of frightening visions in which stormy winds herald destruction and
men become shadows, in which windowpanes rattle, lampposts bend, high
buildings collapse, and death dwells in the houses of the city. These threat-
ening scenes leave the narrator severely unsettled, and he shrinks back and
­retracts his earlier agreement. The story ends with the supplicant’s unex-
pectedly ­happy reaction: he discerns in the narrator’s revocation a sign that
not only has the man been truly touched by the visions but that his denial,
in fact, confirms the power of the frightening words.2 This impact remains
­unacknowledged by the narrator; yet the unsettling effect of the visions of
doom and terror is conveyed to the reader, who inevitably associates the effect
with his or her own experience of Kafka’s art.
Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ (1912) can be read as a variation on this pat-
tern: the sudden transformation of the traveling salesman Gregor into a g­ iant
vermin (Ungeziefer) shatters the seeming normality of his world. At first, the
members of his family try to subsume his frightening transformation into
their quotidian existence. However, faced with the mounting impossibility of
­doing so, they increasingly long to be rid of this disturbance contaminating

2 Franz Kafka, Drucke zu Lebzeiten, eds. Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard Neumann
(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1996), 394.
62 Liska

their lives. Finally, they succeed, effacing every trace of the insect and ulti-
mately even their memory of the event itself. The story ends with the apparent
­reestablishment of order and the suggestion of a renaissance of the family’s
mastery and strength. Gregor, however, who in the course of his transforma-
tion experiences the impossibility of acceding to normality, dies in despair.
Unlike the narrator of ‘Conversation with the Supplicant,’ the rest of the Samsa
family seems, by the end of ‘The Metamorphosis,’ to have been untouched by
Gregor’s transformation and the ensuing events. For the reader, however, this
cruelly ‘happy ending’ not only evinces the family’s successful denial of the
terrifying disruption of their lives but it also heightens the disturbing effect of
Kafka’s story, generally considered to be among the most haunting narratives
of modern literature.
Vladimir Nabokov’s reading of ‘The Metamorphosis,’ as published in his
­Lectures on Literature, testifies in complex ways to the haunting effect of Kafka’s
story. Critics have repeatedly pointed to the lecture’s limitations and incongrui-
ties, in particular the contradictory nature of Nabokov’s theoretical reflections,
the lengthy paraphrases and page-long quotes from Kafka (which constitute
the middle – and by far longest – part of his lecture), and the brief and strik-
ingly reductive summary with which Nabokov concludes his address to his
students. Leland de la Durantaye calls it ‘simply stated, the poorest’ among the
group of lectures Nabokov wrote on literary authors.3 In a strong critique of the
lecture, he underscores how Nabokov’s commentary on ‘The Metamorphosis’
betrays Nabokov’s own criteria for great literature, not least his principles of
‘doing justice to details’ and ‘ignoring allegories.’4 De la Durantaye avers that
‘Nabokov’s sensitivity […] abandons him’ in his reading of crucial passages of
the story, and accuses him of ‘failing to recognize fundamental features about
Kafka and his creations.’5 However, rather than considering these aspects of
Nabokov’s Kafka lecture as mere flaws, we can read them as symptoms of his
own unsettling encounter with Kafka’s story.
As Nabokov notes in the introduction, he approaches the story from the
­perspectives of three interlinked roles, each of which he implicitly assigns
to himself: the teacher, the storyteller, and the enchanter. As teacher, he

3 Leland de la Durantaye, ‘Kafka’s Reality and Nabokov’s Fantasy. On Dwarves, Saints, Beetles,
Symbolism, and Genius,’ Comparative Literature, 59/4 (2007): 318. On Nabokov’s ambivalent
relationship to German literature in general and his inability to read Kafka in the original
German, see John Burt Foster Jr., ‘Nabokov and Kafka,’ in The Garland Companion to Vladimir
Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York: Routledge, 1995), 444–51.
4 De la Durantaye, ‘Kafka’s Reality,’ 324.
5 De la Durantaye, ‘Kafka’s Reality,’ 326.
Nabokov’s Lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ 63

­introduces the audience to the premises of his own poetics by way of general-
izing abstractions. He explains his views of beauty, his understanding of the
­relationship between reality and fantasy, and his aversion to adopting sym-
bolic religious and psychoanalytic approaches to art, in particular to Kafka’s
stories. As a storyteller, he retells Kafka’s tale, partly in page-long citations,
partly in paraphrases occasionally interrupted by generally anodyne commen-
tary. But it is the enchanter who matters most: without him, Nabokov writes,
‘teacher and storyteller make poor company.’6 Indeed, it is Nabokov’s own role
of enchanter and its relation to the teacher and the storyteller in his reading of
‘The Metamorphosis’ that will concern us here.
The idea and function of the enchanter differ considerably in the three parts
of Nabokov’s lecture. In his opening paragraphs, Nabokov defines in com-
pelling words the enchanter as the one who, with his fantasies, transfigures
his audience by shaking up their sense of reality. Yet in the final part of the
­lecture, his own performance as enchanter rather resembles a conjuration to
keep at bay the story’s unsettling effects. Between these contrasting versions
of ‘­enchantment’ lies Nabokov’s narration of ‘The Metamorphosis’ itself. It is
in reading Kafka’s text that the story’s enchantment is not only conveyed to
Nabokov’s audience but also exerts its effect on the storyteller, on Nabokov
himself. His contradictory attitudes before and after his reading of the story
can be explained by the impact of Kafka’s prose on Nabokov himself.
Nabokov’s lecture begins with a literally enchanting sentence: ‘Of course,
no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is
discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines
that remain unkindled.’7 In an indirect captatio benevolentiae he opens the
lecture by challenging his audience to allow itself to become inflamed by his
presentation of a work of art and to respond with a flight of the imagination
and an emotional, even visceral reaction. Nabokov’s introductory sentence is
as ­sonorous as the famous opening lines of his novel Lolita: rhythmic altera-
tion, symmetrical sentence structure, and multiple alliterations counter – or
­preventively compensate for – the possible failure of both rational discussion
and cool analysis to touch and move the audience.
In this first part of his lecture, Nabokov evokes for his audience an impact of
art that transcends analytic grasp. He speaks of ‘spines’ that ‘are to be kindled’
through exposure to ‘the mystery of things’ and rejects rational responses that
take a ‘story apart’ so as to ‘attempt to find out how bits fit’ and ‘how one part

6 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 252.

7 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 251.
64 Liska

of the pattern responds to another.’8 Instead, he praises emotional reactions

suggested in organic metaphors that hail a disposition to receive the ungrasp-
able power of the work, to let it move us, to shake us up: ‘You have to have
in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensa-
tions that you can neither define, nor dismiss.’9 In shifting from cell to germ –
from an intrinsic element of the body to a foreign particle – Nabokov evokes
an ­intruder that can enter an organism and contaminate it. In these opening
lines, art appears as a thoroughly existential experience and a potential threat
to any stability, and the reader is called upon to ‘take upon oneself’ the disturb-
ing experience of a strangeness that dismantles one’s defenses and that can be
neither tamed nor dismissed.10
This objective of art is supported by Nabokov’s initial reflections on the
­relationship between reality and fantasy; these reflections constitute the lon-
gest part of the introduction. Here, Nabokov defines objective reality as ‘an
average sample of a mixture of a million individual realities,’11 as opposed to
the singular, private fantasy constituting the literary artifact. On the basis of
this opposition, he distinguishes two types of stories: the weaker, though never
truly pathetic or tragic ones of the Jekyll and Hyde type, in which reality and
fantasy constitute two different worlds; and the others – in Nabokov’s opinion
the great ones – of the Gogol and Kafka type, where everyday reality and a
private fantastic world exist and clash on the same ontological plane. In such
stories, fantasy is no longer a separate, other world, but has contaminated what
is considered as ‘real.’ Only in the second type of story, Nabokov writes, can
we find an ‘artistic emotional throb.’12 The beauty of ‘The Metamorphosis,’
­Nabokov explains, lies in the fact that ‘in Gogol and Kafka the absurd central
character belongs to the [same] absurd world around him but, pathetically and
tragically, attempts to struggle out of it into the world of humans – and dies in
despair.’13 The story’s impact – the unsettling of what is regarded as ‘normal’
reality – can transpire only at the point where there is no distinction between
fantasy and what is considered to be common reality. It is only then that art
presents itself not as a means of transcending ‘normality’ but as a mode of
revealing its tenuous conditions.

8 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 251.

9 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 251.
10 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 251.
11 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 252.
12 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 254.
13 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 254–55.
Nabokov’s Lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ 65

Nabokov’s rejection of religious and psychoanalytic interpretations is based

on a similar understanding of how true art and literature touch and disturb.
Nabokov not only criticizes the introduction of extraneous registers into the
aesthetic experience, but he also takes to task the neutralizing effect of sym-
bolic interpretations. In a critically important insight into the power of Kafka’s
story, Nabokov insists that such interpretations undercut the story’s unsettling
power because they translate Gregor’s experience of alienation from its sin-
gular expression to an existing concept, thereby normalizing it into a familiar
set of values and ideas. Indeed, it was precisely on these grounds that Kafka
himself repeatedly expressed his disdain for metaphors – and, implicitly, for
symbolic or metaphorical readings.
As Günther Anders and Stanley Corngold, among others, have shown,
‘The Metamorphosis’ can be read as a subversion, through literalisation,
of the ­metaphor of ‘vermin’ (Ungeziefer) applied to the human subject.14 In
­literalizing the metaphor, Kafka undermines the symbolic move from the
strange and ­surprising to another, familiar plane. He thereby prevents the
­process of translation that would neutralize any singular and uncanny trans-
figuration into an already existing meaning. The truly unsettling aspect of the
story, Corngold writes, is not so much that becoming a vermin is disturbing
but that the story’s ‘indeterminate, fluid crossing’15 of human and animal is so
disquieting. Gregor is, Corngold continues,

at times grossly human, at times airily buglike. In shifting incessantly

the relation of Gregor’s mind and body – and of the tenor and vehicle
of the metaphor – Kafka shatters any possibility for establishing precise,
stable analogies (the vermin standing for modern man, traveling sales-
men, son, and the like) that would mask the knowledge of our [human]
strangeness.16

When the ‘vermin’ is no longer a metaphor both translatable into ‘base’ and
‘ugly’ and applied to the exception, the outcast, but is instead taken literally,
the painful discrepancy between Gregor’s human consciousness and his crea-
turely being is revealed; at the same time, the harmonizing and neutralizing

14 Stanley Corngold, The Commentators’ Despair: The Interpretation of Kafka’s ‘The

M
­ etamorphosis’ (New York: Kennikat Press, 1973), 10; Günther Anders, Kafka – Pro und
Contra (München: Beck, 1951), 41.
15 Corngold, The Commentators’ Despair, 9.
16 Corngold, The Commentators’ Despair, 9.
66 Liska

structure of symbolic readings and their propensity to ‘normalize’ is undone.

The result, Corngold concludes, is ‘the creation of a monster.’17
Nabokov indeed describes Gregor’s plight as a desperate attempt to escape
‘into the world of humans,’18 into normality. It is especially striking that he
­refers to the escape ‘from the absurd world around [Gregor]’19 as a flight into
‘the world of humans’20 rather than out of it: after all, this ‘absurd’ world around
the protagonist is the human world. Nabokov’s insight captures a fundamental
dimension of Kafka’s poetics: unlike romantic ideas of art that are premised on
flight from the banal, from the everyday, into a world of enchantment, excep-
tionality, and heightened existence, Kafka’s story points to the fragility – and
desirability – of normality itself. Rotten and unappetizing as this normality of
Gregor’s human world is, it is the only world there is. After he loses it, he tries to
make the right adjustments and retains hope of being able to return to routine,
‘normal’ life. For Nabokov, the core of the story’s disturbing force lies in the
revelation of an archaic fear of falling out of normality – or of never acceding
to it, or worse, of recognizing its non-existence other than as ever renewed
illusion. However, at the close of the introduction – possibly in a moment of
over-identification with Kafka’s bug – Nabokov betrays his chief insights: his
insistence on the oneness of the story’s ontological plane, his warning against
symbolizing readings, and his interpretation of Gregor’s predicament as a fail-
ure to escape ‘into the world of humans.’21
The introduction’s final paragraph begins with an invitation: ‘Let us look
closer at the transformation.’22 Coming thus closer, Nabokov already a­ nnounces
a reversal of the course of his argument. He reduces the shock of the encounter
with the story’s strangeness, betrays his imperative to refrain from symboliz-
ing interpretations, and opens an escape route for Kafka’s insect. ­After stating
that ‘the change, though shocking and striking, is not quite so odd as might be
assumed at first glance’23 and comparing Gregor’s awakening as an insect to
familiar pathologies (such as schizophrenics believing they are ­Napoleon), he
commits, in the final sentence of his introduction, what for him is, in fact, the
chief hermeneutic sin, namely, the translation of a literary ­singularity into a
conceptual generality: ‘The Samsa family around the fantastic insect is nothing

17 Corngold, The Commentators’ Despair, 9.

18 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 255.
19 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 254.
20 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 255.
21 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 255.
22 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 260.
23 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 260.
Nabokov’s Lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ 67

else than mediocrity surrounding genius.’24 As De la Durantaye has convinc-

ingly shown, Nabokov’s interpretation of the vermin as genius converts Kafka’s
fantasy into a common idea, a familiar constellation resting on the trope of
the misunderstood and alienated, exceptional individual striving to flee b­ anal
reality.25 This emphasis on the creative flight – a flight that would lead out of
rather than into the world of humans, and certainly out of the uncanny gray
zone between these worlds – smoothens and calms the keenly unsettling
­aspect of Kafka’s story. It is as if Nabokov, in drawing ever closer to Kafka’s
story, comes to feel, in the concluding paragraph of his introduction, the need
to deflect the story’s threat.
Nabokov’s introduction is followed by the longest, central part of his l­ ecture,
his retelling of Kafka’s story. In lengthy quotes interspersed with ­occasional
­anecdotes (‘I don’t know if you read a couple of years ago in the papers
[...]’), jokes (‘but let us not ourselves be insects’), and increasingly distancing
­observations (‘how good our poor little monster is’), Nabokov reads and ­retells
the ­story.26 After the first paragraphs of his reading, Nabokov dwells on the
­nature of the insect, examining its shape and characteristics in order to a­ rrive at
a ­biological classification. In contrast to his earlier appeal to the cell or germ in
his listeners that will ‘vibrate’ in response to sensations ­provided by an ­artwork
that c­ annot be defined, Nabokov’s analysis of the appearance of the creature
­becomes a tool for apprehending its uncanny qualities. ‘Gregor,’ ­Nabokov
writes, ‘­obviously belongs to the branch of “jointed leggers” (­Anthropoda), to
which insects and spiders, and centipedes, and crustaceans belong.’27 ‘From a
zoological point of view,’28 Nabokov assumes that Gregor has six legs and that

24 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 260.

25 De la Durantaye calls this interpretation of Gregor as genius Nabokov’s ‘cardinal sin’
­because the only basis for this view does not lie in ‘what he does, or how he thinks,’
but only ‘in the dismissive and uncomprehending manner in which others treat him.’
De la Durantaye, ‘Kafka’s Reality,’ 324.
26 The only longer and more significant comment relates to the music scene – famously,
the passages of the most acute clash between Gregor’s human and his animal nature.
­Strikingly, Nabokov registers the delight in music as among the beetle’s animal instincts,
and he thereby misses the disturbing, undoubtedly ironic paradox in Kafka’s sentence:
‘Was Gregor an animal to be so affected by music?’ The openness of this question – the
­uncertainty of its rhetorical nature – points precisely to the most unsettling aspect of
­Kafka’s story, the dissolution of boundaries between human and animal, of which
the members of the family, so confident in their own humanity, must rid themselves
­(Nabokov, ­Lectures on Literature, 279).
27 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 258.
28 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 258.
68 Liska

he is an insect, more precisely a beetle. The taxonomic determination of the

vermin’s species turns Gregor’s undefined shape into a familiar object.
Nabokov then goes a step further and, defying Kafka’s explicit prohibition,
he sketches two drawings of the beetle, one from the side and one from above.
‘This brown, convex dog-sized beetle,’ Nabokov comments, ‘is very broad.
I should imagine him to look like this.’29 The sketches of the beetle can be found
in his copy of ‘The Metamorphosis,’ where Nabokov tried to visualize Kafka’s
indistinct description of Gregor, giving the creature a recognizable, stable con-
tour. Kafka, who had left the physical appearance of the insect deliberately
vague, was aware of the temptation to visualize and draw what he g­ enerically
calls an Ungeziefer. He insistently proscribed drawing Gregor’s amorphous
shape. In a letter from October 25, 1915, Kafka wrote to his publisher that he
did not want a drawing of the insect on the cover page of the publication of
‘The Metamorphosis’: ‘The insect itself cannot be portrayed. It cannot even be
shown from far-away.’30 De la Durantaye comments on Nabokov’s sketches in
light of Kafka’s wish not to come too close:

Nabokov’s precise delineation may seem at cross-purposes with one of

the effects Kafka wished to achieve. Based as it is, however, on philological
attention and entomological acumen, it is not an illegitimate ­conclusion
and, more importantly, it is an account that served to focus his ­students’
attention on the story’s minute details.31

Nabokov thus did not merely focus his students’ attention on the story’s details,
as De la Durantaye surmises, but he added details where Kafka deliberately
left them out. David Prescott-Steed rightly considers the unclear d­ escription of
Gregor an invitation for the reader:

Because his instability plays into a range of connotations, Samsa is

a­ nimated by the reader’s imagination. It is as if his changed form is the
­creation of the reader – as if the undisclosed reason for his metamorpho-
sis might well be found in the mind of the reader.32

29 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 259.

30 Franz Kafka, Briefe 1902–1924, ed. Max Brod (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966), 13.
31 De la Durantaye, ‘Kafka’s Reality,’ 323.
32 David Prescott-Steed, ‘SAMSA: The Plea for Undecidability in Kafka’s Die Verwandlung,’
Hot Metal Bridge: The Literary Magazine of the University of Pittsburgh, 4 (2008), accessed
May 5, 2017, http://hotmetalbridge.org/?page_id=316.
Nabokov’s Lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ 69

In delineating and fixing on paper what in Kafka’s text is uncannily shapeless

and ungraspable, Nabokov attempts to tame and regain control over the source
of his unsettling exposure to Kafka’s creation.
This controlling gesture increases along with the length and frequency of
the quotes and the scarcity of comments. A turning point is reached when
Nabokov suggests that Gregor’s father may have become infected by Gregor’s
sickness: ‘It would almost seem that the father himself is on the point of
­disintegrating and becoming a feeble beetle. […] Gregor’s beetle illness is
catching, his father seems to have caught it.’33 Soon after noticing this danger
of contamination, Nabokov terminates the process and reaches a reductive
­final interpretation: ‘Gregor is a human being in an insect’s disguise; his family
are insects disguised as people.’34 With this quick, symmetrical reversal, which
negates his earlier insight that Gregor wishes, in vain, to accede to normal life,
the commonly accepted order of things seems restored: Nabokov reinstates
Gregor’s rightful place among the humans, the family is punished and trans-
formed into insects, and the uncanny metamorphosis appears as little more
than a disguise – a metaphor and an overly neat analogy for the shunned poète
maudit sacrificed on the altar of banal mediocrity.
‘As in a fairy tale,’ Nabokov comments on the penultimate scene, ‘in the ­happy
end of a fairy tale, the evil charm is dissipated with the magician’s death.’35 In
identifying the dead insect with an evil magician, Nabokov is – u ­ ndoubtedly
with ironic intention – adopting the perspective of Gregor’s family and their
lodgers. However, he also unwittingly spells out the death of the magician he
conjured in his opening paragraphs. No longer luring the audience into the
‘emotional throb’ of the story, the lecturer inadvertently joins those who wish
to be rid of the monster. Nabokov’s retelling of ‘The ­Metamorphosis’ concludes
with a critical excerpt, that of the story’s haunting final scene, ending with
the blossoming of Gregor’s sister after his death. Nothing follows this quota-
tion, save a handwritten note in Nabokov’s annotated copy, a note that seals
his metaphorical transformation of Gregor into an elevated human ‘soul’ and
Gregor’s family into base insects: ‘The soul has died with Gregor; the healthy
young ­animal takes over. The parasites have fattened themselves on Gregor.’36
Addressing his students in his introduction, Nabokov takes pride in his ‘very
nice observation to be treasured all your lives’ that ‘Gregor the beetle never

33 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 274.

34 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 280.
35 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 281.
36 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 282.
70 Liska

found out that he had wings.’37 Turning the beetle’s imagined wings into a
­lesson about dormant potentials that ought to be used, Nabokov allegorizes
an aspect of the insect that is absent from Kafka’s story. In giving these wings a
metaphorical interpretation pointing to the possibility of soaring above h ­ uman
mediocrity, and in associating Gregor with the human ‘soul,’ ­Nabokov ­allows
him both to escape into ‘the world of humans’ and to rise above it, against
the grain of the story. Nabokov thus transforms Kafka’s Ungeziefer both into a
zoological beetle and into a metaphorical butterfly, Nabokov’s emblem for the
beauty, spirit, and freedom of aesthetic creation.
The conclusion of Nabokov’s lecture, barely a page, displays Kafka’s story
itself as such a butterfly, but one that ends up dead, dried, and pinned down for
distanced aesthetic enjoyment of its perfection. Beauty is no longer ­correlated
with unsettlement or, to speak in Rilke’s terms, with the beginning of terror.38
Instead, it is coupled to faultless harmony and order. In a strikingly radical
­pivot to pure formalism and logical rigor unheralded by his opening comments,
Nabokov summarizes what he considers the three key themes of Kafka’s story:
the number three, the opening and closing of doors, and the ‘subtle state of
balance’39 between the family’s and Gregor’s conditions. Nabokov deems only
the first worthy of elaboration. Once more rejecting symbolic interpretations,
particularly the Freudian sort,40 he explains the importance of the number
three in purely aesthetic and logical terms: ‘the trinity’ (which Nabokov sur-
prisingly ranks among ‘obvious art forms’), the triplet, the triad, the triptych;
the sequence of youth, maturity, old age; three acts of a play and ‘the triad of
thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.’41 In each of these examples, Nabokov insists
on closure and totality. In his only reference to the story’s actual content, he

37 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 259. In a 1967 interview, Nabokov repeated the possibility
of Gregor’s escaping from his predicament and extends this ‘oversight’ to Kafka himself:
‘Neither Gregor nor his maker realized that when the room was being made by the maid,
and the window was open, he could have flown out and escaped and joined the other
happy dung beetles rolling the dung balls on rural paths.’ Quoted in De la Durantaye,
‘Kafka’s Reality,’ 323.
38 ‘Denn das Schöne ist nichts / als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertra-
gen.’ (For beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to en-
dure, Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, ed. and trans. Stephen
Mitchell (New York: Vintage International, 1989), 150–51).
39 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 283.
40 For Nabokov, psychoanalytic interpretations constitute a rationalization following a prior
pattern that diminishes the aesthetic power and the emotional impact of literature in
general and of Kafka’s writings in particular.
41 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 283.
Nabokov’s Lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ 71

emphasizes the subtle state of balance in the condition of the main charac-
ters. In one of his few references to points made in the introduction, he reiter-
ates, in even stronger terms, his dismissal of Freud, whom he now labels ‘the
­Viennese witch doctor.’42 Perhaps Nabokov, ever the enchanter, feared the one
who could uncover his own interpretive conjuring behind this textual smooth-
ing of literary surfaces.
Nabokov’s final paragraph seals this surface to its ultimate polish: ‘You will
mark Kafka’s style. Its clarity, its precise and formal intonation. […] Contrast
and unity, style and matter, manner and plot are most perfectly integrated.’43
Here, Nabokov revokes his initial impulse – his appeal to open up to the story’s
‘emotional throb’ and its unsettling impact. Rather than accusing Nabokov of
inadequate sensitivity to Kafka’s masterpiece,44 one thus is tempted to say, with
Kafka’s supplicant, that Nabokov’s ‘revocation is the ultimate confirmation,’45
that he has truly been touched.

Postscriptum: Nabokov on Kafka – A Visual Comment

The short television film Nabokov on Kafka (1989) visually dramatizes N ­ abokov’s
reaction to the haunting effect of Kafka’s novel. Director Peter M ­ edak ­depicts
Nabokov, played by Christopher Plummer, delivering his lecture on ‘The
­Metamorphosis’ in the late 1940s at Cornell University, where Nabokov taught
from 1948 to 1959. Against the background of a traditional, banked-seating
lecture hall, Plummer, one of the finest classical actors of his time, ­interprets
Nabokov as teacher, storyteller and enchanter who lures his visibly fascinated
students into Kafka’s world; the aspects of Nabokov’s lecture that attempt to
keep the story’s terror at bay are, however, significantly reduced in the film.
­Medak undoes Nabokov’s strategies of downplaying the story’s disturbing
­features and, in Plummer’s reading of the text, recovers its unsettling effect. The
film operates in the reverse direction from the lecture: it starts on a light note
and, after a haunting reading of Kafka’s story, ends without closure. The witty
opening lines of Plummer as Nabokov address the students casually, i­nviting
the film’s viewer to take a seat in the auditorium: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, there
are two million words in this course… You have to read them. ­Every one of
them twice. If possible, take copious notes in short hand of every word, type

42 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 283.

43 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 283.
44 See De la Durantaye, ‘Kafka’s Reality,’ 326.
45 Kafka, Drucke zu Lebzeiten, 394.
72 Liska

them out, sell them to your friends, and give me three copies.’ In stark contrast
to the written lecture’s opening words, this joking description of the teacher’s
expectations reduces the hope for a genuine response to literature to some-
thing measurable – the list of numbers significantly ends on the number three.
The camera then tracks Plummer, who imitates Nabokov’s distinct accent, as
he briefly introduces the writer Kafka to his audience before starting to read
and retell the story. The film alternates between three perspectives: the view
from one of the back seats of the auditorium, focusing on the teacher who,
faceless and banal, stands in front of the class; a closer side view that highlights
the manipulative act of the enchanter as he explains, analyzes, and draws the
beetle on the blackboard; and, above all, stark close-ups against a black back-
ground of Plummer as Nabokov, the storyteller, as he reads and r­ etells ­Kafka’s
story, mainly looking straight into the spectators’ eyes. S­ trikingly, the film
leaves out those passages in which Nabokov interprets Gregor allegorically as
a misunderstood genius ‘surrounded by mediocrity.’ As the lecture progresses,
the film increasingly omits most of the anecdotes, jokes or other distracting
or distancing comments with which Nabokov, in his written text, interrupts
the reading of Kafka’s story. There is, however, one significant e­ xception: the
scene in which Nabokov describes Gregor as a beetle who never discovered
his wings. Medak rightly calls attention to this decisive moment in the lecture.
Plummer’s sketched beetles may be even more detailed than Nabokov’s, their
outlines more clearly defined; moreover, in addition to Nabokov’s side and
overhead sketches, he adds a third one of an erectly standing Gregor, gazing
from the window of his room. When Plummer actually reads Kafka, however,
with the camera showing a close-up of his face, the story unleashes its stirring
effect and mesmerizes the viewer into Gregor’s growing despair.
Film adaptations of Kafka’s works are rarely successful, despite, as ­Michelle
Woods writes, ‘being undertaken by some of the great filmmakers of the
­twentieth century (Welles, Fellini) and the leading auteurs of today (Michael
Haneke, Steven Soderbergh, Straub and Huillet).’46 Kafka’s disturbing crea-
tures seem to lose their impact when films attempt to visualize literally what
the written word leaves to the imagination. Medak’s film avoids the ‘pitfalls of
over-visualization’47 and fully relies on the text read by the actor to cast its spell
on the audience. Medak obviously does not aim at being faithful to ­Nabokov’s
written lecture. Through a careful selection of passages and the changing points

46 Michelle Woods, Kafka Translated (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 192.

47 Woods, Kafka Translated, 192.
Nabokov’s Lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ 73

of view of the camera the film emphasizes the contrast between N ­ abokov’s
­increasingly distancing comments and the power of Kafka’s story.
The film’s final scene starts with a line from the introduction of the o­ riginal
lecture: ‘From my point of view, any outstanding work of art is a fantasy
­insofar as it reflects the unique world of a unique individual.’48 Whereas the
real N
­ abokov ends his lecture by praising ‘contrast and unity, style and matter,
manner and plot’ as ‘perfectly integrated,’49 the film concludes on a note of
disquieting ambiguity:

Art is not just a simple arithmetic; it’s a delicate calculus. Keep in mind
the passion of the scientist and the precision of the artist. Have I made a
mistake? Don’t I mean the passion of the artist and the precision on the
scientist? No. No. The passion of the scientist and the precision of the
artist.50

This sentence, which does not appear in the text of Nabokov’s lecture, but
which he reportedly repeated ‘several times a term’51 to his students in other
contexts, can be read as the film’s comment on Nabokov’s lecture on Kafka:
The chiastic construction of passion, science, precision and art inextricably
intertwines exposure and control. The film’s ending reintroduces an unsettling
confusion that Nabokov supports elsewhere but seems to want to avoid in his
reading of Kafka’s story. The class bell rings, the students get up, and leave the
auditorium. It is not clear what they will take with them. Have they merely
been instructed by the erudite teacher up front? Have they been charmed into
deploying their wings? Or have they been touched to the depths of their being?
At the end of his performance Plummer shrugs his shoulders in a gesture of
indecisiveness, possibly as a commentary on Nabokov himself.

48 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 252.

49 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 283.
50 Quoted in Ross Wetzsteon, ‘Nabokov as Teacher,’ TriQuarterly 17 (1970): 244. The distinc-
tion between arithmetic and calculus, which is not immediately obvious, is illuminated
by another passage in Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature, where he states that ‘Flaubert’s
novel [Madame Bovary] deals with the delicate calculus of human fate, not with the arith-
metic of social determination’ (Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 126). In his lecture on
Kafka, Nabokov similarly associates the response to art with an indeterminate, existential
fatefulness that eschews a ‘simple arithmetic,’ a measurable, predictable and determinate
logical exercise. Nabokov notes in his lectures that Flaubert was the greatest influence on
Kafka (Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 256).
51 Wetzsteon, ‘Nabokov as Teacher,’ 244.
74 Liska

Literature Cited

Anders, Günther. Kafka – Pro und Contra. München: Beck, 1951.

Corngold, Stanley. The Commentators’ Despair: The Interpretation of Kafka’s ‘The
M
­ etamorphosis.’ New York: Kennikat Press, 1973.
De la Durantaye, Leland. ‘Kafka’s Reality and Nabokov’s Fantasy. On Dwarves, Saints,
Beetles, Symbolism, and Genius,’ Comparative Literature 59/4 (2007): 315–31.
Foster, John Burt Jr. ‘Nabokov and Kafka.’ In The Garland Companion to Vladimir
N­ abokov, edited by Vladimir E. Alexandrov, 444–51. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Kafka, Franz. Briefe 1902–1924, edited by Max Brod. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966.
Kafka, Franz. Drucke zu Lebzeiten, edited by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard
Neumann. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 1996.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by
John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Prescott-Steed, David. ‘SAMSA: The Plea for Undecidability in Kafka’s Die ­Verwandlung.’
Hot Metal Bridge: The Literary Magazine of the University of Pittsburgh, 4 (2008).
­Accessed May 5, 2017. http://hotmetalbridge.org/?page_id=316.
Rilke, Rainer Maria. The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Edited and translated by
Stephen Mitchell. New York: Vintage International, 1989.
Wetzsteon, Ross. ‘Nabokov as teacher,’ TriQuarterly 17 (1970), 240–46.
Woods, Michelle. Kafka Translated. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.
 chapter 5

‘As Flaubert Intended It to Be Discussed’: Vladimir

Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary

Flora Keersmaekers

Abstract

In this article, I examine Nabokov’s literary views through the focus of the work of the
Swiss critic Jean Rousset. Rousset’s Forme et Signification (1963) displays a combination
of phenomenological literary criticism with structuralist interests. It will be shown
that his thoughts and method provide a valuable context to understand N ­ abokov’s
views on writers, readers and literary communication.

Thinking the Thoughts of Another

In his essay ‘The Art of Literature and Commonsense,’ Nabokov describes what
reading a novel should ideally look like, by drawing an analogy with painting:

If the mind were constructed on optional lines and if a book could be

read in the same way as a painting is taken in by the eye, that is with-
out the bother of working from left to right and without the absurdity of
­beginnings and ends, this would be the ideal way of appreciating a novel,
for thus the author saw it at the moment of its conception.1

Nabokov actually made this comparison between reading a novel and looking
at a painting in several of his texts.2 This has led to a considerable number of
scholarly studies on his work that highlight the role of paintings and other
visual objects in Nabokov’s fiction.3 In these studies, the role of painting is

1 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 380.
2 For example, Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: Vintage, 1990 [1973]), 31–32, 138;
Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 3–4.
3 For example: Thomas Seifrid, ‘Nabokov’s Poetics of Vision, or What Anna Karenina is ­Doing
in Kamera obskura,’ Nabokov Studies 3 (1996): 1–12; Lara Delage-Toriel, ‘Brushing through

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_007

76 Keersmaekers

a­ nalysed mainly on the basis of concrete references to painters and paintings

or to visual passages in Nabokov’s work. These are generally taken to form a
motif, or to point to the influence of certain artistic movements or aesthetic
theories on Nabokov’s writings. With respect to Nabokov’s poetics, however,
the significance of the reading literature/looking at a paining ­metaphor
­reaches beyond matters of content, theme or style. This chapter therefore takes
Nabokov’s comparison as a starting point and will explore how his metaphor
of the novel as painting can be understood to contain a reflection on the com-
munication between author and reader.4 To fully understand the comparison’s
meaning, it is important to take a closer look at the citation above. I want to
single out three elements. First, that Nabokov seems to hold that the reader’s
imagination has a decidedly optical character, as the similarity between novel
and painting concerns the mental equivalence of sensory experiences when
reading, respectively seeing works of art. The second element follows from the
first: Nabokov’s concept of ‘the ideal way of appreciating a novel’ is marked
by the absence of time and sequence. The same goes for the very moment in
which an author conceives of the novel. Therefore, the ‘ideal appreciation’
arises when the experience of reading the novel equals that of the author as he
‘saw’ it when creating it. This is the third element.
It is especially this third element that led me to consider ­phenomenology
as the framework for analysing the reading theory underlying Nabokov’s
­lectures. When the members of the so-called Geneva School introduced the
philosophy of phenomenology into the field of literary studies, the motto of
‘consciousness of consciousness’5 was an important starting point in their
approach. This motto is quite similar to Nabokov’s intention to relive, when
reading, an a­ uthor’s creative experience in his own mind. Despite some obvi-
ous ­differences between Nabokov’s views on (the creation and reception of)
literature and those of the Swiss group, the two approaches are informed by
similar ideas. For critics such as Georges Poulet, Marcel Raymond, and Jean
Rousset, literature is primarily a form of consciousness. They do not approach

“Veiled Values and Translucent Undertones”: Nabokov’s Pictorial Approach to Women,’

T
­ ransatlantica, 1 (2006) http://transatlantica.revues.org/index760.html; Gerard De Vries
and Don Barton Johnson, eds., Nabokov and the Art of Painting (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
­University Press, 2006); Gavriel Shapiro, The Sublime Artist’s Studio: Nabokov and Painting
(Evanston, Il.: Northwestern University Press, 2009).
4 The first chapter of De Vries and Johnson, eds., Nabokov and the Art of Painting presents
­several interesting insights.
5 John Hillis Miller, ‘The Geneva School: The Criticism of Marcel Raymond, Albert Béguin,
Georges Poulet, Jean Rousset, Jean-Pierre Richard, and Jean Starobinski,’ Critical Quarterly 8
(1966), 305.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 77

a text, a poem, or a novel as an objective structure from which a meaning, a

message, a sentiment, or a socio-historical content can be extracted. A literary
text in their view is the materialised expression of a mental state with language
forming a unity between mind and word.6 As Sarah Lawall puts it, the ‘critics of
consciousness’ do not look upon a literary work as an object, but as a (mental)
act or an experience that takes shape through language. Phenomenological lit-
erary criticism therefore derives its largely subjective and personal character
from the belief that a text cannot and must not be studied from the exterior,
and instead tries to revive and bring to the fore the experience that underlies
it.7 The critic’s ambition can thus be described as follows:

Criticism must therefore begin in an act of renunciation in which the

critic empties his mind of its personal qualities so that it may coincide
completely with the consciousness expressed in the words of the author.
His essay will be the record of this coincidence. The ‘intimacy’ necessary
for criticism, says Georges Poulet, ‘is not possible unless the thought of
the critic becomes the thought of the author criticized, unless it succeeds
in re-feeling, in re-thinking, in re-imagining the author’s thought from
the inside […].’ […] For the Geneva critics, then, criticism is […] the trans-
position of the mental universe of an author into the interior space of the
critic’s mind.8

Whereas the Geneva School mainly deals with literary criticism and the role of
the critic as mediator between writer and reader, Nabokov tends to direct his
thoughts to authors and readers themselves. However, as the three following
passages from his work indicate, his notion of the ideal way of reading hardly
differs from the one proposed by members of the Swiss School:

the authentic instrument to be used by the reader […] is impersonal

imagination and aesthetic delight. What should be established, I think,
is an artistic harmonious balance between the reader’s mind and the
author’s mind. […] the reader must know when and where to curb his
imagination and this he does by trying to get clear the specific world the
author places at his disposal.9

6 Hillis Miller, ‘Geneva School,’ 306–07.

7 Sarah N. Lawall, Critics of Consciousness: The Existential Structures of Literature (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), 2–8.
8 Hillis Miller, ‘Geneva School,’ 307.
9 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 4.
78 Keersmaekers

I have tried to teach you […] to share not the emotions of the people
in the book but the emotions of its author – the joys and difficulties of
creation.10
The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or
the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that
book.11

According to Georges Poulet, whenever something is presented as a thought

in a novel, a thinking subject is implied whose subjectivity replaces our own
while reading. When I am reading, therefore, ‘I am thinking the thoughts of
another.’12 Jean Rousset shares this principle. In ‘Pour une lecture des formes,’
the introductory essay to Forme et signification, Rousset explains how a liter-
ary work of art comes into being and how it should be approached by readers,
writers and critics:

Entrer dans une œuvre, c’est changer d’univers: […] qu’elle soit récente
ou classique, l’œuvre impose l’avènement d’un ordre en rupture avec
l’état existant, l’affirmation d’un règne qui obéit à ses lois et à sa logique
propres.13

And further down in the text he writes:

ce qui nous est demandé, c’est toujours une participation à l’existence

d’un être spirituel que nous ne pouvons comprendre qu’à la faveur
d’un acte d’adhésion totale qui exclut, du moins provisoirement, tout
jugement.14

In what follows, I want to elaborate upon the remarkable similarity between

Nabokov’s conception of literary communication and the one proposed by liter-
ary critics and theorists inspired by phenomenology, because they share a view
on the goal of reading: utter and complete identification with the conscious-
ness of the author. More specifically, I want to confront both the critical theory

10 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 382.

11 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, ed., with an introd. Fredson Bowers.
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 11.
12 Georges Poulet, ‘Phenomenology of Reading,’ New Literary History 1/1 (1969): 55.
13 Jean Rousset, Forme et signification. Essais sur les structures littéraires de Corneille à
C
­ laudel (Paris: José Corti, 1963), ii.
14 Rousset, Forme et signification, xiv.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 79

and the practice developed in Rousset’s Forme et Signification with Nabokov’s

literary views and analyses. With its combination of phenomenological liter-
ary criticism and structuralist interests, Forme et Signification comes closest
to Nabokov’s conviction that a text’s formal features cannot be ­dismissed if
we want to gain insight into the author’s mind. First, the ­statements made in
­Rousset’s essay ‘Pour une Lecture des Formes’ will be compared to ­Nabokov’s
‘strong opinions,’ after which I will proceed with a case study of the two a­uthors’
readings of Flaubert’s masterpiece, Madame Bovary.

Jean Rousset: Form as Crucial to Meaning

As a student at the University of Geneva, Jean Rousset took courses with ­Albert
Thibaudet and Marcel Raymond, who introduced him to phenomenological
literary criticism. His dissertation La Littérature de l’âge baroque en France: ­Circé
et le paon was published in 1953 and was very well received by his f­ ellow ­critics.
Because of his next work, Forme et signification, Rousset’s name also came to
be associated with structuralism and narratology. In this volume, R ­ ousset dis-
tanced himself from the purely phenomenological approaches used by, for
­example, Georges Poulet and Jean-Pierre Richard. Instead, he ­focused upon
the decisive role of formal elements (such as the narrative structure) for the
meaning of a literary work. Like Nabokov, he preferred individual novels as
objects of study. In his view, every work has a unique form of its own, ‘[that]
brings into existence meanings which could become articulated in no other
way.’15 Unlike Poulet, who feared that form is an external obstacle when trying
to reach the consciousness that created it, Rousset believed form to be the very
means by which the mind distinguishes itself and becomes aware of its indi-
viduality.16 Sarah Lawall stresses that Rousset does not agree with Poulet’s and
Richard’s conviction that every expression by an author, including non-fictional
ones, reveals his ‘mental universe.’ The ‘substratum’ Rousset is interested in,
she ­explains, is ‘not unwritten or nonstylistic.’ It is not something that can be
planned in advance, but only comes into existence in the author’s execution of
his work of art.17 Lawall concludes that ‘for [Rousset] the existential personal-
ity creates the literary personality, but is not synonymous with it. Flaubert the

15 Hillis Miller, ‘Geneva School,’ 317.

16 Robert Holub, ‘Phenomenology,’ in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Volume 8:
From Formalism to Poststructuralism, ed. Raman Selden (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 315.
17 Lawall, Critics of Consciousness, 191 (my italics).
80 Keersmaekers

novelist is separate from Flaubert the letter-writer, and the novelist is more
important.’18
Nabokov makes a similar connection between a text’s formal features, inex-
tricably bound up with the work itself, and an author’s literary identity (per-
sona poetica) when giving his students a definition of ‘style’:

[S]tyle constitutes an intrinsic component or characteristic of the a­ uthor’s

personality. Thus when we speak of style we mean an ­individual artist’s
peculiar nature; and the way it expresses itself in his artistic output.19

Likewise, Rousset writes in ‘Pour une Lecture des Formes’ that he feels very
close to Leo Spitzer’s

[c]onception moderne du style, […] ce qu’il y a de plus individuel, de plus

irréductible chez l’artiste, le signe même de sa vision; […]. L’artiste n’a pas
un style, il est son style.20

His own convictions are indeed in keeping with Spitzer’s (and Nabokov’s):

L’écrivain n’écrit pas pour dire quelque chose, il écrit pour se dire, comme
le peintre peint pour se peindre; mais, s’il est artiste, il ne se dit, il ne se
peint que par le moyen de cette composition qu’est une œuvre.21

Like Nabokov, Rousset here takes recourse to the analogy of painting to

­represent the way an author works. Later on in his text, Rousset defines a piece
of art as the simultaneous birth and development of structure and thought,
form and experience. Regarding a critic’s reading method, he concludes that
the critic can seize ‘the dream’ by means of the form.22 This necessarily leads
to the question of: ‘Mais comment saisir la forme?’23
In his answer to this question, Rousset comes close to Nabokov. In the
­passage from ‘The Art of Literature and Commonsense’ that I quoted at the
beginning of this article, Nabokov emphasised the nature of ideal reading as

18 Lawall, Critics of Consciousness, 192.

19 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 59–60.
20 Rousset, Forme et signification, xviii (his italics).
21 Rousset, Forme et signification, v–vi (his italics).
22 Rousset, Forme et signification, x–xi. Rousset’s metaphor, a dream, is pre-eminently visual
and like a painting or a picture.
23 Rousset, Forme et signification, xi.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 81

similar to experiencing a painting: for the experience of the work as a whole,

it is not necessary to follow a fixed chronology in addressing its separate parts..

Rousset writes something similar. He believes that the form of a novel reveals
itself in certain lines, patterns and networks, ‘ces constantes formelles, ces
­liaisons qui trahissent un univers mental et que chaque artiste réinvente selon
ses besoins.’24 A fruitful reading should therefore be comprehensive and com-
plete, he claims, and in doing so he takes recourse to the same visual metaphor
as Nabokov:

De toute façon, la lecture, qui se développe dans la durée, devra pour être
globale se rendre l’œuvre simultanément présente en toutes ses parties.
Delacroix fait observer que si le tableau s’offre tout entier au regard, il
n’en est pas de même du livre: le livre, semblable à un ‘tableau en mouve-
ment,’ ne se découvre que par fragments successifs. La tâche du lecteur
exigeant consiste à renverser cette tendance naturelle du livre de manière
que celui-ci se présente tout entier au regard de l’esprit. Il n’y a de lec-
ture complète que celle qui transforme le livre en un réseau simultané de
­relations réciproques; c’est alors que jaillissent les surprises heureuses et
que l’ouvrage émerge sous nos yeux, parce que nous sommes en mesure
d’exécuter avec justesse une sonate de mots, de figures et de pensées.25

Rousset’s comparison between the novel and painting leads to the same conclu-
sions as Nabokov’s. Rousset also highlights the contrast between duration and
sequence of successive literary fragments on the one hand and the simultane-
ity and static character of a painting’s components on the other. Like ­Nabokov,
he explicitly links this to the fact that painting is an art form perceived by the
eye, paralleled by the ‘regard de l’esprit’ in the case of the novel. In another
interesting phrase in this passage, Rousset points out that the reader must try
to counteract or even to reverse the sequential nature of literary writings and
to enable the novel in question to present itself to that ‘inner eye’ as a whole,
just like a painting.

From Image to Word, and Back Again

Nabokov’s description of the reader’s task is quite similar. The reader aims to
acquire the image of the novel such as the author had it in mind at its con-
ception and in doing so is actually pursuing a reconstruction. For Nabokov,

24 Rousset, Forme et signification, xii.

25 Rousset, Forme et signification, xiii.
82 Keersmaekers

i­nspiration is often a matter of ‘images,’ of sensory-like impressions. This is

­indicated by several passages in which Nabokov ascribes the pleasure of writ-
ing to ‘the ­unknown force in his [i.e. the writer’s] mind that has suggested a
combination of images,’26 or argues that the first flash of inspiration can a­ lways
be reduced to

the most natural form of creative thrill – a sudden live image constructed
in a flash out of dissimilar units which are apprehended all at once in a
stellar explosion of the mind.27

The image offered to him by this type of inspiration then matures into ‘a curi-
ously clear preview of the entire novel’28 before a single word is written. For
this concept of the novel, Nabokov again uses the painting metaphor:

Since this entire structure, dimly illumined in one’s mind, can be com-
pared to a painting, and since you do not have to work gradually from left
to right for its proper perception, I may direct my flashlight at any part or
particle of the picture when setting it down in writing.29

As I mentioned before, because of this image, the author is not bound by time
and sequence when he proceeds to turn it into words. Sequence is the last
stage, when the form of the book and the demands of language compel the
author to place one element after the other. But sequence is not the end of it.
As Rousset suggests, the reader has the possibility to reverse ‘cette tendance
naturelle du livre’ and to turn the words back into the original image. Thus
both Rousset and Nabokov believe that a reader is able to reach ‘the mental
universe’ of an author conceiving of his or her book, by stepping beyond chro-
nology and by (re)presenting all different elements together. In this respect,
Nabokov makes an important remark on reading: ‘Curiously enough, one can-
not read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active
and creative reader is a rereader.’30 In other words, a good reader reads a book
several times, because only then can the book be approached in the same way
as a painting: By having an image of the entire novel from the beginning, the

26 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 40.

27 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 379.
28 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 69.
29 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 32.
30 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 3 (his italics).
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 83

reader can fix his or her attention on the detailed little parts that construct this
image instead of on the act of constructing the image first.
Of course it could be argued that it is possible for a reader to compose the
‘painting’ of a novel on the basis of a single reading and still arrive at an overall
picture of the novel and its internal relationships. The point is, however, that
we are unable to reach a writer’s ‘univers mental’31 as long as our reading is not
finished. Rousset and Nabokov seem to disagree on the nature of this men-
tal universe. Unlike Nabokov, Rousset never links it to ‘inspiration,’ nor does
he discuss the nature of inspiration. In fact, what they do have in common is
that they both remain rather vague about what exactly happens (and how that
­happens) when the matter of consecutive words and phrases is transformed in
the reader’s imagination; nor do they elaborate on the ways in which ­various
properties of a literary text might function in this process. However, Nabokov
does indicate how we can ‘get clear the specific world the author places at
[our] disposal.’32 His instructions for the reader appear to show some striking
similarities with Rousset’s directions for the author.

Heart, Brain, and Spine

When he talks about the correspondences between the experiences of read-

ing and writing, Nabokov uses terms such as ‘pleasures,’ ‘delights,’ ‘felicity,’ and
‘bliss.’33 For him, writing and reading do not simply boil down to a detached,
mechanical, and objectively describable process in the course of which one
has to run through various stages. Instead, both are determined by an artistic
sensation that can only be achieved if a number of conditions are simulta-
neously met. In an interview with Alvin Toffler, Nabokov expressed what this
meant for reading well:

I could never explain adequately to certain students in my literature

­classes, the aspects of good reading – the fact that you read an artist’s book
not with your heart (the heart is a remarkably stupid reader), and not
with your brain alone, but with your brain and your spine. ‘­Ladies and
gentlemen, the tingle in the spine really tells you what the author felt and
wished you to feel.’34

31 Rousset, Forme et signification, xii.

32 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 4.
33 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 40–41.
34 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 41.
84 Keersmaekers

In this passage, Nabokov adds a third element to what looks like the classic
distinction between ratio and emotion: the poetic sensibility of the imagina-
tion. He locates this sensibility in the spine, and, more importantly, connects it
exclusively to the artistic experience shared by author and reader. If the heart
dominates the activity of reading, ‘emotional reading’ is the result, but if the
reader is able to centre his attention on the mind of the author, this is because
he uses ‘impersonal imagination.’35 ‘Reading with the spine,’ as Leland de la
Durantaye suggests when referring to Nabokov’s lecture on Kafka, means that
Nabokov’s ideal reader must not only exhibit ‘literary intelligence,’ which can
be used to formally analyse a novel, but also and foremost a ‘literary sensitivity’
essential to reaching the aesthetic experience.36 Thus, in his lecture about ‘The
Metamorphosis,’ Nabokov says:

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of m

­ usic,
a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain
blank and spines that remain unkindled. […] We can take the story apart,
we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to
the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ
that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor
dismiss.37

Without a certain degree of literary sensitivity a reader is not able to revive the
author’s aesthetic experience based on the given text. This sensitivity, however,
does not stem from the heart, but from the spine. As a result, it is exclusively
connected with our experience of literature (and, by extension, of all art). In
other words, it must not be mistaken for the emotion and empathy that can
also be evoked if the story is not presented in its original artistic form.

Poetic Sensibility

Rousset also distinguishes a specific type of sensitivity connected with the

­artistic experience. Although the relevant passage from ‘Pour Une Lecture des
Formes’ concerns the author rather than the reader, he draws our attention to
the analogy between the two just like Nabokov. After comparing reading with

35 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 4.

36 Leland de la Durantaye, Style is Matter. The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2007), 57.
37 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 251.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 85

passing a threshold, Rousset turns to writing and remarks that ‘à l’expérience

du contemplateur correspond celle des créateurs.’38 He refers to ‘la même
rupture,’39 the same break with ‘l’état existant’40 as mentioned when he dis-
cusses the idea of ‘entering’ a novel. Rousset explains that in this moment the
author experiences a separation and becomes aware of a poetic sensibility that
is quite different from everyday practical sensibility. This is why the distinc-
tion between the experience and its artistic expression must be considered as
‘une loi de toute création.’41 Rousset quotes Balzac, who claimed that an artist
fails to realise his intentions if he departs from his very experience of passion
rather than using its image. Balzac therefore concluded that ‘l’art procède du
cerveau et non du cœur.’42 Rousset counters that the creative process should
not be identified with a purely cerebral activity. The distinction between mind
and heart should be rephrased as one between a precise and specialised activ-
ity on the one hand and spontaneous passion on the other. For ‘ce “cerveau”
qui compose est un laboratoire saturé d’expérience sensible.’43 It should be
noted that Rousset refers to some of Nabokov’s beloved authors (Flaubert,
Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Proust) in order to correct Balzac, whom Nabokov
detested. Flaubert, for example, clarifies why the sensibility belonging to the
domain of artistic creation is so often described as something cerebral: it is a
‘second sensitivity’ of a reflexive nature. Rousset quotes from one of Flaubert’s
letters: ‘la passion ne fait pas les vers [...], moins on sent une chose, plus on est
apte à l’exprimer comme elle est [...], mais il faut avoir la faculté de se la faire
sentir [...].’44 A similar distinction between the actual experience and its literary
expression figures in Nabokov’s writings, even though he assigns a significant
role to this experience as initiator of the creative process. However, he also
believes the writing itself to be ‘cool and sustained,’ contrary to the ‘hot and
brief’ experience which the author, as stated by Flaubert, must transmit to the
reader.45 The fact that Rousset emphasises Flaubert’s instruction by using ital-
ics probably indicates that he feels the same way. Rousset logically concludes
that an author should make use of a

38 Rousset, Forme et signification, iii.

39 Rousset, Forme et signification, iii.
40 Rousset, Forme et signification, ii.
41 Rousset, Forme et signification, iii.
42 Rousset, Forme et signification, iv.
43 Rousset, Forme et signification, iv.
44 In a letter dated July 6, 1852. Quoted in Rousset, Forme et signification, iv.
45 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 378.
86 Keersmaekers

[s]ensibilité de l’imagination, qu’on distinguera et dégagera de l’émotion

empirique parce que celle-ci, loin de la nourrir […] la trouble et l’amortit.46

Like Nabokov, Rousset recognises a sensitivity belonging specifically to the

­literary experience: ‘pas celle de la “vie,” […] [mais] exclusivement tournée vers
le travail de l’œuvre.’47

When Rousset and Nabokov Meet Flaubert

Naturally Rousset and Nabokov are not the only ones to have written about
the similarities between literature and painting. In the essay ‘Spatial Form
in Modern Literature,’ for example, Joseph Frank uses Lessing’s distinction
between painting and literature (as bound to the perception of respectively
space and time) in order to conclude that authors of modern literature ‘­intend
the reader to apprehend their work spatially, in a moment of time, rather than
as a sequence.’48 The works of writers such as Flaubert, Joyce, and Proust break
through Lessing’s boundaries because they are based on the principle of ‘reflex-
ive reference,’ which means that true meaning can only arise when the book
is finished because only then will the reader be able to take in the whole.49
Following Frank’s theory, one could say that, considering their poetics, it is
no wonder that Madame Bovary appealed to both Nabokov and R ­ ousset as an
­object of study.50
When comparing the chapter on Madame Bovary in Rousset’s Forme et
s­ ignification to Nabokov’s lecture on the same novel, the main difference that
strikes the eye after an initial reading concerns the matter of form. Rousset
­approaches Madame Bovary in a much more systematic and structured way
than Nabokov does. He explores the idea of Madame Bovary as an anti-­novel
(based on Flaubert’s statement that his aim was to write ‘un livre sur rien, un

46 Rousset, Forme et signification, iv–v.

47 Rousset, Forme et signification, v.
48 Joseph Frank, The Widening Gyre. Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1963), 9. The essay was originally published in Sewanee Review in
1945.
49 Frank, The Widening Gyre, 13–14, 16, 19.
50 More specifically, Frank focuses on Madame Bovary’s famous county fair scene which, as
I will point out later, is also selected by both Nabokov and Rousset to illustrate their find-
ings. And Proust, to whom the next section of Frank’s essay is dedicated, happens to be
the second author studied by both Nabokov and Rousset.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 87

livre sans attache extérieure’51) by elaborating on Flaubert’s characteristic use

of the formal device of ‘point of view.’ Rousset analyses three different n ­ arrative
procedures in Madame Bovary to illustrate how Flaubert deploys this device.
First of all, there is (the function of) Charles Bovary as the ­binoculars provid-
ing us with a perception of Emma at the beginning and the end of the novel.
Secondly, Rousset discusses the transitions from one character’s perspective
to ­another’s. The third procedure concerns the downward gaze, often from
aw ­ indow and connected to episodes of daydreaming. These episodes seem
to form a pattern with Emma always falling back into reality, which creates
an alternation of stagnation and action parallelled by the continuous switch
­between the subjective and the objective perspective. N ­ abokov’s ­lecture, in
contrast, does not seem to follow a preconceived, clear-cut plan. It is charac-
terised by what looks like a haphazard weave of alternating themes and ­topics,
comments and quotes, argumentations and digressions. For e­xample, the
­discussion of ‘the layer theme’ is followed by a note on Emma’s and Charles’
characterisation, but later on, after the elaboration on the theme of daydream-
ing, Nabokov returns to (the hardness of) Emma’s nature, after which he lists
Emma’s (ten) loves and then continues with examples of Flaubert’s ‘coun-
terpoint method.’52 The two texts also strikingly differ in length: with fifty-
one pages, Nabokov’s chapter is twice as long as Rousset’s twenty-four pages
(­although the difference appears to be largely due to the fact that Nabokov
uses so many excerpts from the novel). Of course, we must keep in mind that
a published essay is not the same as notes for a lecture. In the case of Nabokov,
the role of Fredson ­Bowers, the editor, cannot be ignored, and we know for a
fact that what we read in Lectures on Literature is always the result of the com-
bination of various pieces and fragments of texts.
Despite those differences, however, it is valuable to compare the two read-
ings of Madame Bovary: Nabokov’s and Rousset’s reading methods have a lot
in common, while they also seem to differ on crucial points. They share the
­tendency to bring coherence and internal connections in Madame Bovary
to the fore, so that the novel can reveal itself to the inner eye as ‘un réseau
­simultané de relations réciproques.’53 Both critics put a lot of effort into reveal-
ing how the artistry of Madame Bovary’s structure sustains the novel. In ­doing
so, Rousset identifies with the reader on several occasions. For example, he
­explains Charles Bovary’s central position in the first chapters as providing the

51 Flaubert, January 16, 1852. Quoted in Rousset, Forme et signification, 111.

52 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 128, 132, 136–42, 142–43, 143–44, 147.
53 Rousset, Forme et signification, xiii.
88 Keersmaekers

introduction of Emma with a certain sensitivity, but also as having a special

effect on the reader:

Cette disposition permet au lecteur d’éprouver de l’intérieur la forme de

connaissance que Charles a, et aura toujours, de sa femme; le souvenir
que ce lecteur prévenu en gardera par la suite, une fois Emma promue
au centre, contribuera à éclairer et à épaissir l’univers romanesque où il
s’enfonce.54

Note that for Rousset, a novel does not simply coincide with a story, but entails
a reality of its own that emerged from the author’s imagination and is perfectly
complete in itself. This cannot easily be taken in by a passive audience. One
has to pay attention to understand the workings of a novel:

Ainsi, au début et à la fin de cette odyssée amoureuse, en deux pages

fort éloignées, mais symmétriquement opposées, Flaubert place son
héroïne au même lieu dominant, où il lui réserve la même perspective
plongeante. Au lecteur attentif d’établir la relation et de sentir les richesses
dont se charge un livre si fortement composé.55

In the same way that Nabokov speaks of ‘premonitions’ (for example the fate
of Emma’s bridal bouquet – thrown in the fire after being found covered with
dust56), Rousset uses words like ‘prévenu’ and ‘pressentir’57 to indicate how
Flaubert guides his readers through the universe of Madame Bovary. ­However,
Nabokov seems to ‘zoom in’ more, and to dig deeper into Flaubert’s text. Like
Rousset, he explores the structure of Madame Bovary by means of several
‘themes,’ but as these are often based on details, he distinguishes a lot more of
them than Rousset does. Figuratively speaking, Nabokov’s sketch of the ‘web’ of
Madame Bovary consists of numerous threads (the themes) in different sizes.
One such theme is discussed in a separate section at the end of the lecture:
‘The Equine Theme.’58 According to Nabokov, ‘horses play a tremendous part in
this book,’59 more specifically in the book’s romance, as they always seem to be

54 Rousset, Forme et signification, 117.

55 Rousset, Forme et signification, 126 (emphasis added).
56 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 140.
57 Rousset, Forme et signification, 129: ‘Comment ne pas pressentir l’agonie de la jeune
femme […].’
58 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 175–76.
59 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 133.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 89

involved (in one way or another) when it comes to the development of Emma’s
love life. Nabokov lists no less than twenty-three examples, concluding that ‘as
symbolism goes it is perhaps not more symbolic than a convertible would be
today.’60 This remark indicates that Nabokov’s reading is not an allegorical one,
on the contrary: what is called a ‘symbol’ points towards a formal and struc-
tural function. Indeed, it is not necessary for a ‘theme’ to return throughout
the book, since its appearance may also be limited to only one chapter, as is the
case with Emma’s sunshade in the second chapter of Madame Bovary.61 Differ-
ently from Rousset, Nabokov also scrutinises Flaubert’s characters to bring out
the novel’s internal connections. Emma and Homais, for example, are said to
echo each other because of the common ‘vulgar cruelty of their natures.’62 And
the comparison between the personalities of Charles, Emma, and her lovers
produces two important points:

What seduces him in Emma and what he finds in her is exactly what
Emma herself is looking for and not finding in her romantic daydreams.
[…] The second point is that the love Charles almost unwittingly devel-
ops for Emma is a real feeling, deep and true, in absolute contrast to the
brutal or frivolous emotions experienced by Rodolphe and Léon, her
smug and vulgar lovers.63

The ways Rousset and Nabokov represent Madame Bovary’s internal and
structural connections reflect their ideas on (the role of) Flaubert as a writer.
Both texts are characterised by their focus on the author.64 Madame Bovary
might be known for its criticism of contemporary society and morals or for
its ­psychological depth, but neither Nabokov nor Rousset deem this worth
considering. Nabokov even goes against this point of view by stating that
‘Flaubert’s novel deals with the delicate calculus of human fate, not with the
arithmetic of social conditioning.’65 He also attacks the notions of realism and
­naturalism, which he believes to be only comparative notions, since all reality
is comparative reality in itself.66 Likewise, Rousset is oriented on the author

60 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 176.

61 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 134.
62 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 142.
63 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 133.
64 ‘En littérature, ce sont les personnalités créatrices qui comptent, plus que les genres et les
styles collectifs.’ Rousset, Forme et signification, xxvi.
65 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 126.
66 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 146.
90 Keersmaekers

who ­created the novel, more specifically on the way Flaubert makes use of
the formal device of ‘point of view’ to turn Madame Bovary into ‘a book about
nothing.’ Rousset’s line of approach is reminiscent of Gérard Genette’s concept
of focalisation, but the lack of such a precise concept has consequences for
the lack of ­sophistication in Rousset’s use of the term ‘author,’ which he mostly
uses as synonymous to ‘narrator,’ for example when he writes that Flaubert
renounces ‘the privileged perspective of the omniscient author.’67 Something
similar ­happens with Rousset’s use of the term ‘reader’ (‘lecteur’) to talk about
point of view; sometimes the reader is barred, in his words: ‘un surprenant effet
de prise de vue: les nouveaux amants sont dans le fiacre, rideaux baissés, mais
le lecteur n’y est pas admis avec eux.’68 And sometimes the reader can come
along: ‘Emma entre dans sa nouvelle maison, le lecteur l’y accompagne.’69
­Nevertheless, Rousset does not only identify (the writer) ­Flaubert with an
­internal voice or viewpoint, but also with a scriptwriter or director performing
a technical intervention to enable a change of perspective or surprising optical
effects.70
We might conclude that in the case of Rousset the connection between
­narrator and author is central, to the extent that they are, as it were, equated:
the ‘voice’ in/of the text is viewed as the author’s. This focus on the author,
which is rather untypical for a narratological method, can be seen as ­Rousset’s
heritage from phenomenology. As I have mentioned earlier, Rousset is con-
vinced that the mind of a writer finds its unique and complete expression
in the form of his novels. For Rousset, Flaubert is omnipresent in Madame
Bovary,71 ­whether it is as the figure we call the narrator, or as the person who
is making the compositional choices. Rousset approaches these choices not
­unlike a genetic critic would do. Concerning Charles Bovary’s central position
at the beginning and end of Madame Bovary, for example, he writes that it
‘était prevue dès les premiers scénarios,’ and that the only change which took
place along the way was ‘l’importance croissante prise par Homais dans les
dernières pages.’72 And when it is Charles instead of Emma who is daydream-
ing in front of the window, Rousset refers to Flaubert’s drafts to indicate that

67 Rousset, Forme et signification, 114.

68 Rousset, Forme et signification, 130.
69 Rousset, Forme et signification, 120.
70 Rousset, Forme et signification, 124.
71 Flaubert himself has written that ‘like God in His world, so the author in his book should
be nowhere and everywhere, invisible and omnipresent.’ Translation by Nabokov in
­Lectures on Literature, 97.
72 Rousset, Forme et signification, 112.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 91

this short, a­ lmost secret moment of intimacy between reader and character
originally covered several pages.73 Later, these drafts are consulted again to
show that Flaubert changed a poetic, ‘impressionistic’ description of Emma
into a less subtle one, to better suit Charles.74 By looking into the history of
Madame Bovary’s development, Rousset is able to reconstruct and analyse
Flaubert’s writing process, thus providing insight in his intentions and poeti-
cal opinions. In other words, he seems to hold that a focus on (the genesis of)
formal and structural aspects such as perspective can lead to an understanding
of the essence and core of the writer Flaubert.
Whereas Rousset identifies Flaubert with his novel, Nabokov tends to iden-
tify his role model with himself: ‘Eighty to ninety pages in one year – that is a
fellow after my heart.’75 Note that he begins his lecture with the remark that
‘we shall discuss Madame Bovary as Flaubert intended it to be discussed.’76 It
is ­significant that he uses the word ‘discuss’ and not the word ‘read’; ­Flaubert
might have had some ideas about what constitutes the importance of his
­novel and about what he would like readers to pay attention to, but there is
no evidence of him indicating the way his work should be analysed in courses
on literature. Rather, it is likely that both subjects in this sentence (‘we’ and
‘­Flaubert’) are substitutes for Nabokov himself, as in ‘I shall discuss Madame
Bovary as I intend it to be discussed.’ The fact that he shares some of his main
aesthetic ideas with Flaubert (concerning primarily the preponderance of style
and art over story and adventure) results in Nabokov’s biased interpretations
of and additions to Flaubert’s work to force his readers’/students’ reading in a
particular direction. By means of the clever strategic use of the word ‘really,’ for
example, he manipulates the understanding of his audience: ‘this is what the
chapter really is about.’77 When certain images or elements are designated as
‘symbols’ (such as the loss of the whippet78) or ‘premonitions,’ Nabokov does
not bother to argue why.
While Rousset and Nabokov both devote their attention to Flaubert’s
­choices and actions as a writer, they seem to situate the relevant textual
­elements in different places. Nabokov mainly has an eye for those passages
that reveal ­Flaubert’s line of thought as a creative artist, sometimes in the
form of ‘­disclosing information’ (granted to the reader by Flaubert) behind the

73 Rousset, Forme et signification, 113–14.

74 Rousset, Forme et signification, 115.
75 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 147.
76 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 126.
77 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 156.
78 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 139.
92 Keersmaekers

­ arrator’s back. This is an aspect that Rousset pays little or no attention to. As
n
Nabokov describes the county fair episode as being ‘instrumental’ (in bring-
ing Rodolphe and Emma together),79 it becomes clear that he does not take a
reader’s position, but thinks as an author instead. A text’s structural elements
are important for him because they take us to the aesthetic construction the
author had in mind. For Nabokov, ‘themes’ or motives are not necessarily con-
nected to the narrator’s perspective or to focalisation. Rousset’s attention, on
the other hand, is very much directed toward the consciousness of the writer
as it is present in the text.
The most interesting instances of correlations between Rousset and ­Nabokov
occur when the two approaches meet, as it were. For example, ­Rousset’s ­second
section titled ‘L’art des modulations’ is dedicated to ­Flaubert’s mastery of the
seamless modulation between alternating points of view, mainly ­between
Emma and ‘the author’ but also between Emma and other c­haracters.80
­Nabokov finds that Flaubert’s ‘highly artistic structure’ is based upon two
­narrative techniques. First, there’s ‘the counterpoint method,’ ‘the method of
parallel interlinings and interruptions of two or more conversations or trains of
thought.’81 The second one, ‘structural transition,’ is used by ­Flaubert to make
the movements from one subject to another within a chapter ‘as elegant and
smooth as possible.’82 Together, they come very close to the aspect of ­Flaubert’s
writing covered by Rousset’s second section, though it is extended to the words
and thoughts of the characters and to the events that happen to them.
The fragments Nabokov and Rousset chose to illustrate their analysis are
close to each other in the book and involve the same four characters: Emma,
Léon, Homais, and Charles. Nabokov selects his example from the second
­chapter of Part Two to illustrate Flaubert’s counterpoint method. It concerns
the arrival of Emma and Charles at the inn in Yonville, where they meet
Léon and Homais. This encounter generates the sequence of a conversation
­between all four, a long speech by Homais and the first talk between Emma
and Léon.83 Before discussing this passage, Nabokov cites an excerpt from a
letter by F­ laubert to Louise Colet, where he writes about his difficulties with
the composition of the scene, as it should be ‘rapid and yet not dry, ample
without being lumpy.’84 Nabokov also refers to another letter (commenting

79 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 155.

80 Rousset, Forme et signification, 117–18.
81 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 147.
82 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 151.
83 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 147–51.
84 Letter dated September 19, 1852. Quoted in Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 147.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 93

on the grotesque character of the conversation between Léon and Emma) in

an attempt to ­endorse his remark that ‘the Léon-Emma team is as trivial, trite
and platitudinous in their pseudoartistic emotions as the pompous and funda-
mentally ignorant Homais is in regard to science.’85 Mark that Nabokov selects
these letters not so much to present the development of the scene, (as Rousset
does when he refers to the drafts), but rather to indicate the intended effects
of ­Flaubert’s writing acts.86 Likewise, he interprets Homais’ mistake when he
switches from (degrees) ­Réaumur to Fahrenheit as Flaubert’s way to show ‘a
little chink in [Homais’] philistine armor,’87 and when Léon mentions a pianist
playing in front of a Swiss landscape for inspiration, Nabokov exclaims: ‘This is
superb!’88
While Nabokov looks at Madame Bovary through Flaubert’s eyes, which
­creates a certain distance between himself and the text, Rousset choses the
reader’s position: ‘Emma entre dans sa nouvelle maison; le lecteur l’y accom-
pagne, il sent avec elle “le froid du plâtre.”’89 He demonstrates Flaubert’s ‘art
of modulations’ with a fragment from the next chapter, when the day after,
the same characters find themselves at the square in front of Emma’s and
Charles’ new house and the focalisation shifts from Emma to Léon, from Léon
to ­Homais, from Homais to Charles, and from Charles back to Emma.90 Com-
pared to Nabokov, Rousset seems to work in the ‘opposite direction’: his analysis
does not serve to exemplify Flaubert’s desired effects and is focused instead on
pinpointing the consequences or results of its composition. The scene b­ egins
with Emma watching Léon from her window. Rousset points out how Emma’s
gaze enables Flaubert to shift from her thoughts and feelings to those of her
future lover without abruptly breaking the storyline and to tell the r­ eader a bit
more about Léon. When the circle is closed again by Charles looking at Emma,
their thoughts are juxtaposed. As Rousset illustrates, this underlines the differ-
ences between them.
Following his analysis, Rousset also cites several letters to discuss Flaubert’s
conception of ‘style,’ summarised as ‘un principe agglomérant, […] la réduc-
tion à l’homogène. […] c’est la continuité.’91 The scene on the square, he argues,
shows one of Flaubert’s attempts to realise this ideal. Unlike the letters Nabokov

85 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 149. Flaubert’s letter dates from October 9, 1852.
86 Both letters are written before or during Flaubert’s writing process of the scene, not
afterwards.
87 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 149.
88 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 150.
89 Rousset, Forme et signification, 120.
90 Rousset, Forme et signification, 120.
91 Rousset, Forme et signification, 121. The letters date from December 18, 1852, January 29
and July 2, 1853.
94 Keersmaekers

quotes from, none of the letters used by Rousset are concerned with a particu-
lar passage in Madame Bovary; rather, they throw a light on Flaubert’s tech-
nique to construct and structure Madame Bovary. Nabokov chooses letters that
actually cover the scene, its characters, and what is happening between them.
A second difference with Nabokov’s approach is that Rousset saves the letters
about style for the end of his own analysis, whereas Nabokov intertwines his
dissection of the scene with passages from the letters. In the case of Rousset
the letters serve as a conclusion to the discussion, in the case of Nabokov, they
provide the starting point.
Nabokov and Rousset also reflect on Chapter 8 of Part Two, the one on the
agricultural show. Nabokov first quotes from three letters in which F­ laubert
explains what he wants to do and why and how he intends to realise it:
‘I ­obtain dramatic movement merely through dialogue interplay and charac-
ter contrast.’92 Nabokov then sets up a thematic link with events happening
further on in the story and explains the counterpoint method once more. In
retelling the scene, scattered comments reveal to his students how Flaubert’s
mastery goes well beyond the counterpoint method. For example, Flaubert is
said to create a structural line when Homais sees Emma meeting Lheureux (an
important contributor to her future ruin), just after he talked about how badly
Lheureux has treated a man called Tellier. Now, explains Nabokov, ­Lheureux
and Emma are already thematically linked.93 As Flaubert mingles the ‘stale
“journalese”’ of the speeches with the ‘stale “romantese”’ of Emma’s and
­Rodolphe’s conversation, Nabokov says he ‘paints color on color.’94 At the end
of the scene, a toast is proposed to ‘Industry and the Fine Arts’ which according
to Nabokov ‘symbolize the hog breeders and the tender couple in a kind of far-
cical synthesis.’95 Rousset brings out the structure of this chapter and connects
it to the theme of the downward gaze, as it is linked to the contrast between
daydreams and reality.96 The bird’s eye view of the two lovers, he says, has a
double advantage: it reinforces both the narrator’s ironic distance towards the
event and the superimposed idyll. Emma’s and Rodolphe’s lodge has the same
function that Rousset ascribes to windows in other scenes: it allows Emma to
lose herself in an imaginary adventure (in this case, a play), after which she is
thrown back into reality and confinement.

92 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 155–56. The letters date from July 15, September 7 and
October 12, 1853.
93 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 156.
94 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 157.
95 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 160.
96 Rousset, Forme et signification, 124–25, 129.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 95

In both examples, we notice that Rousset’s attention is mostly directed

t­owards matters of structure only and that he conceives of the structure of
­Madame Bovary as determined by (changing) perspectives as if they represent
the author in his own work. Nabokov seems to believe that a book’s structure is
also rooted in the themes and motives born from its content or in the relation-
ships or meetings between the different characters. He also pays attention to
Flaubert’s imagery, his manipulation of language, and choice of words. Besides
the part dedicated to the ‘Equine Theme,’ the ‘notes’ which follow the lecture
also contain a section on Flaubert’s style. What is typical for Flaubert, according
to Nabokov, are his use of the word ‘and’; the ‘successive development of ­visual
details’ which is called ‘the unfolding method’; the way he renders ­feelings and
thoughts through meaningless words; the imperfect form of the past tense;
and his use of metaphors. A third part concerns his imagery.97 Compared to
­Nabokov’s lecture, Rousset’s approach might appear ‘one-dimensional.’ Of
course, this difference is primarily due to Rousset’s and Nabokov’s different
purposes and research questions. A narratological or structuralist analysis is
less likely to examine an author’s imagery or the ‘subtle points’ of a scene which
might be misinterpreted by ‘the average reader.’98 And a literature professor will
not compose lectures for his students in the same way as he writes his essays.
But the differences between Nabokov’s and Rousset’s readings also emanate
from their opinions on the relations between a text and its author. To Nabokov, a
novel is the final stage in a creative process we must try to reverse, and as a con-
sequence, it provides rather a means to gain an insight in a meta-level. As I have
mentioned earlier, Rousset considers a literary text to be an expression, a reflec-
tion of a writer’s identity. With him, the connection between the two is much
more direct, and one must stay with the text itself to grasp this identity in full.
In my last example, Nabokov’s and Rousset’s common interests but differ-
ent convictions are the most obvious. They cite the exact same words from
another letter by Flaubert to Louise Colet: ‘Je suis convaincu d’ailleurs que tout
est affaire de style, ou plutôt de tournure, d’aspect.’99 Of course, this is a famous
quote known to most critics of Flaubert, but the way it is incorporated in the
argument of Nabokov and Rousset serves as the ideal way to round off this

97 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 171–75.

98 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 149. Nabokov quotes Flaubert’s letter from October 9,
1852.
99 Letter dated January 15, 1853, quoted in Rousset, Forme et signification, 132; see also
­Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 152, translated (in all probability by Nabokov himself)
as follows: ‘Everything […] is a matter of style, or more exactly of the particular turn and
aspect one gives to things.’
96 Keersmaekers

analysis. As both explain, the letter addresses Flaubert’s concern with the lack
of action in (certain parts of) Madame Bovary. Here at last he puts his worries
aside and acknowledges that his ‘voice’ will never be dramatic or a­ ppealing and
that all he cares about is style or rather the way an author presents his story. For
Rousset, this conclusion proves and underlines how much Flaubert identifies
with his play with point of view and how the resulting creation of slowness
is distinctive for his art. Nabokov has a different tack. He copies a larger part
of the letter prior to the quote about style, and this paragraph i­ncludes the
remark that ‘images are action,’ a notable translation (and interpretation) of
the original ‘les idées sont des faits.’ For Rousset, the metaphor of the n
­ ovel as a
painting is mainly based upon a correspondence of structure, but for ­Nabokov
it also represents (a certain phase in) the workings of an author’s creative
imagination. His translation of ‘idées’ as ‘images’ must therefore have been
inspired by the context of the letter, in which Flaubert speaks of a part of his
novel as ‘un tableau continu,’ and of an inactive romance which is ­‘difficile à
peindre.’ From this point of view, it is only logical that Nabokov omits a couple
of phrases so that the quote about the importance of style serves as the conclu-
sion to Flaubert’s comparison of writing to painting:

Both [(the love) Charles and Léon (cherish for Emma)] are mediocrities
in the same environment, but they still have to be differentiated. If I suc-
ceed, it will be a marvelous bit, because it means painting color upon
color and without well-defined tones.100

Conclusion

Faced with a literary work of art, Rousset and Nabokov identify with different
agents in the process of literary communication. Whereas Nabokov studies the
novel’s interrelationships and connections mostly from the perspective of the
author (being one himself), Rousset tends to take the position of the reader as
he follows in Flaubert’s footsteps. Rousset is no writer of fiction himself, but his
phenomenological background encourages him to come as closely as possible
to one. The author in question (in this case Flaubert) is, initially, out of reach,
and unknown. The only means by which the author can be known, is the text.
Therefore, Rousset is the ultimate reader, supposing as little as possible and
rarely deviating from the path that the author has set out for him. Nabokov is a
writer at heart. Being used to control, manipulate, and build a fictional world,

100 Letter dated January 15, 1853. Quoted in Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 152.
Vladimir Nabokov and Jean Rousset on Madame Bovary 97

he considers himself able to gain insight into worlds controlled, manipulated,

and built by other authors, to stroll around in them, and to reveal them to read-
ers. If he can ever be identified with a reader, that reader is a superior one,
helping the others to immerse themselves into a writer’s creative imagination.
When reading Flaubert, Rousset’s approach remains more internal. He is
focused upon the text as it is presented to him, and regards it to be a final result.
When he talks about structure, he means the structure of the text, and style and
structure are intertwined as they can both be reduced to Flaubert’s voice and
presence in Madame Bovary. Nabokov is guided by an ‘external’ ­project and
his reading is in function of that project. For him, Madame Bovary is interest-
ing not so much as a result of a creative process, but because it makes that
process retraceable. Nabokov’s discussion of Flaubert’s style goes well b­ eyond
matters of structure and he pays a lot of attention to Flaubert’s imagery, for
instance. When Rousset refers to Flaubert’s beautiful descriptions, it is only to
examine issues of perspective. He does not offer extensive comments on the
descriptive language, whereas Nabokov for example praises Flaubert’s artistic
trick to ­present ‘crude and repulsive subjects’ in an ‘artistically modulated and
balanced’ way.101 For Nabokov, to ‘replace’ one’s mind with Flaubert’s means
to absorb every aspect his novel is built with. And as he tells his students, he is
most interested in the act of writing, in the way an author uses this aspects to
transform a rather unattractive story into literature:

Ponder most carefully the following fact: a master of Flaubert’s artistic

power manages to transform what he has conceived as a sordid world
inhabited by frauds and philistines and mediocrities and brutes and way-
ward ladies into one of the most perfect pieces of poetical fiction known,
and this he achieves by bringing all the parts into harmony, by the inner
force of style, by all such devices of form as the counterpoint of transition
from one theme to another, of foreshadowing and echoes.102

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.revues.org/index760.html.

101 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 138.

102 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 147.
98 Keersmaekers

De Vries, Gerard and Don Barton Johnson, eds., Nabokov and the Art of Painting.
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 part 2
Critic among Critics

∵
 chapter 6

Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses

Geert Lernout

Abstract

From the moment when he first read Ulysses as an undergraduate, Vladimir Nabokov
thought of Joyce as a major presence in his literary aesthetics and as one of his four
top twentieth-century authors (with Proust, Kafka and Bely). The Irish and the Russian
author had a lot in common, not just as exiles, but also as writers in a Flaubertian vein.
And within months of his arrival in the United States, Nabokov had befriended the two
pioneering Joycean critics, Harry Levin and Edmund Wilson.
Nabokov’s lectures on Joyce at Cornell were special, because he was teaching Ulysses
before Joyce’s letters had been published, and before the publication of Richard Ellmann’s
famous biography. In addition, Nabokov deliberately placed his form of literary inter-
pretation outside the New Critical, psychoanalytical and mythological approaches of
the university critics of his time, preferring literary detail over grand ideas. And that is
not a bad strategy for reading Joyce.

The central importance of James Joyce’s Ulysses for Vladimir Nabokov, at least
for the purpose of teaching his undergraduate course at Cornell University on
‘Masters of European Fiction,’ is obvious both from the sheer number of lec-
tures he devoted to the book and from the number of pages the discussion of
the novel occupies in the posthumously published lectures. Ulysses was the
final work to be discussed in the famous ‘Dirty Lit’-course and the section on
Joyce’s book in the Lectures on Literature volume takes up nearly a fourth of the
transcription of his lectures. According to a scribbled addition at the end of
the lectures, for the final exam Nabokov had set aside two and a half hours and
there were questions on only three authors. One question and thirty minutes
each for Kafka and Proust, three questions and ninety minutes for Ulysses. It
seems safe to say that Joyce was worth three Kafkas or three Prousts, despite
the fact that both of them figure (with Joyce and Andrey Bely) in the list of four
twentieth-century novelists Nabokov liked best. No wonder the manuscripts
of the Joyce lectures were thought to be important enough to be published

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_008

102 Lernout

separately in facsimile and introduced by the pioneering Joycean at Princeton

A. Walton Litz.1
Joyce was not just important in Nabokov’s teaching, which took up only
a brief but important part of his career as a writer at the time when he was
transforming himself into an American writer. Afterwards, when he had been
transformed into the infamous author of scandalous Lolita, Nabokov repeat-
edly named Ulysses as among the best works of fiction of the century and as
the most important literary work tout court.2 In addition Joyce was the only
writer in the course and in his changing list of favorites that Nabokov had actu-
ally known personally. It is clear from his comments here and elsewhere that
he respected the craftsmanship of the Irish author in his second novel much
more than that of any other modern writer, including Kafka, Proust and Bely.
Nabokov’s interest is hardly surprising. In many ways, the Russian exile must
have been the ideal reader for a book like Ulysses. Of course, he was ­neither
Irish nor Catholic, but like Paul Léon, Joyce’s friend and unpaid secretary in the
thirties, Nabokov was a member of the kind of uprooted European cultural élite
that Joyce himself had wanted to join at the moment that he decided to leave
Ireland. This was the international audience that he had been writing for since
1904 and that Valery Larbaud not only embodied but that he also defended in
his 1922 polemic about Joyce’s writing with the American critic Ernst Boyd.3
Both writers had a complex relationship with their native countries. In
­exactly the same way that Joyce had Ireland, Nabokov had a Russia that he could
not return to. Nabokov became a professional exile, as a displaced E ­ uropean
in America and, when he moved back to Europe, as a displaced American in
Europe: Jason Epstein writes that in the early seventies in a virulently anti-
American Paris, Nabokov wore a Hawaiian shirt and spoke in a loud American
accent, ‘pretending to be a boisterous American tourist,’4 but he almost never
went back to the States. The two writers shared a nostalgic yearning for places
that deep down they knew all too well existed only in their memory and pos-
sibly in their work, but not or no longer in the real world.

1 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Ulysses. A Facsimile of the Manuscript, with a foreword by

A. Walton Litz (Bloomfield Hills: Bruccoli Clark Publishers, 1980). The pages in this book are
not numbered.
2 See, e.g., Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973), 55, 57, 71.
3 See my discussion of Joyce as seeing himself not as an Irish but as an essentially European
writer in Geert Lernout, ‘European Joyce,’ in A Companion to James Joyce, ed. Richard Brown
(London: Blackwell, 2008), 93–107.
4 Jason Epstein, Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future (New York: W.W. Norton,
2001), 77.
Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 103

Most importantly, Nabokov and Joyce were writers of a certain European

type, fed on the same diet of Flaubert (Nabokov writes in the Lectures on
Literature that ‘without Flaubert there would be no Marcel Proust in France,
no James Joyce in Ireland, Chekhov in Russia would not have been quite
­Chekhov’5) and with roughly the same literary tastes, both in the literary tradi-
tion and in the work of their contemporaries. Very much against the climate in
which they lived, Nabokov and Joyce even shared a deep distaste for Sigmund
Freud and psychoanalysis.
From the evidence available to us, in addition to these lecture notes and spo-
radic comments, mostly essays and interviews, Nabokov was an appreciative
but not entirely uncritical reader of Ulysses. We know that, despite later dis-
claimers, he may have read the book early, while still a student at Cambridge,
within months of the novel’s publication in Paris: one of his schoolmates had
smuggled the book across the channel.6 On a number of occasions in the late
thirties, through his friend Alex Ponizovky, Paul Léon’s brother-in-law, Nabokov
met the Irish writer in Paris. When in 1940 Nabokov and his family reached
the safe American shores, the new exile-twice-over was destined to become
a Joycean. Within months of his arrival in New York he had already met and
­befriended the two early apostles of Joyce in America: Edmund Wilson and
Harry Levin. It is their role in introducing modernism in the United States
that created the kind of atmosphere after the war in which university courses
on modern literature could be given, much like Nabokov’s ‘Dirty Lit’-course
in ­Cornell.7 Yet it should also be clear that Nabokov was by no means a rep-
resentative of what was at this time becoming known as the New Criticism.
He ­distanced himself at every occasion from all forms of academic literary
criticism: maybe he was too much of a scientist and a novelist to take liter-
ary criticism seriously as a scientific endeavor in the way that some literature
professors were beginning to do. And with hindsight he claimed that ‘serious’
students of literature may well have balked at the way that he read literature:

Classes varied from term to term during my seventeen years of teach-

ing. I do remember that my approach and principles irritated or puzzled
such students of literature (and their professors) as were accustomed to

5 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 147.
6 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1990), 194.
7 See the discussion of the American reception of Joyce in Jeffrey Segall, Joyce in America:
­Cultural Politics and the Trials of Ulysses (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
104 Lernout

‘serious’ courses replete with ‘trends,’ and ‘schools,’ and ‘myths,’ and ‘sym-
bols,’ and ‘social comment,’ and something unspeakably spooky called
‘climate of thought.’ Actually, those ‘serious’ courses were quite easy ones,
with the student required to know not the books but about the books. In
my classes, readers had to discuss specific details, not general ideas.8

Nabokov clearly distinguishes his way of teaching (and examining) litera-

ture classes from that of his university colleagues and the words within scare
quotes demonstrate that the ‘other’ approach is one that looked very much
like a cross section of the different schools of which New Criticism was only
one. While trends and schools are general enough to occur in any discussion
of literature that deals with more than just a single work or a single author,
in the forties and fifties, myth and symbol were everywhere in the critical and
historical studies on literature, most of the time performing as a duo (as in
‘myth and symbol’). On the one hand there were mythological critics such as
the Jungian Joseph Campbell who in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)
found the same archetypes in Finnegans Wake as in the literature of the Vedas
or of classical Greece.9 In 1944 Campbell had published, together with Henry
Morton ­Robinson, the Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, an early Joyce book
that Nabokov may well have used as a handy introduction to the plot of that
most difficult book, which he later claimed to have read (but not without help
from Campbell and Robinson, as we will see).10 The other mythological critic
associated with archetypical or mythological criticism, another early reader of
Joyce, was Northrop Frye.
Where mythological critics found in myths and symbols a common lan-
guage to give a structure to all the different kinds of literature – in the case of
Frye even in the form of a veritable taxonomy of genres – Nabokov’s comments
seem also to attack the more historical or contextual approaches for which
the terms ‘social comment’ and ‘climate of thought’ are indicative. The first
seems to value some kind of social commitment (which had been popular in
the United States between the world wars), the second refers to a more general
history of ideas approach. What they have in common is that they both ignore
or dismiss the importance of the work of art created by an individual artist as
opposed to the culture in which it is produced. When asked to describe his
academic work in literature in the early sixties, Nabokov in a typically carefully

8 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 128.

9 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: Pantheon Books, 1949).
10 Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1944).
Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 105

worded and equally typical alliterative statement claimed that he demanded

from his students:

the passion of science and the patience of poetry. As an artist and scholar
I prefer the specific detail to the generalization, images to ideas, obscure
facts to clear symbols, and the discovered wild fruit to the synthetic jam.11

With this program in mind we, as teachers of literature and of Ulysses in par-
ticular, can now evaluate Nabokov’s lectures notes and the only conclusion
must be that given the circumstances in which he had to work, Nabokov was
doing an excellent job. At the time that he was giving these lectures, there was
no Joyce industry. The lectures, like all lecture notes not a finished product but
a work in progress, show a few traces of secondary literature, quite literally in
the facsimile volume which opens with an unnumbered page titled ‘Used in
1954’ (so rather late in the life-cycle of the lectures) and three references to
books: Bacon’s plan of Dublin, Richard M. Kain’s Fabulous Voyager and Patricia
Hutchins’s James Joyce’s Dublin, with in the three cases the books’ call num-
bers in the Cornell Library. We can also assume that in addition to these three
books, Nabokov must have been aware of at least the seminal Axel’s Castle
(1931) by Edmund Wilson and Harry Levin’s James Joyce: An Introduction (1941),
which are mentioned in passing. At the time, Stuart Gilbert’s first collection of
Joyce letters and Richard Ellmann’s biography had not been published yet, so
in a way both Nabokov and his students belonged to a more innocent time, to
a generation of readers who could still enjoy the most influential novel of the
twentieth century without the library of commentaries that began to appear
in the years immediately following Ellmann’s biography in 1958, exactly at the
moment that Nabokov stopped giving his lectures.
Of one thing we can be certain: Nabokov would not have liked most of the
secondary literature that followed Ellmann. In an interview from 1965, he
speaks of Ulysses as ‘a divine work of art’ that will ‘live on despite the academic
nonentities who turn it into a collection of symbols or Greek myths’12 and we
may well wonder what he would have made of the later s­ tructuralist, ­feminist,
genetic or postcolonial approaches. In the pre-Ellmannian times there were
already some general books of criticism and one assumes that ­Cornell’s
­excellent libraries must have had all of them, including Stuart Gilbert’s book
on Ulysses most prominently (which Kain refers to in his book and which
Nabokov may have read in the thirties), and of course the Gorman biography

11 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 7.

12 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 55.
106 Lernout

(edited and censured by Joyce himself, and not mentioned in the lectures or
the notes).
Hutchins’s James Joyce’s Dublin is not even a book of criticism, but a chatty
report of a pilgrimage to the Joycean holy places, accompanied by a collection
of pictures of important scenes in Joyce’s work. Despite the fact that most of
them were taken almost half a century after the supposed action in the novel,
these pictures do attempt to capture the feel of Joycean Dublin. Elegantly writ-
ten, the book not only takes us chronologically through Joyce’s life, but gives
us a complete panorama of the city from Sandycove in the south of Dublin bay
to Howth in the north. The final words of what Nabokov here calls ‘a charming
book’13 may have had a special significance for the Russian exile:

If that struggle, personal and country-wide, has gone, giving place to a

settling down process before new elements change the outlines again,
much remains the same in that city of friendship and venom, criticism
and good nature. Yet something has been added, a greater conscious-
ness, if not a conscience perhaps, since Joyce talked of the three things
St. Thomas Aquinas declared were needed for beauty, ‘wholeness, har-
mony, and radiance,’ and then in exile achieved them.14

Nabokov also makes ample use of Richard M. Kain’s Fabulous Voyager: James
Joyce’s Ulysses, arguably the first product of American university criticism.15
Bernard Benstock, another American Joyce pioneer, shows in a long essay
about this book that Kain himself only found two studies on Joyce ‘particularly
useful’ for his own work and these are precisely the works by Nabokov’s early
American acquaintances, Edmund Wilson and Harry Levin.16 Benstock also
points out that Kain was one of the first critics to show that Bloom is in many
ways superior to his creator’s mouthpiece Stephen: ‘Bloom almost gets the point
– indeed, comes closer than Stephen to seeing the point – and again proves
that common sense may be a more reliable guide than sterile intellectuality.’17
This may be where Kain is closest to Nabokov’s sense of the novel.

13 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 302.

14 Patricia Hutchins, Joyce’s Dublin (London: Gray Wall Press, 1950), 101.
15 Richard M. Kain, Fabulous Voyager: James Joyce’s Ulysses (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1947).
16 Bernard Benstock, ‘The Fabulous Voyaging of Richard M. Kain,’ in: Re-Viewing Classics
of Joyce Criticism, ed. Janet E. Dunleavy (Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1991), 8.
17 Kain quoted in Benstock, ‘Fabulous Voyaging,’ 14.
Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 107

On the first page of the lecture notes Nabokov calls Kain’s book ‘an other-
wise rather poor though well-meaning work.’18 At the end of the facsimile edi-
tion there are reproductions of four typewritten pages (presumably typed by
Véra), which must have been placed at the end of the Ulysses folder: the only
editorial comment this book contains reads: ‘Vladimir Nabokov revised these
lectures during the years he delivered them to his classes. The ordering of the
pages here is based on the final plan of the lectures as indicated by the arrange-
ment of the manuscript in Nabokov’s folder.’ On the last two pages we find
short aperçus divided by a series of horizontal dashes. The final note on the
penultimate page praises Kain for printing in his book a schedule of ‘times of
day and weather conditions – the skeleton of the day’ and a presentation of
the horse racing theme. But after this praise for the interest in empirical facts,
the final page of typewritten notes concentrates on two points ‘on which Kain
seems to have gone wrong.’
The first of these is that Kain explicitly wanted to extend the relevance of the
novel beyond its purely local Dublin references in order to claim that ­Ireland
demonstrates ‘the diseases of modern social life.’ But in this way Kain fails to
see ‘that to limit time to the 19th century is as provincial and shortsighted as
to limit space to Ireland.’ It is not completely clear what exactly Kain is being
accused of, but Nabokov seems to claim that Joyce’s masterwork transcends
both time and place.
The second point is that Kain is mistaken in seeing a link between Bloom’s
loneliness and that of Stephen, which has nothing to do, Nabokov believes,
with his revolt against the common-place or ‘in consequence of any social con-
ditions but because he is created by the author as a budding genius, and genius,
of necessity, is lonesome.’ This is the core of Nabokov’s aesthetics which is, like
his politics, essentially individualist: literature does not teach us general truths
about the world, about history or about people.
The same concerns inform Nabokov’s general lecture on ‘Good Readers and
Good Writers’ that opens the series of lectures and that starts with an expres-
sion of Nabokov’s (and Flaubert’s) love for detail which can be read as pro-
grammatic for all of these lectures:

In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong
with the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny tri-
fles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a ready-
made generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from
the book before one has started to understand it. […] We should always

18 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 285.

108 Lernout

remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world,
so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely
as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious
connection with the worlds we already know.19

But this general approach of the explorer’s view of literature should be quali-
fied with a comment Nabokov makes at the beginning of the lecture on Kafka’s
‘The Metamorphosis.’

Beauty plus pity – that is the closest we can get to a definition of art.
Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must
die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies
with the individual.20

There is always a moral dimension present, but the details come first. Nabokov’s
hermeneutics is primarily based on an interest in individual details, not on
generalizations that direct and thus limit our reading and enjoyment. He
would not have advised the use of CliffsNotes or other guides to Ulysses that we
now take for granted. And as I have already said, he was lucky to read and teach
Joyce at a time when none of these guides existed.
In the era before Ellmann’s biography, in the years be (Before Ellmann),
readers of Ulysses could still explore the new continent of the book and dis-
cover places that no-one had seen yet. This has become much rarer in a field
of criticism that has grown to a size that makes it nearly impossible to keep up
with. When today somebody claims to have found something new in Ulysses,
it usually means that they have failed to consult all of the necessary secondary
literature. As a result there is a great delight in really being the first to see some-
thing in this novel, a feeling that can only be compared to something Nabokov
wrote about scientific discovery:

To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to
trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse your-
self in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence
reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena – all
this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.21

19 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 1.

20 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 251.
21 Letter to his sister Elena Sikorski (1945), in Vladimir Nabokov, Selected Letters 1940–1977,
ed. Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli (San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt,
1989), 59.
Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 109

These delights of pure discovery, combined with the apparent certainty of

being the first person to see it, can be observed in Nabokov’s readers, as when
Brian Boyd finds an inconsistency in Lolita and writes that as far as he knows
‘this discrepancy has never before been remarked on in print’22 or even more
spectacularly, when Véra Nabokov claims after her husband’s death that the
main theme of his work had been missed by all the critics.23
One of the things Nabokov claims he has discovered in Ulysses is an example
of a literary technique that as a novelist he was fond of using in his own fiction.
He writes that Joyce has made sure that there are lots of connections between
Stephen and Bloom, long before the two characters first meet in the novel.
And this pattern, he claims, is tighter ‘than is generally thought’24 while in the
facsimile edition he is a bit more cautious: ‘I do not know if these parallels of
Bloom’s and Stephen’s themes have ever been noted.’25 In the latter publica-
tion we then find two columns underneath the names Stephen and Bloom and
he lists eight items, followed by ‘etc. etc.’ Some of these have become common-
places in Joyce criticism, but there are very specific verbal echoes that only the
most attentive unaided readers of Joyce would notice, as with the ‘fleshpots
of Egypt,’ a biblical allusion that occurs first in Stephen’s interior monologue
in his memories of Paris and is then followed by a similarly fleeting reference
in Bloom’s interior monologue. This is not just a verbal repetition: both occur-
rences are quite complex.

My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want
puce gloves. You were a student, weren’t you? Of what in the other devil’s
name? Paysayenn. P.C.N, you know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles.
Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed
by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in
­Paris, boul’ Mich’, I used to.26

The first three chapters describe Stephen’s morning, while in the next three we
follow Leopold Bloom getting up and going about his business. At the end of
Bloom’s second chapter we find a similar sequence of idle thoughts:

22 Brian Boyd, ‘“Even Homais Nods.” Nabokov’s Fallibility: or, How to Revise Lolita,’ in
V
­ ladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A Casebook, ed. Ellen Pifer (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003), 65.
23 Quoted in Neil Cornwell, Vladimir Nabokov (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1999), 12.
24 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 326.
25 Nabokov, Lectures on Ulysses.
26 James Joyce, Ulysses: Student’s Edition, ed. Hans Walter Gabler (London: Bodley Head,
1986), 3: 174–79.
110 Lernout

Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap
in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it lately.
Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large tender turkey.
Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming embezzling to gam-
ble then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They never come
back. Fleshpots of Egypt.27

The biblical reference in both cases is straightforward: the book of Exodus28

when in their flight through the desert the Israelites complain to their leaders
Moses and Aaron that they had been better off in Egypt, where at least they
were well fed. The phrase has become proverbial for luxury and it is listed as
such in David L. Jeffrey’s Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature.29
In the first instance in Ulysses the reference is ironical: Stephen remembers
eating the cheapest fare in Paris and as an exile he may well have wondered at
the time about the relative luxuries that he had left behind in Dublin, but it is
more likely that he is comparing the present dish with the supposed luxuries
of Paris (when viewed from Ireland) and it is interesting to see that the variant
‘the fleshpots of Paris’ was in use when Joyce was writing this chapter. Bloom’s
use of the phrase is equally complex and ironical, because Jack Fleming left
Ireland for America and it is not clear whether the land he left behind stands
for Egypt, especially when we know that he embezzled money in order to run
a hotel in the United States (just as the biblical Hebrews took spoils of gold
and silver with them from Egypt). This single repeated phrase creates a link
between the characters that goes beyond a simple verbal echo: it also involves
the complex relationship they have with the country they happen to live in.
At the same time we know that Nabokov had recognized a lot more of these
synchronisms in Ulysses: he refers to them elsewhere in the lectures and of
course they are among Joyce’s most important tools in creating a sense of
coherence in his big sprawling book. Nabokov knows that the cloud seen by
Bloom in Chapter 4 was also blocking the sun for Stephen in the first chapter.
Another example of an original insight by Nabokov that is now common
place enough to feature in the CliffsNotes to Ulysses, is the dream that S­ tephen

27 Joyce, Ulysses, 5: 543–48.

28 ‘And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the
LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to
the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with
hunger.’ (Exodus 16:3).
29 David L. Jeffrey, Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids, Wm.:
B. Eerdmans, 1992), xii.
Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 111

and Bloom have had the night before and that in the usual confused and
distorted fashion prefigures their meeting later in the day. This seems to be
the same dream described from two perspectives, a psychologically not very
­realistic phenomenon that nevertheless fascinated Nabokov.30 He found a
­similar shared dream in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, made it one of his favorite
exam questions and moreover used the device in his own novel Pnin ­(written
in the period in which Nabokov was teaching these courses). In that novel
­Chapter 4 begins with a dream of Victor (the son of Pnin’s ex-wife) which is
­mirrored at the end of the chapter by one of Pnin’s own dreams. In an aside
­during an interview published in Strong Opinions, Nabokov even claimed
that the two characters ‘dream of a passage from my drafts of Pale Fire, – the
­revolution in Zembla and the escape of the king – that is telepathy for you,’31
apparently forgetting, as the indefatigable Brian Boyd points out, that the
drafts for Pale Fire did not yet exist when he was writing the chapter of the
earlier novel:32 it seems much more likely that the first ideas for that novel
developed out of the dream image.
One of the more astonishing feats of Nabokov, characteristic of the method
of reading that he demonstrates elsewhere in these lectures, is the careful
­documentation of Dublin, its main streets and its alleys, in order to demon-
strate what Joyce is trying to do in some of the more complicated chapters of
the book. Again, this is done at a time when there were no guides or lists of
annotations to help the novice reader, when the only help available seems to
have been a copy of Bacon’s Map of Dublin, an older city map that must have
shown the older street names (some of them had been changed after the foun-
dation of the Free State) and the photographs in Hutchins’s book: the drawing
of 7 Eccles Street on the bottom of page 305 is clearly based on the picture of
the house on page 95 of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
The use of Bacon’s map is evident in his discussion of the ‘Wandering Rocks’
chapters for example, which is the seventh chapter of Part ii. Nabokov uses
Joyce’s division, while most critics today follow Hans Walter Gabler in his 1984
edition and number the eighteen chapters of the book consecutively ­(Nabokov
and his students read the book in the old Modern Library Edition of 1934 before
its resetting in 1961). Chapter 10 has nineteen different sections (one more
than the total number of chapters). Stephen and Bloom each have a section
of their own, where they behave in much the same way as they have in their
respective sections of the first half of the book, but most interesting is the fact

30 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 326.

31 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 84.
32 Boyd, ‘“Even Homais Nods,”’ 65.
112 Lernout

that starting with the first section in this chapter, Joyce gives central stage to
other inhabitants of what in a previous chapter had been called the ‘Hibernian
metropolis.’ The result of this way of presenting the material is that the author
demonstrates that each of the people inhabiting the city of Dublin on 16 June
1904 might have been the hero of the book. But there is more: as becomes clear
at the end of the chapter, when we follow the viceroy making his way through
the city center from his home in Phoenix Park in the North-West to a bazaar
which he is supposed to open in a South-Eastern suburb of Dublin, he is seen
and greeted by quite a few of the people we have already met. We notice that
most of them are no longer in the location where we last saw them and then
realize that with the exception of the first and the last, each of these sections
takes place in a roughly chronological order, with Father Conmee in the first
and the viceroy in the last section ranging most widely in the landscape and
meeting or seeing most of the other people mentioned in the chapter.
But that is not all: some of the material clearly does not fit in this neat tem-
poral and spatial pattern. In each of the sections there are parts, sometimes no
more than a sentence, that do not belong in their respective section. These are
intrusions from other sections and they signal a kind of simultaneity which in
his lectures Nabokov calls ‘synchronizations’: they happen at the same time,
but invisible to the people involved in that particular section or, in the lec-
turer’s words, ‘while this happens here, that happens there.’ It is clear from
the pages devoted to this chapter that Nabokov is reading in exactly the way
that scheming writers like he and Joyce might expect of their readers, all the
time admiring Joyce’s technical expertise, and maybe the word ‘admiration’ is
not strong enough. When he adds up the evidence, he concludes in his own
words ‘with a tinge of artistic pleasure’ that Sections 2, 3 and 9 occur at the
same time.33
Only rarely is Nabokov wrong on these factual details and it is only when
we reluctantly awaken our inner Brian Boyd that we are able to point to these
little blemishes in an almost impeccable reading record. Nabokov gets the odd
address wrong, but most of the time he is remarkably skilful in collecting clues
from all over the book to document Molly and Leopold Bloom’s relationship,
a particularly tricky business, since Luca Crispi has recently shown that the
textual evidence for the early years of that relationship was added fairly late
in the genesis of the book and is not even consistent.34 In addition, the person

33 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 304.

34 See Luca Crispi, Joyce’s Creative Process and the Construction of Characters in ‘Ulysses’:
­Becoming the Blooms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 113

Nabokov calls a grocer35 is in reality clearly a publican and there is one instance
in the typed pages at the end of the facsimiles where he briefly refers to the
examples of the poetic style which are innumerable in the case of Stephen,
but then he adds: ‘here is one about Bloom: p. 78: “Going under the bridge …
sank.”’ Here too Homer is nodding: in reality this especially poetic sequence
does not have the word ‘bridge’ at all: ‘Going under the railway arch he
took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the
road. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter then all
sank.’36
But as Stephen Dedalus knew very well, men of genius do not make m ­ istakes
and their errors are portals of discovery. What we learn from this change is that
while Nabokov’s mistake indirectly proves that he was right in his ­argument
against the supposed psychological realism inherent in the i­ nterior monologue.
As he stressed both in the lectures and elsewhere, humans do not think in
­language: the lecturer’s brain replaced the ‘railway arch’ for one of its s­ ynonyms
because what he remembered was the meaning and not the verbal form.
Sometimes Nabokov succumbs to the temptation of the supposed man of
genius and then he does not give his students all the information they might
need if they wanted to venture further into Ulyssean lands, instead of ­simply
walking in the footsteps of their guide in joycibus. When discussing the gipsy
song referred to by Stephen in the ‘Proteus’ chapter, Nabokov mentions that
he looked up the words in the ‘same special dictionary where Stephen and
Joyce found the words’37 and then neglects to say what dictionary that would
be. Mere mortal men know that this must be Grose’s Classical ­Dictionary
of the Vulgar Tongue that was published in 1811. Presumably Nabokov
wanted his students to do some part of the work themselves, although at the
same time his exam questions were concerned only with matters of facts,
times and places. But it remains ironic when we see him open his series of
Ulysses lectures making fun of those professors of literature who in ‘order to
astound their students’ ‘secretly wing their way’ to Thom’s Dublin Directory
which contains the information Joyce himself used in writing the novel in the
first place.38 But at the same time he neglects to mention that this university
lecturer who is making fun of his colleagues has found this particular bit of
information in Kain’s book, which he mentions and quotes dismissively only
one paragraph later.

35 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 304.

36 Joyce, Ulysses, 5: 300–02.
37 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 300.
38 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 285.
114 Lernout

Although Nabokov is making sure that his students know where and when
everything is in Bloomland, down to the exact layout of the Eccles Street
house where the Blooms live, he also understands what I take to be one of
the basic psychological points about Ulysses and he did so long before a lot
of professional Joyce readers: Stephen Dedalus is not the hero of this book.
Nabokov punctures his young students’ possible identification with the hero
of A ­Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by stressing the young man’s more
disagreeable characteristics: his refusal to help his family when they need it,
his snobbery and his casual antisemitism.
Lecturers on good books, especially if they have to give formal lectures in
the old-fashioned, pre-Powerpoint meaning of that word, have full control
over what they say and this is what the novelist Nabokov must have loved
about the genre: afterwards he kept stressing that he was not lecturing but
reading. Like a Nabokovian novelist, he was in full control of this little world
and it is no surprise to learn that he boasted that he did not say a word in
class that had not been scripted beforehand. One sometimes wonders why he
needed the students there in the first place. I am old enough to have been the
victim of this kind of lecture, though not old enough to have actually given one.
But I remember lecturers, both in Antwerp and in Dublin, rehearsing materi-
als that they had delivered to other classrooms for decades and that they had
honed to fit perfectly the 50 minute slot, where they would reach the conclud-
ing sentence, gather their papers, put them in the briefcase, close it and at
that particular point the bell would ring. These lecturers must have had the
time slot hardwired in their brains. In those days, especially if you were teach-
ing literature, you could get away with quoting large chunks of the text you
were commenting on. One of my teachers in Dublin would do little else: read
a poem from Yeats, pause dramatically to gaze towards the distant Wicklow
hills and then say breathlessly: ‘Quite powerful stuff, don’t you think so?,’
before moving on to a reading of the next poem. I have been tempted some-
times to do the same thing, but, to be honest, have always been too much of a
coward.
Nowadays we put our quotes on Powerpoint or on handouts, but we do not
read them aloud anymore. In any case: Nabokov owes the Estate of James Joyce
quite a bit of royalties for all the Ulysses quotes in his published lectures: at
times roughly half of the text of these lectures seems to have consisted of quo-
tations. Like my old professor (by now haunting the happy hunting grounds),
Nabokov interrupts his quotes to signal agreement or admiration. In fact, he
paraphrases the action of two young people coming out of a gap in a hedge
encountered by the Very reverend John Conmee when the young man raises
his cap to the priest. Nabokov quotes ‘the young woman abruptly bent and
Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 115

with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging twig’ and then adds
between parentheses ‘marvelous writer.’39
This is how Nabokov introduces a scene in the middle of the fourth chapter
of the book: ‘You will enjoy the wonderfully artistic pages, one of the great
passages in all literature, when Bloom brings Molly her breakfast. How beauti-
fully the man writes!’40 Then follow two full pages from the chapter, which I
will not quote in my turn. It is no surprise that Nabokov especially likes the
lists and catalogues in Ulysses, as in what he describes as the ‘wonderful cata-
logue’ of Bloom’s books (as one of the foremost lovers of literary lists, Nabokov
should have been included in Umberto Eco’s study of the genre Vertigine della
lista). And just occasionally he even deigns to tell his students why something
is beautiful (which can be quite as difficult and frustrating as explaining why
something is funny).
On occasion, Nabokov can also be just a tad too neat in his interpretations:
few Joyceans now believe that the famous and mysterious man in the Mac­
intosh is James Joyce himself. This is a novelist’s mistake and in a way it has
to do with lists: at the end of his discussion of the final section of the ninth
chapter, Nabokov gives us a list of all the people who see (or are seen by) the
viceroy and his cavalcade on their way through the city: he mentions them in
sequence and ends the long list (and the lesson, I am sure) with ‘and the man
in the brown macintosh, James Joyce, master of synchronization.’ And then,
after only a single beat, we imagine the ringing of the school bell.41
No Joyceans nowadays would find it useful to claim that the ‘Circe’ chapter
is in itself an hallucination on the author’s part, not one that can be ascribed to
either Stephen or Bloom. But even these mistakes may tell Nabokovians some-
thing about the way Nabokov’s own books can or should be read.
Note that Nabokov reads and admires literary works as a writer, but at the
same time he can also dislike like a writer (although he would never pen such
a deeply awkward phrase like ‘dislike like a writer’). In the briefest section
Nabokov gives the bare facts about ‘Aeolus,’ the newspaper chapter, needlessly
explaining Lenehan’s supremely lame joke about the opera and the railway

39 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 331.

40 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 306.
41 I quote from the facsimile edition of the raw notes; in Fredson Bowers’ edition the discus-
sion of the man in the macintosh becomes a longer digression, a mini-essay involving all
the appearances of this elusive character, but here too the clue comes at the end of the
section: ‘The Man in the Brown Macintosh who passes through the dream of the book
is no other than the author himself. Bloom glimpses his maker!’ Nabokov, Lectures on
L­ iterature, 320.
116 Lernout

line and then ending with this statement: ‘The chapter seems to me to be
poorly balanced, and Stephen’s contribution to it is not especially witty. You
may peruse it with a skimming eye.’42 I don’t fully agree with him here, but he
does have a point. This is one of the chapters in Ulysses that later in the lectures
Nabokov condemns as ‘one of those things that is more amusing for a writer to
write than for a reader to read.’43 It takes a writer to know what a writer likes to
write. In general, Nabokov seems to reject Joyce when the Irish writer is show-
ing off. This is Joyce’s Finnegans Wakey side, a book Nabokov considered one
of the greatest failures in literature. About the ‘Oxen of the Sun’ chapter which
contains a series of parodies of English prose styles, he quotes the bare descrip-
tion from Richard M. Kain’s book on Joyce and then dryly adds ‘and it is not a
success.’44
As we have already shown, these lecture notes may also be important for
scholars of Nabokov’s creative work, because they do tell us something about
Nabokov’s own literary tastes and about the influences on his writing. Both in
his letters and in interviews and essays, Nabokov did not make a secret of his
literary likes and dislikes (against Thomas Mann, Dostoyevsky and Finnegans
Wake, and in favor of Proust, Joyce and Flaubert), but it is interesting to see that
while he may have been extremely dismissive of some writers (as in his cor-
respondence with Edmund Wilson, for instance), we also know that his appre-
ciation of Joyce grew over the years, which does not mean that it ever grew into
the kind of adoration of some of his contemporaries among American writers
(Scott Fitzgerald told Joyce that he would jump out of the window to demon-
strate his regard for the older writer’s work).
From the perspective of Nabokov’s literary output, it is interesting that this
lecturer was also the author of Lolita, writing his unpublishable book at the
time when he was giving these lectures. The connection with Joyce is pre-
served in the novel’s ‘foreword’ when John Ray, Jr. Ph.D. explains that Lolita’s
‘aphrodisiac’ scenes needed to be retained, because they are ‘the most strictly
functional ones in the development of a tragic tale tending unswervingly to
nothing less than a moral apotheosis.’45 In a parenthesis the term ‘aphrodisiac’
is explained in these words: ‘see in this respect the monumental decision ren-
dered December 6, 1933, by Hon. John M. Woolsey in regard to another, consid-
erably more outspoken, book.’46 That book is, needless to say, Ulysses, and the

42 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 320.

43 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 326.
44 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 349.
45 Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (New York: Putnam’s, 1955), 6–7.
46 Nabokov, Lolita, 6.
Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 117

decision was so momentous that in the United States the text of it has been
printed as a sort of introduction to the novel, as was certainly the case in the
edition used by the students in Cornell.
It is amazing in this light that this same Nabokov has a rather dim view of
the hero of Ulysses. He told his students in the fifties, a very different time than
our own, that Joyce failed in this character because Bloom was meant to be ‘a
rather ordinary citizen,’ while his sexual interests make that he is ‘on the verge
of insanity, at least a good clinical example of extreme sexual preoccupation
and perversity with all kinds of curious complications.’47 Admittedly this was
written before 1963, the year when sexual intercourse began, at least for Philip
Larkin in his famous poem (‘Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban / And
the Beatles’ first lp’). It is strange to find Nabokov so bashful in matters sexual:
this is the author of Lolita, a book that could not be published in the United
States and that in England caused a scandal almost equal to that of the Lady
Chatterley ban.
Joyce certainly seems to have been decades ahead in his acceptance of dif-
ferent kinds of sexuality, which all seem to fall within the category of what we
enlightened postmodernists consider to be consensual sex between adults. And
in a Nabokovian vein, I don’t think we should attempt to find a ­psychoanalytical
explanation for Nabokov’s apparent prudery; to quote the master at his most
masterfully dismissive: ‘The psychoanalytical ­interpretation, I of course, dis-
miss completely and absolutely, since I do not belong to the Freudian denomi-
nation with its borrowed myths, shabby umbrellas, and dark backstairs.’48
These lecture notes are also important for another reason. As pointed out
by most of the judicious early readers of Joyce (reading him before the Joyce
industry developed), new students and fresh readers of Ulysses should stay
away from the small library of guides and dictionaries and annotations. They
are supposed to make a first reading easier but instead they make it impossible
or at least difficult for the novice to find the little gems that Nabokov consid-
ered the delight of literature. In this way the joy of reading Joyce for the first
time has almost disappeared: the shock of the new, of the discontinuous and
the difficult, the puzzling ellipses, changes of style and register, the parodies
and intertextual echoes: all these were not supposed to be explained and com-
mented on in footnotes or by means of hyperlinks. Ulysses should be read first
like any other book, from cover to cover.
When I teach the book I tell my students that if there are problems with
a section or a sentence or even a word, they should first try to make sense of

47 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 287.

48 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 350.
118 Lernout

it on their own, by rereading the context, by keeping track of time and space
(nowadays they can use Google Maps so as not to get lost in Dublin) and then
by looking up strange or foreign words and expressions, not in James Joyce for
Dummies or other secondary books, but in real or digital dictionaries. Students
should also be told not to bother too much with Homer and the Homeric paral-
lels, which are much less important than they are made out to be, another solid
piece of advice that Nabokov gave to his students, without mentioning at the
time that it came from the master himself. In Strong Opinions, he claims that
Joyce himself regretted the emphasis on the Homeric references49 and even
his collaboration on Stuart Gilbert’s Ulysses book, one of the earliest extended
studies on the novel in which the references to Homer had been explained in
great detail. When Joyce dismissed the use of mythology in modern literature,
Nabokov reminded him of Ulysses: ‘A whim,’ was Joyce’s comment. ‘But you
collaborated with Gilbert,’ Nabokov persisted. ‘A terrible mistake,’ said Joyce,
‘an advertisement for the book. I regret it very much.’50
Whether we should trust writers when they talk about their own work, had
already been doubted by the New Critics who were at their most active at
the time that Nabokov was teaching. In any case careful readers of ­Nabokov’s
books know better than to trust a narrator or editor or author at his word.
But when Herbert Gold asked Nabokov what he had learned from Joyce, the
writer answered point-blank: ‘Nothing.’ When pressed by Gold, he explained
that he only read and enjoyed Ulysses in 1937, ‘when I was already well formed
as a writer and reluctant to learn or unlearn anything.’ When his friend Peter
­Mrosovski in Cambridge read to him from a copy of the novel smuggled from
Paris, he chose ‘one or two spicy passages from Molly’s monologue, which entre
nous soit dit, is the weakest chapter in the book.’51
This did not stop Nabokov from making Joyce one of the reference points for
most of the books he wrote in English. As Alfred Appel, Jr. demonstrated in The
Annotated Lolita, there are more references to Joyce in that novel than the brief
mention of Judge Woolsey’s decision ‘in regard to another, considerably more
outspoken, book’ in the preface. There is the parody of the interior mono-
logue at a moment of great sexual tension where Humbert Humbert’s use of
English disintegrates and when he describes what is going in a Latin appropri-
ate to nineteenth century pseudoscientific pornography, but the language of
Horace and Catullus itself quickly becomes infected in a most Wakean fashion

49 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 90.

50 Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 616.
51 Herbert Gold, ‘Interview with Vladimir Nabokov,’ in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A ­Casebook,
ed. Ellen Pifer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 203.
Nabokov on Joyce and Ulysses 119

by French, Italian, German. We are also given a version of the limerick about a
‘Right Royal Old Nigger’ from Ulysses. Equally Ulyssean is the strange remark
in French, which again appears out of nowhere: ‘J’ai toujours admiré l’œuvre
ormonde du sublime Dublinois.’52 There is a further reference to Joyce by name
when Humbert dismisses the play he watches with Lolita in which seven girls
dressed in veils represent the rainbow as ‘lifted from a passage in James Joyce.’53
Alfred Apple, Jr. correctly writes that this refers to a scene in ii,2 of Finnegans
Wake. The Joyce references in Pnin or Ada or the other mature English works
tend to be erudite but altogether dismissive. Even without recourse to Harold
Bloom’s anxiety of influence, it is as if the novelist Nabokov had to get Joyce
out of his system by out-joyceing him in the older writer’s own chosen fields of
literary expertise.
On the literary battlefield Vladimir Nabokov competed with those writers
he considered the best: one of these was certainly James Joyce. In all of his nov-
els in English there are playful and sometimes prickly parodies and references
to the works of his great literary peer. But even after more than a half century,
the lectures on Ulysses can still function as excellent introductions. In these
lectures on Joyce, Nabokov demonstrates that Ulysses as a novel is eminently
readable. And that, you have to admit, is good to know.

Literature Cited

Benstock, Bernard. ‘The Fabulous Voyaging of Richard M. Kain.’ In Re-Viewing Classics

of Joyce Criticism, edited by Janet E. Dunleavy, 8–22. Champaign-Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1991.
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990.
Boyd, Brian. ‘“Even Homais Nods.” Nabokov’s Fallibility: or, How to Revise Lolita.’ In
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: A Casebook, edited by Ellen Pifer, 57–82. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Pantheon Books, 1949.
Campbell, Joseph, and Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake.
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1944.
Cornwell, Neil. Vladimir Nabokov. Plymouth: Northcote House, 1999.

52 Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, ed., with pref., introd., and notes Alfred Appel,
Jr. (New York: Vintage, 1991), 209.
53 Nabokov, Annotated Lolita, 223.
120 Lernout

Crispi, Luca. Joyce’s Creative Process and the Construction of Characters in ‘Ulysses’:
­Becoming the Blooms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Epstein, Jason. Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future. New York: W.W. Norton,
2001.
Gold, Herbert. ‘Interview with Vladimir Nabokov.’ In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita:
A ­Casebook, edited by Ellen Pfifer, 195–206. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Hutchins, Patricia. Joyce’s Dublin. London: Gray Wall Press, 1950.
Jeffrey, David L. Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature. Grand Rapids,
Wm: B. Eerdmans, 1992.
Joyce, James. Ulysses: Student’s Edition, edited by Hans Walter Gabler. London: Bodley
Head, 1986.
Kain, Richard M. Fabulous Voyager: James Joyce’s Ulysses. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1947.
Lernout, Geert. ‘European Joyce.’ In A Companion to James Joyce, edited by Richard
Brown, 93–107. London: Blackwell, 2008.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. New York: Putnam’s, 1955.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Strong Opinions. New York: McGraw Hill, 1973.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by
John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Ulysses. A Facsimile of the Manuscript, with a foreword
by A. Walton Litz. Bloomfield Hills: Bruccoli Clark Publishers, 1980.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Selected Letters 1940–1977, edited by Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew
J. Bruccoli. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt, 1989.
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita, edited, with preface, introduction, and notes
by Alfred Appel Jr. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Segall, Jeffrey. Joyce in America: Cultural Politics and the Trials of ‘Ulysses.’ Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993.
 chapter 7

Gogol Seen through the Eyes of Nabokov

Arthur Langeveld

Abstract

This article focuses on Nabokov’s Nikolai Gogol. The monograph was published in
1944 and prepared in the years when Nabokov was lecturing on Russian Literature
at Wellesley. The article considers Nabokov’s biased use of his single most important
source (Vikenti Veresayev’s anthology of letters from and memories of Gogol (1933))
and the affinity his reading of some of Gogol’s texts shows with prominent analyses
by the Russian Formalist Boris Eikhenbaum and the poet Andrey Bely. In each case,
the source material goes a long way in underlining the strong identification Nabokov
felt with some of Gogol’s artistic beliefs. Nabokov’s Gogol ends up being a double of
Nabokov himself.

Introduction

Vladimir Nabokov’s Nikolai Gogol was commissioned by James Laughlin, a young

publisher descending from a wealthy family, whose publishing c­ ompany New
Directions was oriented on works of high literary value which were not com-
mercially successful.1 Laughlin, to whom Nabokov and his wife were ­introduced
by Edmund Wilson in 1941, would also publish Nabokov’s first novel written in
English, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941). ­Nabokov was working on Nikolai
Gogol from 1941 to 1943, in addition to numerous other activities (a lectureship
at Wellesley, lecturing tours and a part-time appointment as an entomologist at
Harvard). The book came out in 1944 in the M ­ akers of Modern Literature series.
In later years Nabokov spoke about it rather ­disparagingly, calling it ‘this little
frivolous thing,’ and he thought that it might have cost him the chair of com-
parative and Slavic literature at Harvard.2 Even so, the book can certainly be
considered to have been quite successful. It greatly influenced the perception
of Gogol in the English-speaking world, while for instance in the Netherlands

1 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1991), 30.
2 Andrew Field, The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Crown, 1986), 245.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_009

122 Langeveld

the renowned scholar Karel van het Reve abundantly drew from it in the chap-
ter on Gogol for his survey of Russian Literature.3 A new edition was published
in 1961 and another one in 1973. The text in these later editions was not modified
in any way, although Nabokov adjusted the transcription of Russian terms and
names to the transcription conventions common at the time. Moreover, the
author dropped the index which had a number of facetious jokes and s­ o-called
writing errors. By doing so, he meant to make the book more palatable (or less
offensive) to academic readers. The implementation of these adjustments was
not entirely logical, by the way, and led to quite a few anomalies.4
Nikolai Gogol is based on the lectures on Gogol posthumously published in
1981 as part of the Lectures on Russian Literature. To this end, the discussion
in the Lectures of Gogol’s Dead Souls and The Overcoat was expanded with a
­discussion of Gogol’s play The Government Inspector; further additions were
the first chapter (‘His Death and his Youth’), the last chapter (‘­Commentaries’),
and the ‘Chronology.’ The long introduction on ‘poshlost’ (see below) with
which the chapter on Dead Souls begins was also an addition. Otherwise, the
text of the ­Gogol chapter in the Lectures, with the discussion of Dead Souls and
The ­Overcoat, is almost verbatim that of the chapters 3, 4 and 5 of the monograph.

Poetics, Ideal Reader

Perhaps even more clearly than in Nabokov’s other lectures on literature,

Nikolai Gogol is mainly concerned with the writer’s own poetics and his
description of the ideal reader. Nabokov’s opinion on this subject is epitomised
in this book: true art is non-normative, deceptive, magic, and irrational; it has
no message nor does it propagate social criticism. And it takes a creative reader
to value it properly. Discussing a passage from Dead Souls, Nabokov writes for
example:

Several years ago during a Rugby game in England I saw the wonderful
Obolensky kick the ball away on the run and then changing his mind,
plunge forward and catch it back with his hands… something of this kind
of feat is performed by Nikolai Vassilievich.5

3 Karel van het Reve, Geschiedenis van de Russische literatuur (Amsterdam: Van Oorschot,
1985), 190–214.
4 See Robert Bowie, ‘Nabokov’s Influence on Gogol,’ Journal of Modern Literature 13/2 (1986):
265–66.
5 Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 [1971]), 83.
Gogol Seen through the Eyes of Nabokov 123

The author should be like a sportsman catching his own ball, a kind of magi-
cian then, who misleads his audience.
In the chapter called ‘The Apotheosis of a Mask’ that is devoted to Gogol’s
story The Overcoat, Nabokov is even more provocative. Having discussed the
plot of the narrative in six lines, the writer continues as follows:

In order to appreciate it at its true worth one must perform a kind of

mental somersault so as to get rid of conventional values in literature
and follow the author along the dream road of superhuman imagination.
Gogol’s world is somewhat related to such conceptions of modern physics
as the ‘Concertina Universe’ or the ‘Explosion Universe’; it is far removed
from the comfortably revolving clockwork worlds of the last century.
There is a curvature in literary style as there is curvature in space – but
few are the Russian readers who do care to plunge into Gogol’s magic
chaos head first, with no restraint or regret.6

Not every reader is able to perform this mental somersault. Not the reader, in
any case, who believes that ‘Turgenev was a great writer.’ However, Nabokov
continues,

the diver, the seeker for black pearls, the man who prefers the mon-
sters of the deep sea to the sunshades on the beach, will find in ‘The
­Overcoat’ shadows linking our state of existence to those other states and
modes which we dimly apprehend in our rare moments of irrational
perception.7

Already in his introduction to the chapter does Nabokov evoke the reader who
is truly able to understand great literature:

The superficial reader of that story [‘The Overcoat’] will merely see in it
the heavy frolics of an extravagant buffoon; the solemn reader will take
for granted that Gogol’s prime intention was to denounce the horrors of
Russian bureaucracy. But neither the person who wants a good laugh, nor
the person who craves for books ‘that make one think’ will understand
what ‘The Overcoat’ really is about. Give me the creative reader: this is a
tale for him.8

6 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 144.

7 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 146–47.
8 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 141–42.
124 Langeveld

So neither the reader looking to be entertained, nor the one expecting a social
indictment, constitutes such an ideal, creative reader – whatever that may
be. Conventional readers are warned to keep out of Gogol’s way. ‘Keep off the
tracks, high tension, closed for the duration!’9

Literary Engagement

In a letter to George R. Noyes, dated 24 October 1945, Nabokov, referring to his

newly published Gogol monograph, writes:

I never meant to deny the moral impact of art which is certainly i­ nherent
in every genuine work of art. What I do deny and am prepared to
fight to the last drop of my ink is the deliberate moralizing which to
me kills every vestige of art in a work however skilfully written. There
is a deep morality in ‘The Overcoat’ which I have tried to convey in my
book, but this morality has certainly nothing whatever to do with the
cheap political propaganda which some overzealous admirers in nine-
teenth century Russia have tried to squeeze out of, or rather into it, and
which, in my opinion, does violence to the story and to the very notion
of art.10

This viewpoint is Nabokov’s pet topic throughout his discussions of literature,

be it in Russian or any other language. Social commitment, if any, must never
be expressed directly, explicitly; it must not show on the surface of the text,
as this would inevitably kill the work of art. This does not, however, imply
that a work of art is immoral or apolitical; on the contrary, on a ‘deeper level’
moral views or social visions can be disseminated in a much more probing way.
It seems as if Nabokov is over and over again settling scores with the ghosts of
his youth. At the close of the nineteenth century an aggressive ‘progressivism’
prevailed in Russian literary criticism, which held that the value of any work of
art was solely based on its contribution to the fight of the oppressed for a better
social position. The fates of farmers, exploited workers, or oppressed cham-
bermaids and servants should provide the building blocks of literature. The
prominent critic Vissarion Belinsky (1811–1848) had cleared the path for this

9 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 150.

10 Vladimir Nabokov, Selected Letters 1940–1977, ed. Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli
(San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt, 1989), 56–57.
Gogol Seen through the Eyes of Nabokov 125

view in the eighteen-forties. Belinsky was the first in a long line of ‘radical’ liter-
ary critics who tried to force Russian literature in an increasingly hard-handed
manner towards the direction they considered absolutely right. However, not
all writers were equally meek sheep. Without exaggerating greatly, a large part
of Dostoyevsky’s œuvre can be considered a single great polemic against this
line of thought, and Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Chekhov also occasionally took a
beating. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, when Nabokov was
growing up in Russia, the influence of these radicals was waning, due in part to
the emergence of movements like Symbolism, Acmeism, and Futurism, which
stood for a more distinctly aesthetic understanding of art. Still, the influence
of that strand in criticism kept lingering on. Not surprisingly, Maksim Gorky,
whose works complied with the demands of the radical critics in every respect,
was one of the most popular writers of the period. In the nineteen-thirties,
Gorky became the flagship of the new Soviet literature, the embodiment of
socialist realism.
Obviously, socially committed literature was not a purely Russian phenom-
enon, but the demand for social commitment has not been as imperative for
such a long time elsewhere. And nowhere else did so many writers (first of
all Dostoyevsky) oppose this trend in literature explicitly or even implicitly.
So Nabokov is just one in a long line. Nabokov demonstrates his opposition
most clearly in the fourth chapter of his novel The Gift (1938), covering nearly
a hundred pages. The Gift is Nabokov’s last and most voluminous novel writ-
ten in Russian, the central figure of which, Godunov-Cherdyntsev, feels called
upon to write a biography of Chernyshevsky, the successor of Belinsky and the
most radical critic of the eighteen-sixties. In 1861, Chernyshevsky was arrested,
falsely accused of arson and of revolutionary activities, and convicted to a
prison sentence and exile in Northern Siberia, whence he returned only twenty
years later. It is a superb and moving portrait and among the best ever written
about this tragic figure. Godunov-Cherdyntsev obviously has a score to settle,
and the conclusion that this can also be said of the novel’s author does not
seem far-fetched.

Sources

‘In The Gift Nabokov initiated his method of hybridising his fictional narratives
with scholarly literary genres, such as biography, annotation and literary his-
tory, a method that was later developed and expanded in Pale Fire, Ada, Look
at the Harlequins as well as in the Onegin commentary,’ as Karlinsky writes in
126 Langeveld

his introduction to the Nabokov-Wilson letters.11 Karlinsky does not include

Nikolai Gogol in this list, but is that appropriate? The book is usually presented
as a biography, one that is not embedded in a fictional narrative such as in
the works Karlinsky mentions. And as such it is often regarded and used as a
source of information about the life and work of the nineteenth-century Rus-
sian writer Nikolay Gogol.
It is a very unusual biography, however, since it begins with the death of the
principal character and ends with his birth. Hardly anything about his parents,
origins, or the environment he grew up in is disclosed. Only three works are
discussed in some detail, while the rest of the œuvre is dismissed as unsuccess-
ful and uninteresting. This is not all: Nabokov’s self appears to be nearly just
as important as the book’s purported subject, with this self being presented as
a character in conversation with the publisher in the last chapter. Moreover,
there is an appendix with a chronology of Gogol’s life, but it is full of odd jokes,
while the index seems to be a parody of the genre and bibliography or at least
an acknowledgement of sources are not included.
Let us begin with Nabokov’s sources. A reference to Andrey Bely’s M ­ asterstvo
Gogolja (Gogol’s Mastery) appears on page 76 and in the final chapter’s few
last lines the author in his conversation with the publisher mentions almost
casually ‘Veressaiev’s delightful biography of Gogol (1933, in Russian).’12 In
the ‘Chronology’ the latter source is mentioned again, this time together with
the title of his book: Gogol v Zhisni, Moscow-Leningrad 1933. What strikes one
most – not just here but in numerous other passages in the book – is Nabokov’s
use of an odd transcription of Russian names and words. In Russian the name
‘­Veresayev’ is spelled with a single s. And the title of the book, whose English
transcription was already widely used at the time, is spelled ‘v zhizni,’ instead
of ‘v Zhisni.’ At other instances in the book Nabokov also prefers the spelling
with double ‘s’ to the official single ‘s’ spelling. Thus he spells Gogol’s patro-
nymic as ‘Vassilievich’ instead of ‘Vasilievich.’ Probably this is an influence of
the German transcription Nabokov must have become accustomed to during
his Berlin years. On one occasion the doubling of a consonant is distinctly
functional: the name of one of the radical nineteenth-century critics Nabokov
regards as black sheep is spelled ‘Pissarev’ instead of ‘Pisarev.’
Veresayev’s book actually is not a proper biography, but a large collection of
testimonies given by Gogol’s contemporaries completed with passages from

11 Vladimir Nabokov, The Nabokov-Wilson Letters. Correspondence between Vladimir Nabokov

and Edmund Wilson, 1940–1971, ed., annot. and with an introd. essay Simon Karlinsky
(London: Harper & Row, 1979), 10.
12 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 155.
Gogol Seen through the Eyes of Nabokov 127

letters by Gogol arranged in chronological order, resulting in a fascinating

portrait of the writer’s life. It certainly deserves to be mentioned more promi-
nently in Nabokov’s Nikolai Gogol since not just ‘most of my facts are taken
from the same convenient work,’ as the author tells his publisher,13 but all of
them. First of all the detailed description of Gogol’s death at the beginning of
the book. As a matter of fact all biographical information on Gogol, complete
with such hilarious facts as Gogol’s mother’s belief that her son had invented
the steam engine, is purloined, quite often almost verbatim, from Veresayev’s
standard work. The same goes for all quotations from Gogol’s letters. Nabokov
ransacked this book mercilessly, and he got away with it, because in 1944 only a
handful of people spoke Russian in the United States and Veresayev’s work was
virtually unknown at the time.
However, Nabokov’s selection from the plentiful material is very biased.
Gogol is portrayed as a completely maladjusted, impossible, and distasteful
character with greasy hair and a protruding nose. He tells lies to his mother
and borrows money from his friends, regaling them with sermons and lectures
on life in return. A religious maniac and incapable of having normal relations
with anyone, he is portrayed as really a kind of shadow throughout his life.
Nabokov throws into sharp relief the contrast between Gogol the human being,
about whom he has nothing positive to say, and the three immortal works he
created (as well as all sorts of failures) which are among the best, most original,
and most profound books in world literature.
Admittedly, all these traits can be read in Veresayev as representing one side
of the writer that was to become increasingly more dominant towards the end
of his life. Still, Gogol the man is painted quite differently in Veresayev. True
enough, he wrote a number of completely deceitful and pathetic letters to his
mother, but by far the most are actually quite charming and show a loving son
who relinquishes any claim on the (fairly modest) family fortune for the bene­
fit of his sisters and answers all the well-meaning remarks and suggestions of
his not too bright mother with the patience of a saint and occasionally just a
hint of irony. The same picture emerges from the testimonies of his friends
and other people who knew him well in Petersburg, Moscow, Rome, or other
places. Gogol could also be a very sociable companion, who was by no means
unworldly, loved good food and could beautifully recite passages from his own
work. The eyewitness account of Pushkin laughing himself silly during Gogol’s
reading of The Government Inspector is by no means a myth, as Nabokov pur-
ports, and is in fact no less plausible than any negative story brought up about
him. Summing up, then, Nabokov is not interested in writing an objective

13 Vikenty V. Veresayev, Gogol’ v zhizni (Moskva, Leningrad: Academia, 1933), 155.

128 Langeveld

­portrait in Nikolai Gogol; he does not behave like a true biographer – instead
he distils from the very diverse and contradictory materials in his major source
those elements that serve to construct a negative hero, behaving thus like a
true writer of fiction.
‘This book on Gogol will be something new from beginning to end: I dis-
agree with the bulk of Russian critics of Gogol and use no sources except Gogol
himself,’ Nabokov writes in a letter to his publisher on 16 July 1942.14 But it
is not as simple as that. Even the chapters that are oriented on the author’s
works – The Government Inspector, Dead Souls and The Overcoat respec-
tively – and less on the biographical aspects draw from additional sources.
The view that Gogol’s work is primarily realistic and was meant to be a social
indictment against bureaucracy, serfdom, and the life of petty officials had
been contradicted long before Nabokov, among others by Andrey Bely in his
­above-mentioned book published in the Soviet Union in 1934, and by Boris
Eikhenbaum, one of the leaders of the Formalists, in his classic article ‘Kak
sdelana Shinel’ Gogolya’ (‘How Gogol’s Overcoat is made’), published in 1919.15
Both Bely and E ­ ikhenbaum precede Nabokov in pointing out how Gogol plays
with sound patterns and in drawing attention to the composition of his sto-
ries, his use of numerous particles such as ‘dazhe’ (even), ‘uzhe’ (already), or
‘eshchë’ (yet) that on the face of it are out of place, and to the remarkable
non sequiturs in his narratives that add a highly absurdist twist to the tales.
­Nabokov follows suit and with the ardour of the true convert he denies Gogol
any realism w ­ hatsoever. He holds that Gogol hardly knew Russia nor showed
any interest in it, as he was a writer creating a world of his own:

Gogol’s heroes merely happen to be Russian squires and officials; their

imagined surroundings and social conditions are perfectly unimportant
factors – just as Monsieur Homais might be a business man in Chicago
or Mrs. Bloom the wife of a schoolmaster in Vyshny-Volochok. Moreover,
their surroundings and conditions, whatever they might have been in
‘real life,’ underwent such a thorough permutation and reconstruction in
the laboratory of Gogol’s peculiar genius that […] it is as useless to look in
Dead Souls for an authentic Russian background as it would be to try and
form a conception of Denmark on the basis of that little affair in cloudy
Elsinor.16

14 Nabokov, Selected Letters, 41.

15 Andrey Bely, Masterstvo Gogolya (Leningrad, Moskva: ogiz, 1934); Boris Eikhenbaum,
Skvoz’ literaturu. Sbornik statey (The Hague: Mouton, 1962), 171–96.
16 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 71.
Gogol Seen through the Eyes of Nabokov 129

The passage provides a good example of Nabokov’s extreme beliefs, exuberant

style, and ironical attitude towards Gogol. As for the purport of this quotation,
however, it is hard to imagine Sobakevich living in Yorkshire or Friesland. What
is interesting about Gogol is precisely his unparalleled mixture of the realistic
with the absurd and the grotesque. It is not without reason that he was con-
sidered a realist by so many: his world looks deceptively like the real one, even
though it only looks so. Perhaps because of this uncanny mixture do his stories
have such a distressing effect on the reader: no other writer has drawn such a
fragile line between reality and nightmare.

Nabokov’s Own Ideas

Still, Nabokov also elaborated ideas of his own in Nikolai Gogol. His focus on
‘background characters’ in especially The Government Inspector and Dead Souls
really is original, as far as I have been able to verify. Nabokov is the first to point
out Gogol’s inimitable way of continually introducing characters complete
with name, surname, and an abundance of details without mentioning them
ever again in the rest of the narrative.

A famous playwright has said that if in the first act a shotgun hangs on the
wall, it must go off in the last act. But Gogol’s guns hang in mid-air and
do not go off – in fact the charm of his allusions is exactly that n­ othing
whatever comes of them.17

In doing so, Gogol, in addition to the diegetic world of the actual narrative,
creates a shadow world of characters who exist only in the stories of his pro-
tagonists. ‘This secondary world, bursting as it were through the background
of the play, is Gogol’s true kingdom.’18 ‘The famous playwright’ is, incidentally,
Chekhov and it is typical of Nabokov, the great mystifier, not to mention the
name, as if he means to test the reader’s expert knowledge.
Nabokov’s discussion of The Government Inspector and Dead Souls largely
consists of a list of all these shadow figures accompanied by Nabokovian com-
mentary. Apart from emphasising the unrealistic nature of Gogol’s world, the
emphasis on these secondary characters is the most distinguishing note about
the œuvre. Another original view concerns an exposition of eleven pages on
the notion of poshlust in the chapter on Dead Souls. ‘Poshlost,’ as transcribed

17 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 44.

18 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 52.
130 Langeveld

officially, is a normal Russian expression that has no appropriate equivalent in

either English, Dutch, or German. In linguistics, words without an equivalent in
another language are a well-known phenomenon that translators for instance
have to deal with quite often. Nabokov, however, puts on a proper show in para-
phrasing this little word, because to him it embodies the essence of ­Gogol’s
œuvre in general and of Dead Souls in particular. In English ‘poshlost’ can be
described by words like ‘trivial,’ ‘vulgar,’ ‘Kitsch,’ ‘gross,’ ‘cheap sentiment’ and
so on. According to Nabokov, the world described in Dead Souls can be typified
by this one word. A felicitous characterisation, since one of the book’s most
striking features is how its characters entertain no elevated thought whatso-
ever; from Chichikov, with his preference for shiny red suits, to all the others,
the characters are completely ‘poshly,’ that is, vulgar, gross, and trivial.

Translations

In the letter to his publisher, James Laughlin, also quoted above, Nabokov apol-
ogises for being late in handing in the manuscript.

What causes the irritating delay is the fact that I have to translate every
scrap of quotation myself: most of the Gogol material (letters, articles
etc.) is not translated at all, and the rest so abominably botched that I
cannot use it. I have lost a week already translating passages I need in
the ‘Inspector General’ as I can do nothing with Constance Garnett’s dry
shit.19

And he ends his letter sighing ‘[t]he enervating part is that the translations of
Gogol I have to make require another section of the brain than the text of my
book and switching from one to another by means of spasmodic jumps causes
a kind of mental asthma.’20
The appalling English translations of the work of Gogol are another recur-
ring topic in Nabokov’s book. All his life Nabokov complained about transla-
tions, especially about English and American translations of Russian literature.
During his American years his irritations were aggravated by the fact that he
had to use them in his classes on Russian literature in translation. For these
classes he crafted translations of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Lermontov’s A hero
of our time and The Igor Tale, the only Russian literary work preserved from

19 Nabokov, Selected Letters, 41.

20 Nabokov, Selected Letters, 41.
Gogol Seen through the Eyes of Nabokov 131

the Middle Ages. Moreover, he wrote several articles on the matter of transla-
tion, the first, called ‘The Art of Translation,’ as early as 4 August, 1941, one year
after his arrival in the States; a second longer and more scholarly one, ‘The
Servile Path,’ in 1959. In the chapter on The Government Inspector, which in fact
is called ‘The Government Specter,’ he comments the following on the English
translations:

I sometimes think that these old English ‘translations’ are remarkably

similar to the so-called Thousand Pieces Execution which was popular
at one time in China. The idea was to cut out from the patient’s body one
tiny square bit the size of a cough lozenge, say, every five minutes or so
until bit by bit (all of them selected with discrimination so as to have the
patient live to the nine hundred ninety ninth piece) his whole body was
delicately removed.21

And Chapter 3, ‘Our Mr. Chichickov,’ starts with Nabokov sighing: ‘The old
translations of ‘Dead Souls’ into English are absolutely worthless and should
be expelled from all public and university libraries.’22
It is a pity that Nabokov never executed a complete translation of any of
the works of Gogol he discusses, since his forays in this area are promising,
as the monograph shows, and might well have resulted in a breakthrough of
the Anglo-Saxon culture of translation from Russian at the time, the standard
of which was indeed pathetically low. It can safely be maintained that, to a
certain extent, the book’s success is due to the translated fragments, which
revealed a witty, acerbic, and absurdist Gogol who had nothing in common
with the writer known till then in the English-speaking world.
Not just the quality of Nabokov’s translations is striking, their quantity is
too. Chapter 3, on Dead Souls, the longest chapter of the book, covers fifty-
one pages. When added up, the quotations account for roughly twenty-three
pages, nearly half the chapter. The other chapters have fewer translated pas-
sages in comparison, but even the first, ‘His Death and his Youth,’ which hardly
discusses Gogol’s works, includes the complete translation of a four-page let-
ter written by Gogol to his mother. Not surprisingly, this leaves little room for
Nabokov’s own text, most of which is used up by linking and introducing the
quotations. Indeed there is little space for really innovative ideas about Gogol
in general and Dead Souls in particular. This chapter too mainly deals with the
special place and function of the book’s countless minor characters.

21 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 38–39.

22 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 61.
132 Langeveld

Commentaries, Chronology, Index

The reader who despite numerous proofs to the contrary, such as the innu-
merable asides and interruptions made by the book’s first-person narrator still
believes that this is a real biography, will be definitely disillusioned by the final
chapter, ‘Commentaries.’ Among the most remarkable features of Nabokov’s
oeuvre is the game of reader and narrator he likes to play. In Pnin, the narra-
tor unexpectedly makes his personal appearance as first-person narrator in the
last chapters, having been largely authorial in the previous ones. Something
similar is enacted in Nikolai Gogol. The book ends with a conversation between
publisher and author: ‘“Well” – said my publisher, – “I like it – but I do think
the student ought to be told what it is all about.” I said….’23 The author then
­proceeds to give a succinct account of the plot of the works discussed before for
the benefit of the publisher who has not fully understood it, declaring also that
a bibliography is unnecessary because ‘apart from Mirsky’s excellent ­chapter in
his History of Russian Literature there are no works of Gogol in English worth
mentioning.24 The ‘fictional’ character of this chapter is heavily emphasised by
the description of the environment (‘A delicate sunset was framed in a golden
gap between gaunt mountains’25) and of two cocker puppies skipping in while
the conversation is being held; features usually not expected by readers of a
biography. The author continues to play with readers’ expectations in the two
appendices to the book, the ‘Chronology,’ a brief chronological survey of Gogol’s
life, and the ‘Index.’ The ‘Chronology’ is remarkable insofar as a full account of
the plot of Dead Souls is provided only at this stage, something that was omit-
ted in the respective chapters on the book. Even more remarkable is the entry:

Winter 1836–1837 Paris. Lived on the corner of the Place de la Bourse

and rue Vivienne. Wrote there a large portion of First Part of Dead Souls.
Browning’s door is preserved in the library of Wellesley College. On
warmish days he took Chichikov for strolls in the Tuileries. Sparrows, grey
statues.26

The passage exemplifies the mischievous mood which seems to have seized
Nabokov quite often while working on this book and illustrates the challenges
faced by the creative reader, in particular Browning’s door.

23 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 151.

24 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 154.
25 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 151.
26 Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol, 159.
Gogol Seen through the Eyes of Nabokov 133

Even the ‘Index,’ usually the most boring yet useful part of a biography, shows
signs of Nabokov being unable to control his playfulness as he continues to tease
the ‘creative’ reader by giving an indeed frivolous parody of the ‘genre,’ if one
may call it that, of indexes. Entries like ‘Jesus,’ ‘Christ 125’ or ‘Virgin,’ ‘the 130’ may
raise a smile on the face of the reader with the appropriate sense of humour.
For the true gourmet there are ‘slips of the pen’ such as Lyapkin-Tryapkin,
who is really called Lyapkin-Tyapkin, without an r. In Russian ‘tryapka’
means ‘rag.’ Lyapkin-Tyapkin is among the numerous ‘background characters’
­discussed above and it is worth mentioning that all of them are included in
the index, including their wives and children, to the effect that for example
­Zemlyankiya (another ‘slip of the pen,’ the chap is called Zemlyanika) is fol-
lowed by his children Nicholas, Ivan, Elizabeth, Mary, and Perpetua. By the way,
page numbers are often erroneous, but this is hardly surprising in this context.
The index is only included in the 1944 first edition. Nabokov dropped it in later
editions, which despite its jocular features does not improve the book’s ‘work-
ability.’ In a footnote to his commentary on Eugene Onegin, Nabokov refers to
Nikolai Gogol as ‘a rather frivolous little book with a nightmare index (for which
I am not responsible) and an unscholarly, though well-meant, hodgepodge of
transliteration systems (for which I am).’27

Conclusion

Nikolai Gogol is a non-fiction work with a strongly fictional bias, featuring

a first-person narrator who regularly propagates his own views and makes
his appearance in the text. It is a biography whose subject is portrayed in a
highly biased, subjective way. It is obvious that the narrator tries to convince
the reader of his own views on literature and Gogol: true literature is magic, a
riddle, while a clearly social or political message is fatal for literature. The mes-
sage, if any, has to be hidden. In doing so, the biographer engages in a polemic
with the utilitarian views on literature which were generally accepted by radi-
cal literary critics in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Russia
while Nabokov was growing up and which after his emigration became the
canonised views in the Soviet Union. The game the author plays with the reader
is typical of Nabokov’s fiction. According to the author, Gogol is meant for the
creative reader who, for one, is repeatedly provoked throughout the book,

27 Vladimir Nabokov, Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksander Pushkin, trans. from the
Russian, with a comm. Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964), 314.
See also Bowie, ‘Nabokov’s Influence on Gogol,’ 263.
134 Langeveld

including in the index. The fact that the author fails to acknowledge his sources
and does not include a bibliography does not mean that he has not used any. As
for the description of Gogol’s life, Nabokov exclusively relied on a single (­Soviet)
source (Veresayev), while in his discussion of Gogol’s works the influence of
(the equally Soviet) Andrey Bely and the Formalist Eikhenbaum can be felt.

Literature Cited

Bely, A. Masterstvo Gogolya. Leningrad, Moskva: OGIZ, 1934.

Bowie, Robert. ‘Nabokov’s Influence on Gogol.’ Journal of Modern Literature 13/2 (1986):
251–66.
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1991.
Eikhenbaum, Boris. Skvoz’ literaturu. Sbornik statey. The Hague: Mouton, 1962.
Field, Andrew. The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Crown, 1986.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksander Pushkin. Translated
from the Russian, with a commentary, by Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Bollingen
Foundation, 1964.
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Nabokov-Wilson Letters. Correspondence between Vladimir
Nabokov and Edmund Wilson, 1940–1971, edited, annotated and with an introductory
essay by Simon Karlinsky. London: Harper & Row, 1979.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Selected Letters 1940–1977, edited by Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew
J. Bruccoli. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt, 1989.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Nikolai Gogol. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 [1971].
Reve, Karel van het. Geschiedenis van de Russische literatuur. Amsterdam: Van
Oorschot, 1985.
Veresayev, Vikenty. Gogol v zhizni. Moskva, Leningrad: Academia, 1933.
 chapter 8

On an Unhappy Marriage, Henry James, and Atoms:

Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov

Ben Dhooge

Abstract

Nabokov’s lecture on Anton Chekhov stands out for its numerous citations from
Korney Chukovsky’s 1947 article ‘Friend Chekhov.’ At the same time, however, the lec-
ture contains many more references to other critics, as well – some of them explicit,
though not necessarily clear, others more concealed. In an attempt to trace the sources
Nabokov used when drafting his Chekhov lecture, the article offers a concrete view
of Nabokov’s critical laboratory. Additionally, the article sheds light on his relation to
other critics and critical movements, more specifically with respect to the compet-
ing ‘tendencies’ at work in the canonization of Chekhov’s oeuvre during the interwar
period: Russian émigré, Soviet, and Anglo-American.

Nabokov and ‘other readers’

In his Lectures on Russian Literature, Vladimir Nabokov emerges not only as

a reader of literature as such – and, by extension, as a teacher of literature –
but also as a reader of critical writings on literature. Nabokov frequently
refers to other ‘readers’ in the broadest sense of the word, i.e. to critics (writ-
ers, literary critics, and scholars) as well as to the common reader who, unlike
the former, does not take pen in hand. Sometimes Nabokov names, cites,
or refers to specific ‘readers’ who commented on the writer whose work is cen-
tral to the lecture in question. More often, however, Nabokov refers to reac-
tions and opinions of ‘readers’ without specifying whom they exactly belong
to. He lumps individual ‘readers’ together, giving them collective names such
as ‘Russian readers and critics,’ ‘socially-minded Russian critics,’ or ‘Freudian-
minded explorers.’ More importantly, the different opinions of other ‘readers’
which Nabokov includes in his lectures are meaningful elements in the struc-
ture of his argumentation. They may serve as a source of new information,
as support for the main argument, as a counterpoint, or just as a means to
make his argument more tangible for his students, who supposedly do not

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_010

136 Dhooge

know all that much about Russian literature, let alone about Russian literary
criticism.
More than once scholars dealing with Nabokov’s lectures on European
literature and his book on Pushkin have touched upon Nabokov’s sources –
especially the explicit ones, i.e. those that are not rendered anonymous or
named as a collective.1 The Russian lectures, however, have largely remained
underexposed in this respect, with the exception of some notable cases.
In his 1981 edition of Nabokov’s Russian lectures, Fredson Bowers mentions
some of the more obvious sources that Nabokov made use of, such as Korney
Chukovsky’s (transliterated as Kornei Chukovski) article on Chekhov, ‘Friend
Chekhov,’ which came out in 1947 in The Atlantic Monthly2 or S. Stephenson
Smith and Andrei Isotoff’s ‘The Abnormal From Within: Dostoyevsky.’3
Another source is the famous historian of literature Dmitry Mirsky. Thus Hugh
McLean shows that Nabokov’s generalizing statement ‘I have heard intelli-
gent people maintain that the utterly false and sentimental story Twenty-six
Men and a Girl is a masterpiece’ in the lecture on Gorky is actually directed
against Mirsky.4 And as Shoshana Knapp argues, in his lecture on Dostoyevsky
Nabokov quotes Mirsky in his analysis of The Double, while Mikhail Efimov
points out that Nabokov uses Mirsky in his lecture on Turgenev.5
Still, the contemporary reader of Nabokov’s lectures may wonder where
exactly (s)he can find Andrey Bely’s attack on Freudianism, such as it is men-
tioned by Nabokov in his lecture on Gogol, or what the source is for Ivan

1 See, for example: John Burt Foster, Jr., ‘Nabokov and Kafka,’ in The Garland Companion to
Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York: Garland, 1995), 447; Joseph Frank,
‘Lectures on Literature,’ in The Garland Companion, 245, 251, 253, 254; Julian Moynahan,
‘Nabokov and Joyce,’ in The Garland Companion, 440; Gerald S. Smith, ‘Notes on Prosody,’
in The Garland Companion, 562; Mikhail Efimov, ‘Nabokov and Prince D.S. Mirsky,’ in The
Goalkeeper. The Nabokov Almanac, ed. Yuri Leving (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010),
225–28.
2 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, ed., with an introd. Fredson Bowers
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 246. Kornei Chukovski, ‘Friend Chekhov,’ The
Atlantic Monthly 140 (1947): 84–90. Chukovsky’s article is a shorter version of his book that came
out two years earlier: Chekhov the Man (London: Hutchinson, 1945). Both the book and the
article were translated by Pauline Rose. Nabokov’s quotes are closer to the text of the article.
3 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 107.
4 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 305; D.S. Mirsky, Contemporary Russian Literature
1881–1925 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 272; Hugh McLean, ‘Lectures on Russian
Literature,’ in The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New
York: Garland, 1995), 272.
5 Shoshana Knapp, ‘Nabokov and Mirsky,’ The Nabokovian 13 (1984): 35–36; Efimov, ‘Nabokov
and Prince D.S. Mirsky,’ 226–27.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 137

Bunin’s alleged disapproval of Dostoyevsky’s religious ideas.6 The same reader

might also like to identify the ‘radical critics’ in the lecture on Turgenev or the
‘Russian critics’ who compared Chekhov’s style to Gogol, Flaubert, and Henry
James.7 These ‘factual’ questions definitely warrant the prospect of an anno-
tated version of the lectures, which could give us an idea of the specific critical
writings and scholarly studies that Nabokov was acquainted with. Additionally,
a closer look at Nabokov’s sources may also shed some light on the writer’s
own methods and preferences.8 And establishing which sources Nabokov did
not use or even did not want to use is just as revealing and important in this
respect. In the case of Dostoyevsky, for example, Hugh McLean shows that
Nabokov’s dislike of Dostoyevsky did not only colour his lecture on the author
of Crime and Punishment, but also prevented him from including new find-
ings on Dostoyevsky.9 Other, related questions may arise. How, for instance, did
Nabokov’s lectures come into being? The question deserves all the more atten-
tion if one takes into account that Nabokov first conceived at least some of the
lectures in Paris in 1940–194110 and later reworked and elaborated them while
teaching at Wellesley College (1941–1948), Stanford University (1941–1942), and
Cornell University (1948–1958).11 The assumed successive use of Russian émi-
gré, European, Soviet, and American sources – all with their own specificities
– may have left tell-tale marks in the lectures. Also, one may wonder how origi-
nal Nabokov’s lectures really are. Do they testify to an independent, idiosyn-
cratic opinion or did Nabokov pick up certain views from other critics in the
course of his long career, absorbing them or even turning them into his own?
Of course, my aim in pursuing these questions is not to find all of Nabokov’s
sources or to point out where Nabokov was or was not faithful to the materials
he consulted, but to gain new insights into Nabokov’s critical laboratory.

6 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 27 and 104, respectively.

7 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 66–69 and 252, respectively.
8 Less important is the question how Nabokov treated his sources – with care or not? As his
lectures were not meant to be published and their primary aim was mainly pedagogical
(except in the case of Gogol), it is very likely that Nabokov did not treat his sources in a
very strict way. Cf. also Fredson Bowers, introduction to Lectures on Russian Literature,
by Vladimir Nabokov, ed., with an introd. Fredson Bowers (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1981), x–xii; McLean, ‘Lectures on Russian Literature,’ 273.
9 McLean, ‘Lectures on Russian Literature,’ 267.
10 Nabokov prepared about 2,000 pages of lectures in 1940–1941, but almost nothing from
these notes is left: see Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian Years (London: Chatto &
Windus, 1990), 521.
11 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years (London: Vintage, 1993 [1992]), 22–23,
109.
138 Dhooge

Nabokov on Chekhov: Some General Thoughts

An interesting case in point to begin to explore these questions is the lecture

on Anton Chekhov. This lecture seems less coherent and balanced than the
other Russian lectures (except for the lecture on Gorky, which is very short and
superficial and deals not only with Gorky’s life and a few of his works, but also
with the Moscow Art Theatre).12 More than in the other lectures on Russian
literature (and definitely more than in the lectures on European literature), a
lot of attention is paid to the author’s life. Numerous, often quite long quota-
tions are taken from one article in particular on Chekhov’s life and oeuvre,
Chukovsky’s aforementioned ‘Friend Chekhov.’13 The lecture also contains a
large number of references, which taken together are quite varied in scope.
Nabokov mentions critical opinions on the writer’s style, on his ‘ineffectual,’
‘weak’ characters, on his ‘apoliticalness,’ on his refusal to include moral judg-
ments or facts and figures that ‘matter’ to a socially inspired reader, on the lack
of conflict in the plays and stories, on the crossed opposition between Arkadina,
Nina, Treplev, and Trigorin, and on the negative reactions to Chekhov’s journey
to Sakhalin Island.14
The references in the other lectures are not only less frequent15 but also less
varied. In the lecture on Turgenev, for example, Nabokov repeatedly stresses
the anti-radical elements which radical critics had observed in Turgenev’s
œuvre,16 but nothing more. In his discussion of Dostoyevsky, Nabokov mainly
cites critics to illustrate their (and his own!) disdain of the novelist’s style,
his religious bias, and his unrealistic characters.17 The same argument can be
made for the lectures on Tolstoy and Gorky.18

12 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 301–03.

13 Something similar can be seen in the other lecture on a ‘modern’ Russian writer, Gorky,
where longer quotations are taken from Alexander Roskin’s biography: Nabokov, Lectures
on Russian Literature, 297, 300, 301; Alexander Roskin, From the Banks of the Volga
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1946).
14 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 252, 253, 254, 259 & 283, 256, 282, 246. The latter
reference derives from Chukovsky’s article. Chukovsky paraphrases what many others –
contemporaries of Chekhov and critics who wrote about him later – thought about Chekhov’s
trip (the editor of Novoe vremya Aleksey S. Suvorin, the playwright Ignaty N. Potapenko,
the critic Mikhail P. Nevedomsky, the theatre expert Sergey D. Balukhaty, etc.).
15 This obviously does not apply to the lecture on Gogol, which was meant for publication
and evidently is much more elaborate and polished than the other lectures.
16 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 66–69.
17 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 104, 115, 126.
18 More concretely, in his lecture on Tolstoy, Nabokov does not refer to any other critics
(except for one ‘ex negativo’ reference that stresses his own perceptiveness. Tolstoy’s
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 139

Why, then, does the lecture on Chekhov stand out in this respect? Nabokov,
as he explicitly stated, found it difficult to say why exactly he liked Chekhov so
much. Not being able to rationalize his preference for Chekhov in the way that
he did for Tolstoy,19 he apparently had to rely on the writings of other critics,
more than in the other lectures. A more probable reason for the broad spec-
trum of references and the long quotations in this specific lecture consists in a
number of essential changes Russian Chekhov criticism went through during
the first half of Nabokov’s literary career, eventually leading to a true paradigm
shift in the 1940s. Contrary to what one might expect today, Chekhov still had
to acquire the definitive status of a classic writer at the time and in fact Russian
critics often did not think very highly of him.20 It is safe to assume that during
his time in Berlin and Paris Nabokov had read much of the debate pro and con-
tra one of his favorite writers21 whom he also called ‘his predecessor’ in a 1956
letter to Edmund Wilson.22 In this respect one could also refer to Nabokov’s
statement that ‘[i]t was quite a game among Russians to divide their acquain-
tances into those who liked Chekhov and those who did not. Those who did
not were not the right sort.’23

s­ pecial ­treatment of time ‘has curiously never been noticed by critics,’ he writes (Nabokov,
Lectures on Russian Literature, 141). The lecture also contains a few remarks about what read-
ers in general thought of Tolstoy-the-realist and Tolstoy-the-preacher (Lectures on Russian
Literature, 140–42). In his discussion of Gorky, Nabokov quotes – apart from Roskin’s book –
Boudain de Courtenay’s qualification of Gorky’s style as ‘lurid and cheap’ in a deleted pas-
sage and twice refers to readers’ reactions, considering Gorky’s work both ‘a masterpiece’
and ‘exotic’ (Lectures on Russian Literature, 304 and 305–06, respectively).
19 Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 286.
20 Simon Karlinsky, ‘Russian Anti-Chekhovians,’ Russian literature 15/2 (1984): 183–202;
Nikolay G. Melnikov, ‘Chekhoviana russkogo zarubezhya,’ in Russkoye zarubezhye o
Chekhove. Kritika, literaturovedeniye, vospominaniya. Antologiya, ed. id. (Moskva: Dom
Russkogo Zarubezhya im. A. Solzhenitsyna, 2010), 3.
21 Nabokov had read Chekhov between the ages of 10 and 15: see Nabokov, Strong Opinions,
42–44, and Boyd, Russian Years, 91–93. He considered him one of the best Russian prose
writers, following directly after the two giants Gogol and Tolstoy (Lectures on Russian
Literature, 137).
22 Vladimir Nabokov, The Nabokov-Wilson Letters. Correspondence between Vladimir Nabokov
and Edmund Wilson, 1940–1971, ed., annot. and with an introd. essay Simon Karlinsky
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979), 297. On Nabokov’s admiration for Chekhov’s
oeuvre and the affinities between the works of Chekhov and Nabokov, see Simon
Karlinsky, ‘Nabokov and Chekhov,’ in The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed.
Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York: Garland, 1995), 389–97.
23 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 254. Of course, the 19th-century writers in
Nabokov’s Russian lectures were also discussed in the émigré and Soviet press. However,
140 Dhooge

After Chekhov’s death in 1904 and until the beginning of World War i, a
great amount of publications on Chekhov’s life and work came out. However,
there was no consensus yet on Chekhov’s place in the literary canon.24 After
1917, Chekhov scholarship fell into two major camps – émigré and Soviet criti-
cism. In the Russian émigré literary criticism of the interwar period, at a time
when Nabokov actively participated in the literary life of the Russian emigra-
tion, Chekhov’s status was still under discussion among both conservative
and progressive critics. In the 1920s, critics like Vladislav Khodasevich, Nikolay
Otsup, and Georgy Adamovich found Chekhov uninteresting, too much of a
gloomy writer focused on the problems of the intelligentsia, too lyrical for the
contemporary reader who was living in exile and going through an existen-
tial crisis. Gradually, however, especially towards the 1930s, Chekhov gained
the appreciation of critics like Mark Slonim and Boris Zaytsev, among many
others.25 At the other side of the ideological border, in Soviet Russia, Chekhov
was first seen in a negative light, as a remnant of the past, at least until the
second half of the 1920s. But then, the attitude towards him began to change,
as can be seen in writings by Anatoly Lunacharsky and Yury Sobolev: Chekhov
was more and more being read as a writer intent on unmasking the miseries

their status had been established already in the nineteenth century. Some serious scholar-
ship had been done already, and opinions on them had crystallized far more than those
on Chekhov. Consider, for instance, the fact that Nabokov as a student once got a bad
mark for not including any of the then almost obligatory social comments in an essay on
Gogol’s Dead Souls (Boyd, Russian Years, 128–29; Donald Fanger, ‘Nabokov and Gogol,’
in The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York:
Garland, 1995), 422). As with Chekhov, opinions on Gorky had not crystallized yet in
the first half of the twentieth century and the scholarly study of his oeuvre had only
just begun. In Soviet Russia, he was already considered a classic, but not among most
Russian émigrés. This may also explain why Nabokov quotes so extensively from Roskin’s
biography.
24 Igor N. Sukhikh, ‘Skazavshiye “E!” Sovremenniki chitaiut Chekhova,’ in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et
contra. Tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova v russkoy mysli kontsa xix – nachala xx veka (1887–1914),
ed. id. (Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo Russkogo khristianskogo gumanitarnogo instituta,
2002), 43–44; Igor N. Sukhikh, ‘Skazavshiye “O!” Potomki chitaiut Chekhova,’ in A.P. Chekhov:
Pro et contra, vol. 2. Tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova v russkoy mysli xx veka (1914–1960), ed. id.
(Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo Russkoy khristianskoy gumanitarnoy akademii, 2010), 8.
25 Melnikov, ‘Chekhoviana,’ 4–6; Sukhikh, ‘Skazavshie “O!,”’ 18–19. See also Mirsky s­aying
that nobody reads Chekhov (Contemporary Russian Literature, 96) or Aleksandr
Kizevetter stating that only in the second half of the 1920s a renewed interest in the ‘bore’
Chekhov could be seen (‘Opyat’ k Chekhovu,’ in Russkoye zarubezhye o Chekhove. Kritika,
­literaturovedeniye, vospominaniya. Antologiya, ed. Nikolay G. Melnikov (Moskva: Dom
Russkogo Zarubezhya im. A. Solzhenitsyna, 2010), 27.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 141

of tsarist Russia. In the 1930s, a more balanced (and scholarly) look on Chekhov
began to develop in Soviet Russia, but in the 1940s the late-1920s image of
Chekhov became dominant once again,26 under the influence of the leading
Soviet critic Vladimir Yermilov.27 While Soviet critics very likely did not have
access to most émigré writings, émigré critics were well aware of the critical
studies that were published in Soviet Russia, even though they considered
them to be ideologically distorted.28
Since Nabokov also had access to non-Russian (mainly Anglo-American)
sources, it is important to note here that Anglo-American writings, with the
exception of the earliest studies of Chekhov’s oeuvre,29 mainly followed the
Soviet tradition (as well as the pre-Soviet tradition, of course) and largely
ignored the émigré writings on this matter. (In general, Anglo-American
­scholarship tended to ignore the Russian émigré community and their works
until the 1960s.30) Till then, studies like Nina Toumanova’s monograph,31 Walter
Bruford’s sociological study,32 or Ronald Hingley’s book33 did not incorporate
the émigré view(s). Also Avrahm Yarmolinsky’s The Portable Chekhov – which

26 There are also some interesting less official (and more balanced and well-founded)
Soviet studies – on Chekhov’s literary context (Grigory A. Byaly, ‘K voprosu o russkom
realizme kontsa xix veka,’ in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et contra, vol. 2. Tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova
v russkoy mysli xx veka (1914–1960), ed. Igor N. Sukhikh (Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo
Russkoy khristianskoy gumanitarnoy akademii, 2010), 712–43; the relation of Chekhov’s
poetics with the poetic evolution in Russian literature (Boris Eikhenbaum, ‘O Chekhove,’
in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et contra, vol. 2, 693–705); or the structure of Chekhov’s dra-
mas (Aleksandr P. Skaftymov, ‘O yedinstve formy i soderzhaniya v “Vishnevom sade”
Chekhova’ and ‘K voprosu o principakh p’yes A.P. Chekhova,’ in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et contra,
vol. 2, 744–82 and 783–813).
27 Sukhikh, ‘Skazavshiye “O!,”’ 10–19, 20–28, 33–35; see also Thomas Eekman, ‘Introduction,’
in Critical Essays on Anton Chekhov, ed. id. (Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall & Co, 1989), 2–3. For
an overview of Chekhov’s main adversaries, see Karlinsky, ‘Russian Anti-Chekhovians.’
28 Melnikov, ‘Chekhoviana,’ 7.
29 William Gerhardi, Anton Chehov. A Critical Study (London: Duckworth, 1923); Mirsky,
Contemporary Russian Literature.
30 Boyd, American Years, 16.
31 Nina Toumanova, Anton Chekhov. The Voice of Twilight Russia (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1937). The author was a Russian émigré who obtained her Ph.D. in the
United States.
32 Walter H. Bruford, Chekhov and His Russia. A Sociological Study (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1947).
33 Ronald Hingley, Chekhov. A Biographical and Critical Study (London: George Allen &
Unwin Ltd., 1950).
142 Dhooge

was on the reading list of Nabokov’s students – mentions many different stud-
ies, but almost no émigré sources.34
The large amount and great variety of explicit and anonymous references to
other ‘readers,’ the peculiar history of Chekhov’s canonization and the different
and possibly conflicting – émigré, Soviet, European, Anglo-American – sources
which Nabokov may have had access to, turn the lecture on Chekhov into
an interesting object of study. This chapter will touch upon three aspects of
the lecture that may help us see Nabokov’s work as a teacher and critic more
clearly: 1. Chekhov’s multi-layered biography, 2. a comparison with Henry
James which Nabokov ascribes to ‘Russian critics,’ and 3. some of Nabokov’s
own findings, i.e. which he does not ascribe to other ‘readers,’ that may be con-
sidered reminiscences of what other critics wrote before him. Of course, there
is much more to be found in the lecture on Chekhov, but it is impossible to
discuss all of it within the scope of this chapter.

On the Genesis of Nabokov’s Overview: Chekhov’s Biography

The part of his lecture that Nabokov devotes to Chekhov’s life is more e­ xtensive
than the biographies in the other lectures on Russian literature. The reader is
given a very positive image of Chekhov – he is a strong and patient man, doing
good for the public, he is a great doctor and also a nature lover, etc. The most
obvious explanation for the long passage on Chekhov’s life may be the inter-
ests that Nabokov and Chekhov had in common: science and nature.
As was mentioned above, Fredson Bowers points out that Nabokov ‘inter-
polated passages’ from Chukovsky’s article ‘Friend Chekhov’ in the lecture.
Chukovsky’s article speaks highly of Chekhov and builds upon pre-Soviet
sources like the reminiscences by Vladimir Korolenko and others that were
published in the years after Chekhov’s death. It also relies on Soviet scholar-
ship, but emphasizes different things. Nabokov mentions the article’s author
only once, without including the title. Not only does he quote rather extensively
from the article – on Chekhov’s green fingers, his organizational projects, his
work as a doctor, on his sociability, and his gift to recreate the Russian world of
the 1880s and the 1890s, – he also paraphrases many other parts of Chukovsky’s
biography – about the happy life at Chekhov’s estate, the reactions to his

34 Avrahm Yarmolinsky, The Portable Chekhov (New York: Penguin Books, 1947). The
1950-translation of Irène Némirovsky’s book (La vie de Tchekov (Paris: Albin Michel,
1946) is included in the list, but her work can hardly be considered as typically Russian
émigré.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 143

trip to Sakhalin, Chekhov’s working method, and the fame and respect he
enjoyed.35
It is strange that Nabokov borrowed so much from Chukovsky, even if one
takes into account those factors that may have made Nabokov particularly
receptive to this specific article. It came out in The Atlantic Monthly, a jour-
nal in which Nabokov published some of his own works. Besides, Chukovsky
enjoyed the reputation of an acknowledged authority in the field of literary
criticism, both in Soviet Russia and abroad, a reputation dating from before the
Russian Revolution and the subsequent changes in power and ideology. Also,
Nabokov knew Chukovsky personally.36 More important, however, is the fact
that Chukovsky’s article represents, in many respects, a major paradigm shift.
Chukovsky was one of the first Soviet critics37 to focus on the image of a posi-
tive, socially engaged, and realistic Chekhov, rather than the gloomy, pessimis-
tic, indifferent Chekhov of 19th-century criticism and Soviet criticism until the
1920s or the Chekhov fighting poverty and misery in Tsarist Russia and criticiz-
ing bourgeois life that dominated Soviet criticism of the 1930s and 1940s. When
compared to the pro-Chekhov criticism written by Russian émigrés, however,
Chukovsky’s text corroborates the image of Chekhov the builder, gardener, and
doctor which can be seen in some early émigré writings (and most post-war
émigré writings). Those writings stress the same aspects of Chekhov’s personal
life as Chukovsky’s article (which are not so commonly or extensively eluci-
dated in pre-war Soviet nor, consequently, in Anglo-American scholarship):
Chekhov’s love of animals and horticulture and his green fingers;38 Chekhov

35 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 246–48.

36 Chukovsky was no complete stranger to Nabokov. He and Nabokov’s father knew each
other (Boyd, Russian Years, 117, 121). Nabokov himself spoke highly of Chukovsky’s poetry
for children (Boyd, Russian Years, 186), but later mocked the author on account of his
bad English (Vladimir Nabokov, Novels and Memoirs 1941–1951: The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight, Bend Sinister, Speak, Memory (New York: The Library of America, 1996), 576). For
a complete overview on the links between Chukovsky and Nabokov, see Anna Muza,
‘Chukovski and the Nabokovs,’ The Nabokovian 26 (1996): 30–40.
37 The earliest Chekhov biographers, however, Aleksandr Izmaylov and Chekhov’s youngest
brother, Mikhail, were the first to focus on the positive aspects of Chekhov’s life: Aleksandr A.
Izmailov, Chekhov. Biografiya (Moskva: Zakharov, 2003 [1916]); Mikhail P. Chekhov,
Vokrug Chekhova (Moskva: Academia, 1933). See also Eekman, ‘Introduction.’
38 Isaak Altshuller, ‘O Chekhove. Iz vospominaniy,’ in Russkoye zarubezhye o Chekhove. Kritika,
literaturovedeniye, vospominaniya. Antologiya, ed. Nikolay G. Melnikov (Moskva: Dom
Russkogo Zarubezhya im. A. Solzhenitsyna, 2010 [1930]), 243; Mikhail Tsetlin, ‘O Chekhove
(1904–1929),’ in Russkoye zarubezhye o Chekhove, 2010 [1930], 93. Most probably these are
based on Aleksandr Kuprin’s reminiscences (Aleksandr Kuprin, ‘Pamyati Chekhova,’ in
Sbornik tovarishchestva ‘Znaniye’ za 1904, kn. 3 (Sankt-Peterburg: Znaniye, 1905), 3–42;
144 Dhooge

working for free for the people as a doctor or administrator;39 Chekhov’s work
as a founder of schools, libraries, and the like in Taganrog;40 Chekhov’s report
on Sakhalin Island.41
Nonetheless, Nabokov must have had other materials on Chekhov’s life
before Chukovsky’s article came out, since he had been teaching the author
since 1941. Nabokov clearly grafted fragments from Chukovsky’s article onto
older materials. First of all, many details in the lecture are not taken from (or
only partially coincide with) Chukovsky’s piece. Most of them – for instance,
the fact that Chekhov’s grandfather had paid the price of 3,500 roubles to buy his
family’s freedom, Chekhov’s studies in medicine at Moscow University, or his
tragic death in 1904 – cannot be attributed to any particular source, since they
appear in almost any major work dealing with Chekhov’s life and œuvre writ-
ten in the first half of the 20th century.42 The common basis for all these studies
are the many publications that appeared in the first two to three decades after
Chekhov’s death, ranging from reminiscences by Chekhov’s contemporaries

Samuel S. Koteliansky, Anton Tchekhov. Literary and Theatrical Reminiscences (London:

Routledge, 1927), 49–58). Kuprin emigrated after the revolution and fell into disfavor with
Soviet authorities and Soviet Chekhov scholars. Yury Sobolev, for example, writes that
‘Kuprin made Chekhov say a fluffy monologue on the topic that “in three hundred years”
time, the whole planet will be turned into a flowering garden’ (Yury Sobolev, Chekhov
(Moskva: Zhurnalno-gazetnoe obyedineniye, 1934), 304). By the way, Ronald Hingley
ascribes this particular quote to Ivan Bunin (Hingley, Chekhov, 224), but nothing similar
can be found in any of Bunin’s reminiscences. The critical utterance obviously belongs
to Sobolev, just like the critical remarks on some descriptions of Chekhov by Vladimir G.
Korolenko and Sergey Ya. Yelpatyevsky which Hingley mistakenly ascribes to Bunin.
39 Altshuller, ‘Eshchë o Chekhove,’ Novy Zhurnal 4 (1943): 338.
40 Altshuller, ‘Eshchë o Chekhove,’ 338ff; Tsetlin, ‘O Chekhove,’ 92.
41 Altshuller, ‘O Chekhove,’ 249.
42 For example, Izmaylov, Chekhov; Valeriya Feyder, A.P. Chekhov. Literaturny byt i tvorchestvo
po memuarnym materialam (Leningrad: Academia, 1928); Pyotr S. Kogan, A.P. Chekhov.
Biografichesky ocherk (Moskva, Leningrad: Moskovsky rabochy, 1929); Sobolev, Chekhov;
Avram Derman, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Kritiko-biografichesky ocherk (Moskva:
Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1939); next to the books by Mirsky (with quite some
factual errors), Némirovsky, Toumanova, and Yarmolinsky that were mentioned before.
Another émigré book on Chekhov (Mikhail Kudryumov (pseudonym for Mariya Kalash),
Serdtse smyatennoye. O tvorchestve A.P. Chekhova, came out in Paris with ymca Press in
1934. The book offers a religious reading of Chekhov’s work which, most probably, would
not have attracted Nabokov (and which did not appeal to many other leading émigré
critics of the time, either). Obviously, also German and French writings on Chekhov (e.g.
by the critic Edmond Jaloux, whom Nabokov did not think much of (Boyd, Russian Years,
425) could be included.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 145

and acquaintances to letters and notebooks as well as critical writings (the

earliest biography of Chekhov, however, Izmaylov’s Anton Chekhov. Biografiya
(1916) appears to have been largely ignored in early Soviet studies).
There are also elements in Nabokov’s lecture that clearly are not taken
from Chukovsky’s article and contrast with it in terms of tone, such as the
suggestion that Chekhov and Olga Knipper did not have ‘a happy marriage.’43
Chekhov’s marriage is discussed in most biographical sources, but these
differ ­significantly in terms of emphasis and tone. In the early Soviet and
­Anglo-American ­studies44 Chekhov and Knipper are said to have been very
happy together, loving each other in a very special way, despite the fact that
they could not see each other often (though all in all, not too much space is
devoted to this aspect of Chekhov’s life).45 In most early émigré sources, how-
ever, one gets a more negative view of the marriage. This negative view even
becomes dominant in the later émigré discourse.46
One of the sources of this negative émigré view of Chekhov’s marriage may
be Isaak Altshuller. He was a doctor himself and treated Chekhov during the

43 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 248.

44 For instance, Sobolev, Chekhov, 258–61; Derman, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, 172–75;
Toumanova, Anton Chekhov, 194, 217. Aleksandr Izmaylov mentions the marriage in pass-
ing and does not give any details or opinion (Chekhov, 388, 413–17). Vladimir Yermilov does
not even say a word about the marriage in his 1944 biography of Chekhov: A.P. Chekhov
(Moskva: Sovetsky pisatel, 1944). Only later, in a newer version of his biography (1951),
does he mention the marriage, in passing, and without saying how happy or unhappy the
marriage was (Vladimir Yermilov, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 1860–1904 (Moskva: Molodaya
gvardiya, 1951).
45 Compare the following statement by Oliver Elton: ‘His wife continued in her profession,
and the couple had often to live apart; but the marriage brought happiness to Chekhov, to
judge from the multitude of letters that have been published by his widow. They do him
all honour, and show his gusty, gallant, and humorous spirit…’ Oliver Elton, Chekhov. The
Taylorian Lecture 1929 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), 11.
46 See, for example, Marc Slonim’s statement on this matter: ‘It was a strange marriage,
since she continued her artistic career in Moscow, while Chekhov’s tuberculosis confined
him to the Crimea.’ Marc Slonim, Modern Russian Literature: From Chekhov to the Present
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 60. Or Boris Zaytsev’s very detailed, but nega-
tive view on Chekhov’s spouse, in his long biography (many parts of which were pub-
lished in the émigré press prior to its definitive publication in 1954): Chekhov is controlled
‘like a little child’ by Olga Knipper, she sends him orders from Moscow, even when he is
in Moscow, she does not give up her active life, goes out, etc. Boris Zaytsev, Literaturnaya
biografiya (New York: Izdatel’stvo im. Chekhova, 1954), 234–36. The fact that Olga is with
him during his last days in Badenweiler is not even mentioned (240–41), which is strange
if one considers the length of this study (261 pages).
146 Dhooge

last 5 to 6 years of his life. Altshuller published some of his memories of Chekhov
in the leading Russian émigré journals Sovremennye zapiski (Paris, 1930,
reprinted in 2010) and Novy Zhurnal (New York, 1943).47 He explicitly states
that Chekhov’s marriage, next to his success in the Moscow Art Theatre, did
indeed influence his already precarious condition in a bad way. Despite the
fact that the feelings of the newly wedded were sincere, their constant sepa-
ration, Chekhov’s many aggravating journeys to Moscow and the bad living
conditions over there (bad weather, poor housing, and a punishing schedule),
the growing animosity between Knipper and Chekhov’s family, Knipper’s
­resistance to Altshuller’s treatment, and the arguments between husband and
wife, etc. all caused a deterioration in Chekhov’s condition.48 In line with this
view, Ivan Bunin, who was close to Chekhov and his sister, claims he foresaw
the animosity between Knipper and Chekhov’s sister and the detrimental
influence on Chekhov’s health (he even speaks of the marriage as ‘suicide!,
worse than Sakhalin’).49 Nabokov seems to follow the traditional émigré idea50

47 His reminiscences were published for the first time in Soviet Russia in 1960.
48 Isaak Altshuller, ‘Eshchë o Chekhove,’ 345–55; ‘O Chekhove,’ 252.
49 Ivan Bunin, O Chekhove. Nezakonchennaya rukopis (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova,
1955), 71; cf. also 131. Modern Chekhov scholarship, taking into account, among other
things, Altshuller’s letters and reports, seems to affirm the émigré view at least partially.
It no longer tends to idealize Chekhov’s life and instead draws a realistic, balanced image
of the facts, acknowledging that Chekhov’s marriage with Olga Knipper was far from
idyllic, even unhappy at times: see, for example, Donald Rayfield, Anton Chekhov. A Life.
(London: Harper Collins, 1997, especially pages 492 ff.). See also the following passage
from Rayfield’s introduction: ‘His many biographers have tried to build out of the evi-
dence a consensual life of a saint – a man who in a life shortened by chronic illness pulled
himself from poverty to gentility, became a doctor and tended to the oppressed, won fame
as the leading prose-writer and dramatist of his time in Europe, was supported all his life
by an adorning sister and, though too late, found happiness in marriage with the actress
who interpreted him best’ (xv).
50 Later Anglo-American writings, like Ronald Hingley’s or David Magarshack’s, are much
more balanced (which could be due to the fact that they, in contrast to earlier Anglo-
American studies, used not only the letters to Olga Knipper, but also the letters by her and
Chekhov (which were published later, in 1934 and 1936 in Moscow), stressing the happi-
ness and some of the problems (Hingley, Chekhov, 224–29; David Magarshack, Chekhov.
A Life (New York: Grove Press, 1925), 360 ff.). Irène Némirovsky, too, seems to give a more
balanced view on Chekhov’s marriage. It is unclear which sources Némirovsky used for
the whole book (mainly Soviet or émigré?), but for the part on Chekhov’s relationship
with Knipper she used the letters between Chekhov and Knipper (Némirovsky, La vie de
Tchekov, 239–50). Némirovsky’s book did not come out till 1946, but it must have been writ-
ten in the early 1940s, before the author got deported to Nazi Germany in 1942. Nabokov’s
attitude to the marriage can hardly be called as balanced as Hingley’s or Némirovsky’s,
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 147

that the marriage was not a happy one, emphasizing that Chekhov died far
from his family and not in the presence of his wife: ‘On the 2nd of July, 1904,
he died far from his family and friends, amidst strangers, in a strange town.’51
It seems safe to assume that for the earlier versions of his lecture on Chekhov
– most probably when he was preparing his first series of lectures in 1940–1941
– Nabokov based his biography of Chekhov on émigré sources that he had at
his disposal or had read when he lived in Berlin and Paris. Later, having read
Chukovsky’s article in 1947, he seems to have changed certain parts of the lec-
ture he already had, interpolating parts from Chukovsky’s article. This explains
the apparent conflicts in tone in the text that one can see in the fragments that
cannot be related to Chukovsky’s article.
As Hugh McLean points out, the inclusion of the extremely positive and
active image of Chekhov-the-doer52 does not quite match the image of Chekhov
that Nabokov presents his reader in other passages of his lecture where he
refers, for instance, to ‘a Russian intellectual of the Chekhovian type.’53 This
phrase comes after the following passage, which actually contradicts the active
image of Chekhov-the-doer sketched in the long introduction:

The fundamental idea of Chekhov’s best and worst characters seems

to have been that until real moral and spiritual culture, physical fitness
and wealth, come to the Russian masses, the efforts of the noblest and

so it seems plausible that Nabokov did not change his mind on the relationship after the
publication of the letters and continued to think in the ‘typical’ émigré way.
51 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 249. Another reading of this fragment can be
found in Leonard Michaels’ review of Lectures on Russian Literature: ‘Nabokov was aware
that Chekhov’s wife claimed to be present and to remember, in poignant detail, the hours
preceding Chekhov’s death. Presumably, Nabokov doesn’t believe her, and, with mag-
nificent courtesy, chooses never to say as much, though he does say the marriage was
unhappy. // It is also possible that Nabokov wants to believe in the ultimate isolation
of artistic genius […].’ Leonard Michaels, L. ‘Lectures on Russian Literature by Vladimir
Nabokov,’ The New York Times, October 25, 1981: 7/1.
52 It seems that Nabokov was well aware of the extremely positive character of his introduc-
tion, which may have made Chekhov look like a typical socially engaged writer – some-
thing Nabokov, avoiding focusing too much on the socio-political and historical value
of the works he treated, certainly did not agree with or at least did not want to stress. To
the description of all the welfare work Chekhov did, Nabokov adds the following down-
to-earth statement: ‘This great kindness pervades Chekhov’s literary work, but it is not a
matter of program, or of literary message with him, but simply the natural coloration of
his talent.’ (Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 247).
53 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 250; McLean, ‘Lectures on Russian Literature,’
270.
148 Dhooge

best-meaning intellectuals who build bridges and schools while the

vodka pub is still there, will come to naught. His conclusion was that
pure art, pure science, pure learning, being in no direct contact with the
masses, will, in the long run, attain more than the clumsy and muddled
attempts of benefactors.54

This idea of Chekhov-the-intellectual follows the discussion of Chekhov’s

story ‘The New Villa,’ where Nabokov focuses on the fact that the old farmer
in the story is just a mean man, and not a symbol, as he would be in the sto-
ries of ‘didactic writers’ like Gorky.55 The first part of the discussion gives the
plot of the story, but the last two sentences quoted above show what Nabokov
reads into the story and into Chekhov’s position. Nabokov’s ‘social’ comment is
remarkable, since he constantly fulminates against ‘social readings’ (of, for
example, Madame Bovary or Dead Souls). Nevertheless, this ‘social reading’ is not
quite what many of Chekhov’s critics tended to stress. Their main point, in line
with the critical writings of Chekhov’s earliest foes, the narodniki Nikolay
Mikhaylovsky and Aleksandr Skabichevsky, is that Chekhov does not have an
opinion on how to change things, that he is indifferent to society. Nabokov’s
‘social reading’ is more like Dmitry Mirsky’s reading of ‘In the Ravine,’ about
which he writes that it is one of the few Chekhov stories that actually con-
tains a moral judgment.56 At the same time, as will be shown below, Nabokov’s
assessment does not differ much from the dominant view on Chekhov in the
first two decades of the twentieth century (which later would be inherited by
the émigré community).

Critics Say …

Throughout the lecture on Chekhov, Nabokov refers to opinions of anony-

mous critics no fewer than nine times. Most of the references are directed
against social readings of Chekhov’s oeuvre. This is not at all surprising:
a lecture by Nabokov would not be authentic without an attack on reading
literature for ‘the message.’ Indeed, Nabokov praises Chekhov for things that
­irritated ‘politically minded’ critics – for not including any moral judgments or
­political statements,57 for writing about ‘trivial unnecessary matters instead of

54 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 250.

55 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 249.
56 Mirsky, Contemporary Russian Literature, 92.
57 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 254.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 149

­thoroughly examining and solving the problems of bourgeois marriage,’58 for

avoiding ‘a definite line of conflict’ in his plays and even for not answering
how much a singer usually earns.59 Some of these opinions can certainly be
attributed to an exact source, but the majority cannot be related to just one
specific critic and collectively reflect the large school of late 19th and early
20th-century socially-minded critics who all built on the critical writings of
Chekhov’s earliest foes, the narodniki.
The same goes for the idea that Chekhov’s main hero is an ineffectual hero –
‘the Russian intellectual, the Russian idealist,’ whom Nabokov calls ‘charm-
ing’ and ‘ineffectual’: someone who does not succeed in his life and cannot
make his dreams come true, no matter how many he has. Nabokov refers to
‘philosophical’ and ‘social-minded critics’ who perceive Chekhov as ‘a unique
exponent of a unique Russian type of character.’60 Later on he claims that
‘what really attracted the Russian reader was that in Chekhov’s heroes he rec-
ognized the type of the Russian intellectual, the Russian idealist, a queer and
pathetic creature that is little known abroad and cannot exist in the Russia of
the Soviets.’61 This view – or more correctly, similar views, each with their own
colouring – was widespread in 19th-century social-minded views of Chekhov.62
The fact that Nabokov actually follows this distorted image (since characters in
Chekhov’s oeuvre are much more diverse than here implied and many are not
intellectuals at all) and the idea that is inextricably linked with it – the char-
acters’ Russianness – is not surprising: it matches the view of many pre-Soviet
and émigré critics which originated in the writings of Silver Age iconic phi-
losophers and critics such as Lev Shestov, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, and others,
who all considered Chekhov a gloomy writer. Think in this respect of the title
of Nina Toumanova’s book Anton Chekhov. The Voice of Twilight Russia (1937) or

58 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 259; with reference to ‘The Lady with the Little
Dog.’
59 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 283, 286; with reference to The Seagull / The Gull.
60 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 253.
61 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 253.
62 See in this respect Karlinsky, ‘Russian Anti-Chekhovians’ and Olga Tabachnikova, ed.,
Anton Chekhov through the Eyes of Russian Thinkers. Vasilii Rozanov, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii
and Lev Shestov (London, New York: Anthem Press, 2010). Besides the critical writings by
Mikhaylovsky and Skabichevsky, see also Mikhail A. Protopopov, ‘Zhertva ­bezvremenya,’
in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et contra. Tvorchestvo A.P. Chekhova v russkoy mysli kontsa xix –
nachala xx veka (1887–1914), ed. (Sankt-Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo Russkogo khristianskogo
gumanitarnogo instituta, 2002 [1892]), 112–44; Dmitry Merezhkovsky, ‘Chekhov i Gorky,’
in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et contra, 2002 [1906], 692–721; Lev Shestov, ‘Tvorchestvo iz nichego
(A.P. Chekhov),’ in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et contra, 2002 [1908], 566–99.
150 Dhooge

the following statement by Janko Lavrin (a Slovenian-Russian émigré and an

important literary critic in interwar Anglo-American academia):

[Chekhov] became haunted by the great Tedium as something insepa-

rable from human existence. This attitude he expressed in accents
entirely of his own at an age when […] the whole of the Russian intel-
ligentsia was plunged into a state of aimlessness and frustration. Feeling
out of gear with the age, with the entire Zeitgeist, the best intellectuals
of that period did not know what to do either with life or with them-
selves. And since Chekhov happened to be one of them, he was able
to render their mood of bewilderment to perfection not only in his
stories but also in his plays. His characters are ‘superfluous’ […]. Their
nostalgia […] comes frequently from their dissatisfaction with the very
core of life. Their state of mind is further complicated by their feeling of
isolation […].63

More interesting than the social and religious-philosophical criticism that

Nabokov refers to, is the criticism that focuses on specific characteristics of
Chekhov’s oeuvre. For example, Nabokov says the following about Chekhov’s
style: ‘Russian critics have noticed that Chekhov’s style, his choice of words and
so, did not reveal any of those special artistic preoccupations that obsessed, for
instance, Gogol or Flaubert or Henry James.’64 Russian critics indeed have com-
pared Chekhov’s work many times with that of Gogol or Flaubert, and some-
times even on stylistic grounds. It is striking to note, however, that Nabokov
adds the name of James to those of Gogol and Flaubert. James was relatively
unknown in Russia and none of his work was perceived as a classic. He was not
considered to be in the same league as Gogol or Flaubert: a few short stories
were translated in the 1880s and 1890s, but then nothing else until the 1970s. So
it is not surprising that Chekhov’s main critics in the 19th century and the first

63 Janko Lavrin, From Pushkin to Mayakovsky. A Study in the Evolution of Literature (London:
Sylvan Press, 1948), 179. Compare also the following statements by Lavrin: ‘Chekhov is the
finest miniature painter of the decaying and bankrupt Russian intelligentsia […]’ (Janko
Lavrin, Studies in European Literature (London: Constable & Company Limited, 1929),
158); ‘It was Chekhov’s art as a whole that gave a powerful diagnosis of contemporary
Russian society, and particularly of the intelligentsia.’ (Janko Lavrin, An Introduction
to the Russian Novel (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1947 [1942]), 131.) Lavrin also speaks
of Chekhov’s ‘cult of frustration,’ as opposed to the ‘Anglo-Saxon cult of success’ (An
Introduction to the Russian Novel, 133; see also Studies in European Literature, 175).
64 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 252.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 151

half of the 20th century did not mention James at all.65 Nabokov seems to
­attribute a comparison between Chekhov and James to Russian critics, but such
a comparison could at best have been made by a Western or ­Western-oriented
reader or critic like Edmund Wilson or Nina Toumanova, but when they do so
it is not on stylistic grounds.66
Only one highly original interpretative study by the now almost forgotten
novelist William Gerhardi (later Gerhardie) explicitly draws the Chekhov-
James comparison with respect to matters of style. Gerhardi published his
study Anton Chehov. A Critical Study in 1923 (reprinted in 1949; note the specific
transliteration Gerhardi uses – more on that below). It was the first book-length
study on Chekhov in any language other than Russian. James is mentioned a
few times in different contexts (e.g., with regard to plot), but this specific pas-
sage is closest to what Nabokov writes:

[S]ubtlety can be expressed easily and directly. They [i.e. Chekhov’s artis-
tic methods, his gestures of speech, some poses and idiosyncrasies] have
none of James’s strings of definitions, qualifications, ramifications, cur-
tailments, which remind one of a tailor who, fumbling with his scissors,
first cuts off a slice but not enough, then cuts off too much and is obliged
to add a piece – and yet, perhaps in consideration of the pains he takes, is
acclaimed a subtle craftsman. It is at the garment we must look. Chehov
has managed to express subtle things simply. Henry James has succeeded
in expressing simple things subtly. But it is the broth that matters, not
the act of stewing it, which with James seems to take place in public. In
Chehov we see nothing of the seething process, which is in the secret
furnace of his sensibility. And, once the broth is stewed, he serves it out
to us simply and directly.67

Gerhardi’s study is also interesting beyond this specific statement as, through-
out his book, he stresses a number of elements that feature in Nabokov’s lec-
ture and that seem to be lacking in the other possible sources mentioned so
far. The similarities are so striking, that it seems safe to assume that Nabokov

65 That does not mean that James was completely unknown – some Russian readers and
critics knew about Henry James and did read him in the original. Note that Nabokov did
not really like Henry James: see Boyd, Russian Years, 90–91; also Nabokov, The Nabokov-
Wilson Letters, 52, 53, 54, 180, 182, 184, 213, 278; Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 64.
66 Edmund Wilson, ‘Seeing Chekhov Plain,’ in Anton Chekhov, ed. Harold Bloom (New York:
Chelsea House, 2003), 112; Toumanova, Anton Chekhov, 145.
67 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 132.
152 Dhooge

must have made use of Gerhardi’s study when preparing his lectures. It could
even be argued that he subsequently ascribed Gerhardi’s thoughts on this mat-
ter to the anonymous, generalizing ‘Russian critics,’ whether by mistake or on
purpose. Let us have a look at these similarities.68
First of all, both Gerhardi and Nabokov express a similar view on the
resemblances that Russian critics, Tolstoy in particular, want to see between
Maupassant and Chekhov.69 In his discussion of the fact that, except for ‘The
Duel,’ Chekhov never wrote any long stories,70 Gerhardi states that ‘[t]he com-
parison with Maupassant is a little naïve. One could understand Maupassant
being called the French Chehov, in a mood of generous extravagance. But
it was well meant; and, after all, Maupassant preceded Chehov, and both of
them excelled in the short-story.’71 Nabokov stresses the same characteristic
and writes: ‘Chekhov has been compared to the second-rate French writer
Maupassant […]; and though this comparison is detrimental to Chekhov in
the artistic sense, there is one feature common to both writers: they could not
afford to be long-winded.’72 Nabokov adds an extra, typically Nabokovian con-
clusion, related to his analysis of The Gull, where he more than once criticizes
Chekhov for certain shortcomings: ‘His qualities as a playwright were merely
his qualities as a writer of long short stories: the defects of his plays are the same
that would have been obvious had he attempted to write full-bodied novels.’73
Second, both Gerhardi and Nabokov focus on the importance of irrelevant
details in Chekhov’s stories for showing the mood of his heroes.74 Interestingly,
they both refer to the same scene from ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ to prove
their point: when Gurov arrives in the city where his mistress lives, the ­narrator
focuses on the grey arm cloth on the floor of Gurov’s hotel room, a grey,
damaged inkstand, etc. Although Nabokov’s analysis is more ­elaborate, the

68 There are many more similarities between the two texts, but some of them can be found
in other critics’ writings too: certain biographic elements (esp. Chekhov building schools,
helping the sick for free, helping with famine relief, his trip to Sakhalin) (Gerhardi,
Anton Chehov, 68–99); Chekhov’s stories are true to life and lack dénouement (15, ­105–09);
the tragicomic character of Chekhov’s stories (24–27); Chekhov’s political indepen-
dence (34); the objectivity of Chekhov’s stories and the fact that they do not contain any
moral judgement (56–59, 167); and the character of Trigorin as an alter ego of Chekhov
(64–65, 86).
69 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 96.
70 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 109.
71 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 96.
72 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 252.
73 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 252.
74 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 133–34 and Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 259–60.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 153

similarities between Gerhardi’s and Nabokov’s analyses are striking. Further­

more, Nabokov’s mention of the fact that Gurov does not remember the name
of the Lady’s little dog75 seems to echo an observation made by Gerhardi else-
where in his long study where he discusses ‘Anna on the Neck.’ Gerhardi calls
attention to ‘[…] Chehov’s uncanny way of securing the illusion of reality by
such intimate retrospective details thrown in here and there, e.g. the fact that
she had been introduced to him in a particular street, but could not remem-
ber his name.’76 Equally striking is the fact that both authors relate Chekhov’s
love for the irrelevant detail to the literary praxis of Tolstoy and Gogol. While
Nabokov drily states that ‘[t]he unexpected little turns and the lightness of
the touches are what places Chekhov, above all Russian writers of fiction, on
the level of Gogol and Tolstoy,’77 Gerhardi actually stresses that Tolstoy and
Chekhov treat trivial, seemingly irrelevant details in a similar way, i.e. very
different from Gogol. Tolstoy and Chekhov describe details like the wallpaper
only when it is useful to do so, to add meaning to the narrative (in case of Anna
being ill in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina),78 while Gogol does not seem to need a
particular reason for including details (as with the wallpaper in Korobochka’s
house). Needless to say, we are reminded here of Nabokov asking his students
to describe what the wallpaper in Anna Karenina looked like, or of the atten-
tion that he pays to the little bug ‘creeping up a blade of grass’ when Levin is
deep in thought (Part 8, Chapter 12).
There are also a few smaller, but no less pertinent similarities – e.g.,
Gerhardi and Nabokov both single out Chekhov’s ability to make his charac-
ters come alive with a few strokes79 – but they are less striking and they also
may go back to what other critics said before. Other elements that point in the
direction of Nabokov having read (and used?) Gerhardi have to do with the
latter’s background and life, which in many ways was similar to Nabokov’s and
certainly must have appealed to him. Gerhardi – a contemporary of Nabokov –
was born in Saint-Petersburg in a wealthy, industrial English family in 1895.

75 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 260.

76 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 162.
77 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 260.
78 ‘Tolstoy’s and Chehov’s method was that of flinging in the apt descriptive detail in a swift
and unobtrusive manner. […] This is, we somehow feel, true to life; it is significant of life.
It is an apparent triviality such as signifies great literature. And it is because Tolstoy’s
and Chehov’s works are permeated with this kind of thing that we feel the pulse of life
in them. This quality Chehov has in common with Tolstoy, but specialising in it more
than the older writer, Chehov’s objects are even more delicately charged with emotional
significance.’ (Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 133).
79 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 176; Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 262.
154 Dhooge

He spent his youth in Russia, spoke four languages (English, French, German
and Russian, the latter with his siblings and the servants of the family; Russian
was also the language of his first literary endeavours) and was well acquainted
with the literature of these four cultures. He left Russia in 1913 to study in
London, enlisted in the British army in 1915 and later was sent to Petrograd as
an officer weeks before the February Revolution. Gerhardi lived through the
turmoil of the 1917 Revolutions and could leave Russia only in 1918. Soon after,
however, he was sent to Vladivostok to fight the Bolsheviks with the Allied
Intervention.80 In 1920 he enrolled at Oxford University (first aiming at a
degree in English literature, but later in Russian), where he became acquainted
with Katherine Mansfield, with whom he shared an interest in Chekhov and
who would help him launch his literary career.81 Gerhardi would focus on the
art of literature and not on social or political issues. He was referred to as ‘the
English Chekhov’ on account of his peculiar style,82 a nickname that inevitably
reminds us of Nabokov referring to Chekhov as his ‘predecessor.’
Two other, but equally inconclusive elements that indicate that Nabokov
may have used Gerhardi’s study are the shared (partial) dislike of Henry James’s
oeuvre – Nabokov in his letters to Edmund Wilson (cf. above), Gerhardi in his
analysis of Chekhov’s plot83 – and the shared preference for Chehov instead
of the more usual Chekhov or even Tchekhov (much less common, but still
more common than Chehov, are Tchehov, Tchekov or Tchekhoff). See, for
­example, Nabokov’s persistent use of Chehov in his letters to Wilson and oth-
ers.84 Gerhardi even explains this choice in a way that reminds us of Nabokov’s
insistence on, for example, Anna Karenin instead of the more usual Anna
Karenina:

Chehov’s name, by the way, had much better be spelt as I spell it. This is
the nearest to both the Russian spelling and pronunciation. And trans-
literation from the Russian, as Mr. Aylmer Maude long ago observed, is
a compromise between the two – due regard always given to the sim-
plicity, shortness, and directness of the rendering. While living abroad,
Chehov himself had made use of more than one transliteration of his

80 Dido Davies, William Gerhardie: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1–90.
81 Davies, William Gerhardie, 93, 99–100, 113–15.
82 Davies, William Gerhardie, 121.
83 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 101–05.
84 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 257, 298; Vladimir Nabokov, Selected Letters
1940–1977, ed. Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli (San Diego, New York, London:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989) 124–27, 128, 199, 239.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 155

name. But there is certainly no need whatever for the initial ‘T,’ so far as
the English transliteration goes. However, this is not very important.85

That it was important to him nonetheless is apparent from the following

remark by Dido Davies: ‘For most of his life Gerhardie adopted his own idio-
syncratic spelling of “Anton Chehov” which he considered more accurately
reflected the Russian pronunciation. Later in life he came to appreciate that
he could never change public opinion on this point, and reverted to the most
usual English spelling “Chekhov.”’86
In general, Gerhardi’s life, oeuvre and view on literature, his attitude towards
Chekhov, the anonymous reference to Henry James and the similarities on
the level of the analysis suggest that Nabokov most probably used Gerhardi’s
book when preparing his own lecture. This is not to say that Nabokov’s lec-
ture is a carbon copy of Gerhardi’s book. Although the similarities cannot be
ignored, the differences are equally striking. While Gerhardi focuses, among
other things, on the philosophical and metaphysical undertones in Chekhov’s
work87 and on its psychological aspects,88 Nabokov limits himself mainly to
the artistic methods, but also allows himself some social statements about ‘the
Russian people’ and the Russian intelligentsia (which, in turn, are opposed to
Gerhardi’s more balanced views on these topics).89

Nabokov Says …

While in the minds of Nabokov’s students the references to ‘other critics’ will,
in general, have fulfilled their primary role – i.e. to make the lesson interesting
and tangible, to create a contrast with Nabokov’s own reading, and even to
season it with additional facts – for literary scholars the inclusion of explicit
and anonymous opinions are signs of Nabokov’s work as a critical reader.
More specifically, these references show how he constructed his lecture and
which sources he used or ignored. The lecture on Chekhov is a somewhat
strange mixture of 19th-century Russian criticism, Russian émigré writings
(at least those that favour Chekhov) and some studies that cannot be con-
nected to any specific school or movement, but which are highly original

85 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 67.

86 Davies, William Gerhardie, xvii.
87 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 42–60.
88 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 124 ff.
89 Gerhardi, Anton Chehov, 80, 155.
156 Dhooge

and innovative – i.e. Gerhardi’s study and Chukovsky’s article. It seems that
prototypical Soviet and Anglo-American sources are largely ignored. This is
in line with what one would expect, given the troubled relationship between
Russian émigré and Anglo-American criticism and Nabokov’s own concep-
tion of literature and attitude towards literary scholarship. In many respects,
Nabokov emerges as a typical émigré critic – inextricably linked with 19th-
century Russia and the Silver Age and opposed to 20th-century socialist
Russia and, hence, Anglo-American criticism for its orientation on Soviet
scholarship. At the same time, however, Nabokov is open to new impulses and
readings as long as they are innovative or close enough to his own ideas, as with
Gerhardi and Chukovsky. It is noteworthy, however, that Nabokov conceals the
status and role of his two main sources. Nowhere does he tell his students that
Chukovsky is a notable Soviet critic, and Gerhardi has even turned into one of
the many ‘Russian critics.’
It is safe to assume that more reminiscences and sources can be found in
Nabokov’s lecture on Chekhov. Think, for example, of the similarities with
Dmitry Mirsky’s survey of Russian literature (which Nabokov praised and
which he used as a general reference book90). About Chekhov’s plays, for
example, Mirsky writes that they ‘are constructed in the same way as his stories.
The differences are due to the differences of material and are imposed by
the use of dialogue.’91 This reminds us of Nabokov’s claim that the qualities
of Chekhov’s plays are inextricably linked with his experience as a writer of
long short stories, while their shortcomings can be explained as his inability to
write novels.92 One could also refer to Némirovsky’s statement that Chekhov’s
narrative is ‘more natural,’ focuses mainly on the usual, the non-exceptional,
and hence differs from Maupassant.93 Nabokov’s first ‘typical feature’ seems
to coincide with Némirovsky’s statement – ‘The story is told in the most nat-
ural way possible, not beside the after-dinner fireplace as with Turgenev or
Maupassant but in the way one person relates to another the most important

90 Nabokov, Selected Letters, 91, 124. Nabokov’s archive holds Ivan Tkhorzhevsky’s and
Dmitry Mirsky’s histories of Russian literature; Stephen Jan Parker, ‘Library,’ in The
Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York: Garland,
1995), 288. For Tkhorzhevsky’s thoughts on Chekhov, see Ivan Tkhorzhevsky, ‘Chekhov
(1860–1904) (Iz knigi Russkaia literatura),’ in Russkoye zarubezhye o Chekhove. Kritika,
literaturovedeniye, vospominaniya. Antologiya, ed. Nikolay G. Melnikov (Moskva: Dom
Russkogo Zarubezhya im. A. Solzhenitsyna, 2010 [1946]), 140–51.
91 Mirsky, Contemporary Russian Literature, 93.
92 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 251.
93 Némirovsky, La vie de Tchekov, 169–76.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 157

things in his life, slowly and yet without a break, in a slightly subdued voice.’94
At the same time, however, it also reminds of Lavrin, who states that

Maupassant would be in his own element among elegant but too expe-
rienced bachelors after supper, when the air is permeated with the scent
and smoke of cigars. We are so carried away by his clear metallic voice,
by his style and his clever pointe that we quite overlook his cruel grin.
[…] The charm of Chekhov, on the other hand, is in his simple, natural
friendliness. However subdued and sad his voice may be, his lips never
grin; they smile instead with a kindly, sometimes humorously disgusted,
yet always understanding and forgiving smile […].95

And one final example: Leonid Grossman also discusses the influence of
Maupassant (besides that of Flaubert) on Chekhov, which shows itself in
Chekhov’s naturalistic, ‘colourless’ style, his short stories, his animal-like char-
acters, the focus on everyday life, the realist-symbolist bias of the stories, etc.96
An interesting element in the article by Grossman is the following: Grossman
gives an interpretation of ‘In the Ravine’ that corresponds with Nabokov’s inter-
pretation of the story, more particularly in the image of Aksinya as a snake-like
person who poisons the people around her:97 a similar, but less explicit view
is expressed in Lavrin’s comparison between Maupassant and Chekhov, where
‘[…] Aksinya in The Ravine is simply a disgusting animal.’98
Needless to say, Nabokov’s lecture is, in many ways, original and innovative,
especially when we consider the early stage of development of Chekhov stud-
ies. Even when Nabokov seems to ‘borrow’ from other critics, he does not just
copy, but elaborates on or incorporates the ideas of others in his own argumen-
tation. Sometimes Nabokov’s originality still – or seemingly – contains traces

94 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 262.

95 Lavrin, Studies in European Literature, 168.
96 Leonid Grossman, ‘Naturalizm Chekhova,’ in A.P. Chekhov: Pro et contra, vol. 2. Tvorchestvo
A.P. Chekhova v russkoy mysli xx veka (1914–1960), ed. Igor N. Sukhikh (Sankt-Peterburg:
Izdatel’stvo Russkoy khristianskoy gumanitarnoy akademii, 2010 [1916]), 108–12, 116–19. In
his comparison Grossman names the same short stories that Nabokov refers to: ‘Bel Ami’
and ‘Une vie’ (Grossman, ‘Naturalizm Chekhova,’ 108–09; Nabokov, Lectures in Russian
Literature, 252) (further in the text he also discusses ‘Mont-Oriol’). It may be compel-
ling to consider this as striking evidence of Nabokov building on Grossman. However,
Chekhov himself discussed these novels in his letters and other critical writings discuss
the same short stories, too (e.g., Lavrin, Studies in European Literature, 174).
97 Grossman, ‘Naturalizm Chekhova,’ 102.
98 Lavrin, Studies in European Literature, 176.
158 Dhooge

of other writings on literature in general and on Chekhov, in particular. See, for

example, the highly original passage on Chekhov’s ‘The Lady with the Little
Dog’: ‘The story is based on a system of waves, on the shades of this or that
mood. If in Gorky’s world the molecules forming it are matter, here, in Chekhov,
we get a world of waves instead of particles of matter which, incidentally, is
a nearer approach to the modern scientific understanding of the universe.’99
The metaphor Nabokov uses is clearly linked to the new scientific findings of
the time, like Einstein’s relativity theory and other new insights in the field
of physics.100 But it could also be argued that Nabokov’s view is more than a
reference to physics alone. The term ‘mood’ (nastroyeniye) was widely used in
Chekhov criticism, especially after the publication of ‘A Dreary Story.’ Nabokov
seems to refer to this characterization, but also to the idea that Chekhov’s art
consists exactly in the nuance, like in an impressionist painting (cf. the remi-
niscences by Lev Tolstoy or the critical writing by Dmitry Merezhkovsky). Also
noteworthy is the fact that, as Stephen Blackwell has pointed out, in earlier
drafts Nabokov first writes ‘atom,’ and then changes it to ‘molecules.’101 A possi-
ble explanation for this seemingly unmotivated (and illogical?) switch may be
the criticism of Zinaida Gippius, one of Nabokov’s literary foes, who allegedly
– under the pseudonym of Anton Krayny – described Chekhov’s perceptivity
as ‘atomic’ (atomistichesky) – at least if we can believe Aleksandr Amfiteatrov,
who mentions Gippius as his main source,102 but who himself continues to use
this term in the years to follow.
All in all, the lecture on Chekhov is more explicitly ‘compiled’ than the other
lectures. This does not, however, diminish the fact that a closer analysis of the
sources that Nabokov used for his other lectures on Russian literature begins
to look quite compelling. It is highly probable that such an analysis would lead
to new insights into Nabokov’s critical laboratory. One of the central topics, for
example, could be where Nabokov places himself in relation to the three big
scholarly traditions – émigré Russian, Soviet Russian, and Anglo-American –
or any specific schools. And what about French and German scholarship? In
any case, this analysis would be useful for a new edition of Nabokov’s lectures.

99 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 262.

100 Stephen H. Blackwell, The Quill and the Scalpel. Nabokov’s Art and the Worlds of Science
(Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2009), 140–41. Cf. the intriguing analysis on
the link between Nabokov’s art and developments in physics, 140–67.
101 Blackwell, The Quill and the Scalpel, 236.
102 Aleksander Amfiteatrov, ‘Anton Chekhov,’ in Russkoye zarubezhye o Chekhove. Kritika,
literaturovedeniye, vospominaniya. Antologiya, ed. Nikolay G. Melnikov (Moskva: Dom
Russkogo Zarubezhya im. A. Solzhenitsyna, 2010 [1931]), 104.
Vladimir Nabokov Reading (on) Anton Chekhov 159

Bearing in mind Brian Boyd’s assertion that Fredson Bowers’ edition of the lec-
tures is not as accurate and complete as it should have been103 and Stephen Jan
Parker’s observation that the edited lectures contain only a part of the textual
notations that can be found in Nabokov’s teaching texts,104 one can only share
Hugh McLean’s hope for a new, ‘more responsible’ and indexed edition of the
lectures.105 Besides an index, a new edition of the lectures definitely should
include annotations, too. The present article has hopefully made a convincing
case for such an enterprise.

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 part 3
Author among Authors

∵
 chapter 9

‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches

Flaubert

Lara Delage-Toriel

Abstract

In this contribution, I discuss the lecture on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, a novel that
Nabokov remained fascinated by ever since he first read it as a youth. Nabokov’s discus-
sion of Flaubert’s novel, and of the aesthetic premises that underlie its production, is
clearly founded on the lecturer’s great sympathy with the French author’s poetics. Like
Nabokov, Flaubert has a great eye for the significant detail and is adamant in his choice
of ‘le mot juste’ – a shared principle that accounts for Nabokov’s exacting criticism of
the English translations that he used in class. However, as I hope to show, Nabokov’s
‘critical’ approach, overly paraphrastic, prescriptive and judgmental in style, is espe-
cially valuable as a testimony of his own cultural background and ethos, one which
informs a markedly binary vision of social roles – male versus female, teacher versus
student, writer versus reader.

The Berg collection of the New York Library, where part of Vladimir Nabokov’s
manuscripts may be found, includes some enlightening material donated by
Myra Dickman Orth, a former student of Cornell University, who during the
academic year of 1954–55 had taken Nabokov’s course on ‘Masters of Euro-
pean Fiction.’ Among the donated belongings are her painstaking notes to his
lecture on Madame Bovary, which closely mirror the teacher’s own notes. In a let-
ter she sent in October 1992 to the collection’s then curator, Francis O. Mattson,
she indicates that

many other students used my polychrome notes, since in the 1950s at

Cornell, going to class and studying was done by few. I was one who did
attend. I was utterly fascinated. The reason for taking such extensive
notes was primarily because I had no idea what N. was talking about.1

1 Vladimir Nabokov Archive. Berg Collection of English and American Literature. The New
York Public Library.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_011

168 Delage-Toriel

These revelations made me smile when I first read them. To start with, they
somewhat qualify the ‘cultified’ image of a Nabokov whose lectures would be
religiously attended by all those interested in literature. Even though, accord-
ing to Brian Boyd, his course ‘had become the most popular academic option
on campus’2 by his last years in Cornell, Nabokov was certainly no irresistible
magnet, probably even less so in the years preceding the author’s sudden rise
to fame after the controversial publication of Lolita. The second idea worth
noting is the fact that to many students, Nabokov was incomprehensible, even
to the relatively astute student (Ms. Orth’s academic report indicates rather
high marks on average). The question that immediately springs to mind is
whether Nabokov was, after all, a good teacher. He himself appeared quite dis-
missive of his pedagogical know-how when he retrospectively claimed that his
‘method of teaching precluded genuine contact’ with the students. At best, they
regurgitated a few bits of my brain during examinations.’3 Nevertheless, based
on Ms. Orth’s testimony, Nabokov’s method did prove beneficial in the long
run since in the same letter she states that ‘the only course [at Cornell] in
which [she] had really learned something was Nabokov’s.’ Only when she went
on to pursue graduate studies did she realize the true wealth of our author’s
puzzling teachings, that is to say its insistence on ‘DETAIL (which corre-
sponds to the volume at which he would, with his curious accent, pronounce
that word)’ and the most eloquent tribute to Nabokov’s gift is the fact that this
same student chose to specialise, of all subjects, in French sixteenth century
manuscript illumination.
One could suggest that Nabokov’s goal, as a teacher, was precisely to illu-
minate the letters of other writers; in other words, like a medieval scribe, his
task consisted in offering minute illustrations to precious texts, shedding light
onto literary masterpieces by inviting the eye to rest on their details. Nabokov’s
devotion to the letter, i.e. the very literal dimension, of a fellow writer’s craft,
shows especially in the stringent emphasis he laid on translation. The pub-
lished version of Nabokov’s lecture on Madame Bovary contains six highly
disparaging remarks on the English translations, most probably the three
renditions he worked with: that of Eleanor Marx Aveling – the oldest transla-
tion extant, − corrected and modernized (Rinehart, 1948), that of Alan Russell
(Penguin, 1950) and that of Francis Steegmuller (Random House, 1957), per-
haps the most renowned and celebrated translator of Flaubert in Nabokov’s

2 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1991), 172.
3 Quoted in John Updike’s introduction to Lectures on Literature, by Vladimir Nabokov, ed.
Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), xxiv.
‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert 169

time. Grievances range from specific inadequacies, for instance the description
of Emma Bovary’s hairdo when she is first discovered by her future husband,
and which ‘has been so dreadfully translated in all versions,’4 to more general
failures, such as the lack of attention translators paid to the imperfect form of
the past tense, best rendered in English by ‘would’ or ‘used to,’ but which ‘trans-
lators have not bothered about […] at all.’5 At times, these betrayals seem so
unbearable to Nabokov that he assimilates them to the traits of the most inimi-
cal character in the novel, Homais the pharmacist: ‘Oh, those ignoble, treach-
erous, and philistine translators! One would think that Monsieur Homais, who
knew a little English, was Flaubert’s English translator.’6 The virulence rings a
familiar note to those who have witnessed the beheadings carried out in Strong
Opinions, but it is still nothing compared to the relentless fierceness he applies
to revising E.M. Aveling’s translation on his own copy of the book. In addition
to larding the text with scribbled corrections, now and then illustrated by a
sketch (for example, on page 38, he draws the distinction between ‘curl’ – a
‘c’ – and ‘lock’ – a snail), he cannot help venting his indignation against the
translator in person, especially when she misrepresents the male portrayals of
Emma; thus, on page 33 (Part One, Chapter 3), in a passage describing Charles’
enamoured vision of Emma in the mornings, he fumes against the repetition of
‘dark’: ‘again the translator’s careless and vile repetition,’ and when Rodolphe
first observes Emma’s movements on page 133 (Part Two, Chapter 7), Nabokov
cries out in brackets: ‘what a miserable translation, Eleonore!’
Incidentally, his indignation against the translator leads him to accuse her
of a blunder that is in fact due to Flaubert. When in the opening chapter of
Part Three, Léon, Emma’s soon-to-be lover, enters the cathedral of Rouen, he
notices a verger standing under a bas-relief which is identified as ‘la Marianne
dansant.’ Aveling translates this as ‘Dancing Marianne,’ prompting Nabokov to
remark that this ‘immediately evokes a revolutionary painting in the style of
David’ whereas ‘this is a biblical scene referring to the famous episode after
the crossing of the Red Sea,’ thus ‘Dancing Miriam.’ Nabokov is quite wrong
here, since the ‘real’ bas-relief represents Salome, recognizably dancing on her
hands, in order to seduce Herod into beheading St. John the Baptist. Flaubert’s
own choice is difficult to explain: was it a mere oversight on his part, or else
a deliberate gesture which a contemporary reader would have understood?
His knowledge of the Biblical episode may be ascertained by the prominent

4 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 134.
5 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 173.
6 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 143.
170 Delage-Toriel

presence of Salome’s dance in Hérodias, but this short story was written after
Madame Bovary and published twenty years later. In fact, the name of
­‘Marianne’ might very well refer to the wife of Herod, Mariamne, whose name,
Myriam in Hebrew, is either spelt Mariamne or Mariamme. According to Julian
Barnes, ‘Marianne dansant’ was ‘the popular nickname for a carving of Salome
dancing on her hands before Herod.’7 This example raises fundamental ques-
tions as regards the translator’s task: should one re-establish ‘Salome,’ in order
to allow the reader to guess the link that can be made between Emma and
Salome on the one hand, and Léon and Herod on the other? Or should the
intertextual allusion be dropped and faithfulness to the author’s word be
retained? Flaubert’s latest translator, Lydia Davis, opted for an intermediary
solution by maintaining the original text and furnishing explanations in the
form of ‘blind’ end notes, that is, notes at the back of the book not signalled by
any mark on the page of the novel.8
Nabokov’s course was based on translated texts, presumably because his
undergraduate students were not expected to be able to read foreign works
in the original. But because translation was so important, and so dissatisfac-
tory, much of Nabokov’s teaching of Madame Bovary consists in rewriting its
translation, a task that might appear belaboured, but which shows how intent
Nabokov was in rendering the letter of the text. The vehemence with which
he flays translators is not only amusing: it reveals a profound admiration for
a fellow writer’s craft. Naturally, the translators of Flaubert are not the only
ones to bear the brunt of Nabokov’s disapproval. Thus, in a letter to his friend
Edmund Wilson, he deplores the Moncrieff translation of Proust, which, in his
own terms, is ‘awful, almost as awful as the translations of Anna and Emma but
in a way still more exasperating because Mr. Moncrieff a son petit style which
he airs.’9 Furthermore, although Nabokov claimed he knew little German, he
also berates the translation of Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ by A.L. Lloyd and
covers his own edition of it with profuse corrections. In them, one recognizes
the exacting ‘ideal of literalism’ that he professes to pursue in his translation of

7 Julian Barnes, ‘Writer’s Writer and Writer’s Writer’s Writer,’ London Review of Books 32
(2010): 7.
8 Davis explains in an interview: ‘I have never liked the intrusion of scholarly apparatus in an
edition of a novel that is not meant to be for the scholar so much as for the general reader.’
http://www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com/discussion-guide/302224/madame-bovary/,
accessed August 19, 2016.
9 Nabokov, Vladimir. Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson letters, 1940–1971, ed.,
­annot., and with an introd. essay Simon Karlinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2001), 286–87.
‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert 171

Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.10 Quoting the German, ‘zappelnden Beine,’ he crosses

out ‘the trembling of his legs’ and replaces it by ‘his wriggling legs’11 with an
entomological accuracy that calls to mind the way in which he objects to the
‘crawling’ of the flies in Madame Bovary (‘montaient’ in the original12), since
‘flies do not crawl, they walk, they rub their hands.’13
Various pronouncements by Nabokov do however indicate that he enter-
tained a particularly strong and long-standing relationship with Flaubert, and
especially the Flaubert of Madame Bovary. As he recalls his father’s copy of
the novel in his autobiography, Speak, Memory, Nabokov lingers a while on
the handwritten inscription he finds on its flyleaf: ‘The unsurpassed pearl
of French literature,’ to which he adds, ‘a judgment that still holds true.’14
Accordingly, Flaubert featured prominently in the young Nabokov’s literary
education, since ‘by the age of 14 or 15 [he] had read or re-read all Tolstoy in
Russian, all Shakespeare in English, and all Flaubert in French – besides hun-
dreds of other books.’15 Yet his love of Madame Bovary was not simply a youth’s
fling, or the passage obligé of a dutiful son. Indeed, he had begun rereading the
novel from January 1924,16 and in 1928 published King Queen Knave, a novel
which contains ‘amiable little imitations of Madame Bovary,’ ‘a deliberate trib-
ute to Flaubert,’ as he puts it in the foreword to the novel’s English edition.17 By
1932, he was rereading the French masterpiece ‘for the hundredth time.’18 It is
therefore no surprise that in addition to his lecture, Nabokov had toyed with
the idea of publishing a critical study and had contacted John Selby, the editor
of Rinehart, in January 1951, offering him ‘a list of more than 1000 corrections’
along with notes ‘elucidating local, literary and historical allusions, which are

10 Vladimir Nabokov, Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Alexander Pushkin, trans. from the
Russian with a comm. Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1964), x.
11 Vladimir Nabokov Archive. Berg Collection.
12 Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 80.
13 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 135.
14 Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1969 [1951]), 136.
15 Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: Vintage, 1990 [1973]), 46.
16 Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1990), 132.
17 Vladimir Nabokov, King Queen Knave (London: Penguin Books, 1993 [1968]), viii. For
further developments on the presence of Madame Bovary as intertext in this novel,
see Maurice Couturier, ‘Nabokov and Flaubert,’ in The Garland Companion to Vladimir
Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York: Garland, 1995), 405–12 and Maurice
Couturier, Nabokov ou La tentation française (Paris: Gallimard, 2011).
18 Boyd, The Russian Years, 378.
172 Delage-Toriel

absolutely incomprehensible to the American student,’ and a ‘small book on

the structure of “Madame Bovary” for students.’19 The project, which never saw
the light, evolved partly for financial reasons, but it also evidences the novel’s
ever-present appeal and the urgency Nabokov therefore felt in giving it full
justice in the English-speaking world.
This appeal stems from a number of shared beliefs, among which a com-
mon endeavour to give precedence to the beauty of art over its moral impli-
cations. In a letter to his cousin Louis Bonenfant on 12th December 1856,
Flaubert makes this oft-quoted statement: ‘La morale de l’Art consiste dans sa
beauté même, et j’estime par-dessus tout d’abord le style, et ensuite le Vrai.’20
Nabokov, also a staunch advocate of style, reasserts the supremacy of art over
morality when he claims, in his Afterword to Lolita, that he is not a writer of
didactic fiction, that his novel has ‘no moral in tow’ and that a work of fiction
may only be assessed in terms of the ‘aesthetic bliss’ it conveys.21 Interestingly
enough, these aesthetic creeds were both voiced at a time when their
authors were being attacked on moral grounds. It is thus no small irony that
Nabokov was closely involved in Lolita throughout the years when he taught
Madame Bovary, that is, from 1950 to 1958, the very period during which
Lolita was written, published and banned in France (1955–58), then finally
published in America (August 1958). Although Nabokov the respectable aca-
demic remains understandably discreet on these matters, the shadow of his
‘lolitigation,’22 as he playfully coined it, lurks quite plainly when he presents
Flaubert’s troubles with the law to his students:

the novel was actually tried in a court of justice for obscenity. Just imag-
ine that. As if the work of an artist could ever be obscene. I am glad to say
that Flaubert won his case. That was exactly a hundred years ago. In our
days, our times… But let me keep to my subject.23

19 Vladimir Nabokov, Selected Letters 1940–1977, ed. Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990), 112. In this same letter, Nabokov declares that
he has to spend ‘at least 10 minutes’ during each class ‘correcting the incredible mistrans-
lations (more exactly, only the worst of them)’ (111), a situation which he judges ‘alarming’
(112).
20 Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance, ed. Jean Bruneau (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 643–44. ‘The
morality of Art consists in its beauty, and I value above all style, and, after that, Truth.’
21 Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, ed., with pref., introd., and notes Alfred Appel,
Jr. (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 314.
22 Nabokov, Selected Letters, 210.
23 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 125.
‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert 173

Furthermore, Nabokov saw eye to eye with Flaubert in the latter’s rejection of
the social importance of fiction. Nabokov’s early caveat, ‘the girl Emma Bovary
never existed: the book Madame Bovary shall exist forever and ever’24 thus
closely echoes Flaubert’s own assertion that ‘Madame Bovary is a pure inven-
tion’ (‘Madame Bovary est une pure invention’).25 Accordingly, Nabokov avoids
delving into the genesis of the novel – contrary to many critics, he shows no
interest in speculating over the possible model(s) for its main protagonist – and
rejects the ‘realist’ label that is traditionally given to Flaubert, claiming instead,
as in the case of Mansfield Park, Don Quixote and Anna Karenina, that Madame
Bovary is a ‘fairy tale.’26 Cutting free from contemporary academe’s methods
instructing students to break literature into prefabricated c­ ategories – ‘trends’
and ‘schools,’ and ‘myths,’ and ‘symbols,’ and ‘social comment’27 – Nabokov
upholds the life of the individual that evolves its own unique conditions. He
reminds his students that ‘Flaubert’s novel deals with the delicate calculus of
human fate, not with the arithmetic of social conditioning,’28 thus smashing
to smithereens the widespread assimilation of Flaubert not only to the realist
movement but also to the naturalist movement, in which the individual is seen
to be a mere product of his or her environment.29 As he neatly puts it, ‘the isms
go; the ist dies; art remains.’30
For both Nabokov and Flaubert, the social milieu which surrounds them
serves as a kind of clay or gross material from which they will elaborate the
highest and most unique form of art. Once more the parallel between Lolita
and Madame Bovary proves relevant, since in both cases, the author draws
much of his inspiration from the distance that separates him from the social
milieu he describes. Thus whilst Nabokov writes that ‘nothing is more exhila-
rating than philistine vulgarity,’31 a century earlier, Flaubert admits that ‘les
milieux communs me répugnent et c’est parce qu’ils me répugnent que j’ai pris

24 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 124.

25 Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance, 728. In another letter he was even more categorical:
‘Madame Bovary n’a rien de vrai. C’est une histoire totalement inventée’ (Flaubert, Cor-
respondance, 691, his italics).
26 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 124.
27 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 128.
28 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 126.
29 In his copy of the Rinehart edition, Nabokov characteristically crosses out as ‘nonsense’
a paragraph from Charles i. Weir’s introduction which develops the idea that Flaubert’s
work contained the seeds of the naturalist movement, with its focus on environment and
heredity. Nabokov’s copy of the edition is in the Berg Collection.
30 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 147.
31 Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, 315.
174 Delage-Toriel

celui-là, lequel était archi-commun et anti-plastique.’32 Nabokov congratulates

his peer for the special gift he has of dealing artistically with the vulgarity of
his subject matter. In particular, when listing the romantic clichés upon which
Emma feeds, in Chapter 6 of Part i:

In the convent, the novels she read ‘were all love, lovers, paramours, per-
secuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every relay,
horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heart-aches, vows,
sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady
groves, “gentlemen” brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one
ever was, always well dressed and weeping like tombstone urns.’33

This mocking enumeration, which might have been inspired by a similar

rhetorical device used by Théophile Gautier in his foreword to Mademoiselle
de Maupin,34 finds its Nabokovian equivalent in Lolita’s fascination with the
stereotypes of popular culture, especially movies, of which she is a fervid
consumer:

Her favourite kinds were, in this order: musicals, underworlders, west-

erners. In the first, real singers and dancers had unreal stage careers in
an essentially grief-proof sphere of existence wherefrom death and truth
were banned, and where, at the end, white-haired, dewy-eyed, techni-
cally deathless, the initially reluctant father of a show-crazy girl always
finished by applauding her apotheosis on fabulous Broadway.35

Both writers thrive on the worn-out tricks of ‘lowlier’ forms of art, which they
humorously magnify by resorting to plural forms and hyperboles, as well as
repetitions that give a specific cadence to the vignette and make it much more

32 Flaubert, Correspondance, 652.

33 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 138. ‘Ce n’était qu’amours, amants, amantes, dames
persécutées s’évanouissant dans des pavillons solitaires, postillons qu’on tue à tous les
relais, chevaux qu’on crève à toutes les pages, forêts sombres, troubles du cœur, serments,
sanglots, larmes et baisers, nacelles au clair de lune, rossignols dans des bosquets, mes-
sieurs braves comme des lions, doux comme des agneaux, vertueux comme on ne l’est
pas, toujours bien mis, et qui pleurent comme des urnes’ (Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 100).
34 ‘Ce n’étaient qu’ogives, tourelles, colonnettes, verrières coloriées, cathédrales et châteaux
forts; − ce n’étaient que damoiselles et damoiseaux, pages et valets, truands et soudards,
galants chevaliers et châtelains féroces’ (Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin
(Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966), 36).
35 Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, 170.
‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert 175

sophisticated than its actual subject. For example, Flaubert stresses the maud-
lin sentimentality of the novels Emma reads through the repetition of the
‘am’ sound in ‘amours, amants, amantes, dames,’ whilst Nabokov underlines
the preposterous artificiality of musicals by jumbling together fricatives and
sibilants in ‘grief-proof sphere.’ Certain syntagmatic structures are repeated
to emphasize the hackneyed nature of these representations, Flaubert wield-
ing the simile quite immoderately (‘braves comme des lions, doux comme
des agneaux, vertueux comme on ne l’est pas, […] et qui pleurent comme des
urnes’) whilst Nabokov douses his text with compound adjectives (‘grief-proof,’
‘white-haired,’ ‘dewy-eyed,’ ‘show-crazy’).
The taxonomy of popular culture that both writers devise in these excerpts
provides an apt illustration of the ‘scientific’ bent in their writing. The French
writer’s assertion that ‘la poésie est une chose aussi précise que la géométrie’36
is indeed very much in keeping with Nabokov’s belief that ‘in a work of art there
is a kind of merging between the two things, between the precision of poetry
and the excitement of pure science.’37 Such precision comes at a cost: while
Nabokov needed six years to write Lolita, it took Flaubert five years to c­ ompose
Madame Bovary, years of countless toil and frustration of which Nabokov
affords his students an inkling by quoting fragments from the author’s abun-
dant correspondence. He thus quotes a letter in which Flaubert discloses the
trials and tribulations afforded by the writing of the conversation the Bovarys
have with Homais and Léon when the couple first arrives in Yonville:

Exactly one year after his starting to compose the book (eighty to ­ninety
pages in one year – that is a fellow after my heart), Flaubert wrote
to his mistress Louise Colet on 19 September 1852: ‘What a nuisance
my Bovary is… This scene at the inn may take me three months for all
I know. At times I am on the brink of tears – so keenly do I feel my help-
lessness […].’38

It is amusing to see how Nabokov parenthetically warms to his fellow ­writer’s

hardships, especially so since it reminds one of that other parenthesis he
makes in his ‘Afterword to Lolita’ when referring to the couple of lines on the
Kasbeam barber ‘who cost [him] a month of work.’39 Nabokov’s own copy of
Madame Bovary includes regular handwritten references to dates culled from

36 Flaubert, Correspondance, 392.

37 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 10.
38 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 147.
39 Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, 316.
176 Delage-Toriel

Flaubert’s letters, thanks to which he was able to read the novel with two
chrono­logies in mind, that is, not only the progression of its plot but also the
progression of its composition. Keeping abreast with Flaubert’s compositional
rhythm meant that for Nabokov, reading and writing had to follow a parallel
course. This concern is made manifest by his endeavour to usher his students
into the intimacy of the writer’s study, and thus allow them to approach fic-
tion from the perspective of its creator. Six extensive passages from the cor-
respondence are included in the lecture, enabling Nabokov to not only share
Flaubert’s intentions but, by so doing, to help them gather what he considers
an accurate interpretation of the novel.
This stance is quite perceptible when he handles the afore-mentioned
conversation in the inn. Having given a detailed periphrastic account of the
scene, peppering it with a few derogatory remarks on its characters, Nabokov
produces his interpretation in a nutshell (‘False art and false science meet
here’), then clinches his argument by calling forth the master’s word:

In a letter to his mistress (9 October 1852) Flaubert indicates the subtle

point of this scene. ‘I am in the act of composing a conversation between
a young man and a young woman about literature, the sea, mountains,
music, and all other so-called poetic subjects. It may all seem to be seri-
ously meant to the average reader, but in point of fact the grotesque is my
real intention.’40

It is worth noting that Nabokov makes two additions to the original which
betray his own bias: ‘so-called’ and ‘to the average reader.’ Even though he is
probably merely making explicit Flaubert’s thoughts, these additions have
a very Nabokovian flavour in that they emphasize the hiatus between the
learned and the unlearned, the common – or average – crowd and the indi-
vidual genius, ‘synthetic jelly’ and the ‘discovered wild fruit.’41 Nabokov is
thrusting out large sign-posts in bold letters, in a manner that recalls Flannery
O’Connor’s famous statement: ‘to the hard of hearing you shout and for the
almost blind you draw large and startling figures.’42 As a teacher, he is intent on

40 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 149. ‘Je suis à faire une conversation d’un jeune homme
et d’une jeune dame sur la littérature, la mer, les montagnes, la musique, tous les sujets
poétiques enfin. On pourrait la prendre au sérieux et elle est d’une grande intention de
grotesque’ (Flaubert, Correspondance, 172).
41 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 7.
42 Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1965), 34.
‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert 177

hoisting his students above the ‘average’ and preventing them from falling for
the seductions of ­‘so-called’ art. The writer is there to ‘indicate’ the correct and
‘subtle’ hermeneutic path. Consequently, Nabokov takes on Flaubert in order to
make sure that his students will not follow the wrong track, which makes him
much more didactic of course than he would have probably cared to admit. Yet
in so doing, he is merely following the plan he had expressed at the start of his
lecture, that is to say, ‘We shall discuss Madame Bovary as Flaubert intended
it to be discussed.’43 Two assumptions may be drawn from this declaration: for
one thing, it is the writer who sets the hermeneutic rules of his own work; for
the other, Nabokov is a perfectly reliable spokesman for Flaubert. For ­literary
theoreticians Wimsatt and Beardsley, this would have been ­tantamount to
‘intentional fallacy.’ In any case, we are quite far here from reader-response
theory – which only developed in the 1960s anyway – or from the structur-
alist take on literature which tends to treat the text per se, ­regardless of its
author’s intentions. The repetition of the verb ‘discuss’ at the opening and the
close of the sentence creates a kind of tautological proposition in which there
seems to be no space for other ways of reading, and in which writerly authority
encloses the reader as the only meaning-producing entity worth considering.
Apart from Proust, yet another fellow writer, and one which is dear to his heart,
Nabokov does not make a single reference to any other critical interpretation of
the novel in the course of his lecture. In this respect, reading is a matter of huis
clos connivance between the individual reader and the individual writer, the
latter setting the rules of the interpretative relationship. One could therefore
suggest that as a teacher transmitting the art of a fellow writer he very much
appreciates, ­Nabokov makes his interventionist proclivities – or his authorial
‘tyranny,’ as critic Maurice Couturier would have it – all the more blatant.44
For all that, Nabokov’s interpretative approach, in this lecture as in o­ thers
(I am thinking, notably, of that on Anna Karenina), is rather scanty. One of
his great qualities is his comparative approach, which offers insights into
the patterned structure of the novel and sometimes even beyond, when for
instance, regarding the theme of ‘layers,’ he draws a parallel between Flaubert’s
description of Charles’ cap and Gogol’s description of Chichikov’s traveling
case and Korobochka’s carriage in Dead Souls. Nevertheless, besides a num-
ber of characteristically peremptory statements such as ‘Flaubert’s bourgeois
is a state of mind, not a state of pocket,’ ‘all reality is comparative reality,’ or
‘only children can be excused for identifying themselves with the characters in

43 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 126.

44 Maurice Couturier, Nabokov ou la tyrannie de l’auteur (Paris: Seuil, 1993).
178 Delage-Toriel

a book,’45 along with a few formal notions such as ‘counterpoint,’ ­‘transitions,’ or

‘the unfolding method,’ his study of the writing itself falls short of any detailed
piece of analysis. In accordance with his faith in the truth of the w ­ riter’s
word, Nabokov mostly paraphrases and summarises the text, or else merely
quotes it, perhaps believing that his lectures might be the only occasion for
his ­students to actually read the text. His study of Flaubert’s style, for example,
consists mainly in describing in a short paragraph a feature such as the use
of the semi-colon followed by the conjunction ‘and,’ then simply g­ iving a few
examples derived from the novel without any further comment, as though he
paradoxically refused to impress his students with his own analytical slant. In
this regard, his attitude to the crucial carriage drive in Rouen, which marks
the beginning of Emma’s adulterous relationship with Léon, is symptomatic:
‘There is no need to go into the details of this remarkably amusing carriage
drive, for a quotation will speak for itself.’46 Although Nabokov seems keen
on drawing attention to the formal aspects of the novel, he remains curiously
silent about one of the most intriguing formal devices used by Flaubert, namely
the shift in narrative voices at the beginning of the novel, from the subjective
‘nous’ that opens the novel to a more impersonal narrator. He briefly evokes
this point when discussing the work’s transitions:

The first transition, a fairly simple one, occurs at the very beginning of
the book. The story starts with the assumption that the author, aged
seven, and a certain Charles Bovary, aged thirteen, were schoolmates in
Rouen in 1828. It is in the manner of a subjective account, in the first
person we, but of course this is merely a literary device since Flaubert
invented Charles from top to toe. This pseudosubjective account runs for
about three pages and then changes from the subjective to an objective
narrative, a shift from the direct impression of the present to an account
in ordinary novelistic narrative of Bovary’s past.47

This treatment of a rather singular and significant aspect is typical of

Nabokov’s descriptive approach: rather than attempt to elucidate Flaubert’s
­motivations – why start with this pseudosubjective account? why then aban-
don it so quickly? – for which he found no clue in the correspondence, or
rather than discuss the effects of this device on the story – is it convincing?

45 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 127, 146, 150.

46 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 165.
47 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 151.
‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert 179

how does it affect the readers’ entrance into the novel and our perception of
Charles? – he is content with a mere exposition of facts.
There is perhaps one area, however, in which Nabokov ventures more
­deeply into interpretation and analysis, and that is in his handling of its main
protagonist, Emma Bovary. Generally speaking, our author has little sympathy
for Flaubert’s heroine. Here are the terms in which he first presents her:

she has a shallow mind: her charm, beauty and refinement do not pre-
clude a fatal streak of philistinism in her. Her exotic daydreams do not
prevent her from being small-town bourgeois at heart, clinging to con-
ventional ideas or committing this or that conventional violation of
the conventional, adultery being a most conventional way to rise above
the conventional. […] However, her extraordinary physical charm, her
­unusual grace, her birdlike, hummingbirdlike vivacity – all this is irresist-
ibly attractive and enchanting to three men in the book […].48

Like her two lovers and her husband, Nabokov is far from indifferent to Emma’s
physical assets, as is also indicated by his insistence on achieving absolutely
accurate translations of her physical portraits (see above), yet the conjunction
‘however’ marks a clear limit between, on the one hand, these positive traits
and, on the other, those damming moral and mental defects that definitely
relegate her to an inferior category of beings. It is not the adulteress whom
Nabokov blames, adultery being after all no crime, merely a ‘conventional’ act.
Anna Karenina’s adultery does not prevent her from being, in his eyes, ‘not
just a woman, not just a splendid specimen of womanhood with a full, com-
pact, important moral nature: everything about her character is significant and
striking, and this applied as well to her love.’49 And indeed, a perfunctory com-
parison between the two heroines makes the French lady pale in front of her
Russian counterpart for different reasons altogether: ‘Her truthful and passion-
ate nature makes disguise and secrecy impossible. She is not Emma Bovary,
a provincial dreamer, a wistful wench creeping along crumbling walls to the
beds of interchangeable paramours.’50 Emma, as Nabokov states, ‘is false, she is
deceitful by nature,’51 and that is her essential flaw. In this he echoes F­ laubert’s
own appreciation: ‘c’est une nature quelque peu perverse, une femme de fausse

48 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 133.

49 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 144.
50 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature (New York, London: Harvest, 1981), 144.
51 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 142.
180 Delage-Toriel

poésie et de faux sentiments.’52 As such, Emma is less akin to Anna than she
is to Lolita, who, in the eyes of Humbert Humbert, has already learned to ‘cul-
tivate deceit,’53 is characterised by ‘a combination of naïveté and deception,
of charm and vulgarity’ and is ‘mentally […] a disgustingly conventional little
girl.’54 As previously observed, both characters share a certain gullibility and
like Lolita, Emma is an ‘ideal consumer,’ phantasizing over the exotic entice-
ments of Parisian fashion, revelling in mostly cheap novellas, indulging in ‘the
whole Bible of the bad reader,’ as Nabokov terms it, where the American teen-
ager believes, ‘with a kind of celestial trust, any advertisement or advice that
appeared in Movie Love or Screen Land,’ and dreams of becoming a Hollywood
star. Both Emma and Lolita, in sum, are creatures that highlight their creators’
cultural snobbism.55
Yet, notwithstanding their creators’ intentions, the fame of both heroines
propelled their lives beyond the boundaries of the novels in which they were
conceived, thus allowing them to escape from their initial authorial cast. The
most eloquent sign of this evolution is the fact that they now exist as antono-
masias, like other mythical figures such as Don Quixote or Carmen. In the case
of Emma Bovary, this migration from proper to common noun has especially
taken the form of an ‘ism,’ Bovarysm, something which Nabokov seems to dis-
regard, and which he probably disliked, considering his aversion for ‘ists’ and
‘isms,’ contrarily to Flaubert, who had intended to make of his heroine the
reproduction of a ‘type.’56 The Oxford English Dictionary defines this topos in the
following terms: ‘By a process of what Jules de Gaultier has called “Bovarysme”
we impose upon ourselves a more or less fictitious personality.’57 In other
words, the quality that history has retained in Mme Bovary is her propensity
to wish to reinvent herself and her own life, taking as models the heroes and

52 Flaubert, Correspondance, 696–97.

53 Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, 229.
54 Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, 147–48, 148.
55 Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, 148, 150, 148. For the purpose of this article, my com-
parison of Lolita and Madame Bovary mostly focuses on the representation of the main
female protagonist. For other analyses of the relationship between the two novels,
see Couturier, ‘Nabokov and Flaubert’ and La tentation française and Suzanne Fraysse,
‘Madame Bovary est-elle une mauvaise lectrice? L’éthique de la lecture selon Flaubert et
Nabokov,’ in Le bovarysme et la littérature de langue anglaise, ed. Nicole Terrien and Yvan
Leclerc (Rouen: Publications de l’université de Rouen, 2004), 123–45.
56 Flaubert, Correspondance, 728.
57 Jules de Gaultier was the first to turn Madame Bovary’s predicament into a general f­ aculty
of the human mind. His condensed definition of Bovarysm reads: ‘Cette faculté est le
­pouvoir départi à l’homme de se concevoir autre qu’il n’est’ (Jules de Gaultier, Le Bovarysme.
(Paris: Mercure de France, 1921), 3, his italics).
‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert 181

heroines in the fiction she reads. To Nabokov, she is the perfect counter-model
for her students, for ‘she is a bad reader. She reads books emotionally, in a shallow
juvenile manner, putting herself in this or that female character’s place.’58 This
way of reading, one may remember, corresponds to what he designates in his
essay ‘Good Readers and Good Writers’ as ‘the worst thing a reader can do, he
identifies himself with a character in the book.’59 In Nabokov’s book, the reader
should identify not with the character but with the author of a piece of fiction,
but what he seems to miss is the fact that although Emma fails in her endeavour
and is deluded in many ways, she is also empowered by her imagination and
derives from the fiction she reads an extraordinary means of emancipation.
More than one male writer has been sensitive to this aspect. Julien Gracq,
for instance, deems the novel more remarkable for its main protagonist’s awak-
ening than for her failure, and is especially struck by the intensity of her pug-
nacious will,

l’intensité de flamme vive qui plante son héroïne, au milieu du sommeil

épais d’un trou de Normandie, comme une torche allumée. Je suis plus
sensible, à cette relecture, au beau combat d’Emma qu’à sa défaite, qui
n’est nullement dérisoire, comme on le dit trop souvent. Car, en somme,
tout ce qu’il est possible de tenter, dans sa situation dès le début sans
espoir, elle le tente, non sans hardiesse, et la passivité nostalgique et fas-
cinée qui a gardé le nom de bovarysme n’a que très relativement à voir
avec un esprit de décision qui, dans le livre, va plus d’une fois jusqu’à
l’intrépidité. […]
C’est cette fureur d’un vouloir-vivre effréné, lent à s’éveiller, couvant et
finalement explosant dans la torpeur d’une bourgade comme une bombe
à retardement, qui en définitive assure pour beaucoup la grandeur du
livre.60

Mario Varga Llosa, who devotes a book-length study to the novel, is also an
admirer of its heroine. In his eyes, her defeat does not prove that she was
wrong, but simply that the fight was unequal. In his view, much of Emma’s
appeal arises from the spirit of revolt with which she seeks to break free from
the limits of her social condition: ‘La rebeldía de Emma nace de esta convic-
ción, raíz de todos sus actos: no me resigno a mi suerte, la dudosa compen-
sación del másallá no me importa, quiero que mi vida se realice plena y total

58 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 136.

59 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 4.
60 Julien Gracq, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 612.
182 Delage-Toriel

aquí y ahora.’61 Such dreams and desires were so rarely fostered in women of
Flaubert’s time that Baudelaire, his contemporary, was moved to suggest that
the writer had instilled in his heroine his own masculinity:

madame Bovary, pour ce qu’il y a en elle de plus énergique et de plus ambi-

tieux, et aussi de plus rêveur, madame Bovary est restée un homme. Comme
la Pallas armée, sortie du cerveau de Zeus, ce bizarre androgyne a gardé
toutes les séductions d’une âme virile dans un charmant corps féminin.62

Nabokov, for his part, mostly casts his eyes on the contours of her charming
female body and one wonders whether he deliberately omits – or is he m ­ erely
blind to its significance? – an important reference to her male proclivities
when he quotes Flaubert’s first portrait of her, which ends with the ­following
sentence: ‘Elle portait, comme un homme, passé entre deux boutons de son
corsage, un lorgnon d’écaille.’63 Nabokov ends the quotation just before this,
a curious oversight for one who professes to be a stickler for detail. For in this
gesture, which is no mere coquetry, but an accessory whereby Emma wishes
to appear as a male dandy, Flaubert makes us glimpse, from the very start, the
very essence of Bovarysm, that is, the lady’s impulse to endow herself, metony­
mically, with the attributes of the other – and stronger – sex, the desire to
see, and be seen by the world, as a man. Perhaps Nabokov was averse to such
­transgressions. After all, none of his heroines ever show any noble boldness
in rejecting the patriarchal frame that imprisons them; to put it bluntly, what
­prevails in his fiction is male desire and male views of the world.64 It is therefore
no wonder that Nabokov should have also been silent about that most famous
of statements by Flaubert, ‘Madame Bovary, c’est moi,’ which, although it has
never been ascertained, would seem quite plausible in the light of the claim
he made to Hippolyte Taine, namely that he was so affected by his characters

61 Mario Vargas Llosa, La orgía perpetua. Flaubert y Madame Bovary (Madrid: Taurus, 1975),
6. ‘Emma’s revolt is born from this conviction, which is the root of all her acts: I do not
resign myself to my fate, the doubtful compensation of the hereafter does not matter to
me, I wish my life to be absolutely and entirely fulfilled.’
62 Charles Baudelaire, ‘Madame Bovary par Gustave Flaubert,’ in Œuvres complètes, ed.
Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), vol. 1, 81. ‘Madame Bovary, in what is most ener-
getic and ambitious, but also dreamy about her, Madame Bovary has remained a man.
Like Athena emerging fully armed from Zeus’s head, this bizarre androgyne retains all the
seductions of a virile soul in a charming feminine body.’
63 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 73. ‘Like a man, she had a tortoise-shell eyeglass thrust in be-
tween two buttons of her bodice.’
64 I discuss Nabokov’s conservative take on the gender issue at some length in Lara
­Delage-Toriel, ‘Ultraviolet Darlings’: Representations of Women in Nabokov’s Prose Fiction.
Unpublished PhD Thesis, Cambridge University, 2001.
‘Do Dogs Eat Poppies?’: When Nabokov Teaches Flaubert 183

that he would become part of them. Thus, when writing Emma’s poisoning, he
himself felt the taste of arsenic in his mouth and suffered from serious indiges-
tion.65 This, of course, would not comfortably fit in with Nabokov’s image of
the male author fully in control, the puppeteer coolly manipulating his ‘galley
slaves’ from above.66 And yet Nabokov himself was not completely insensitive
to his characters’ plight, since as he once admitted in an interview, he, like
Flaubert with the death of Emma Bovary, did cry while composing Lolita’s last
scene with Humbert.67 It might be useful, then, to take a little distance from
Nabokov’s prescriptions and strong opinions, and remember what he most
genuinely transmits, that is, the love of literature, a love both intellectual and
emotional, and, like Bovarysm, which writer Daniel Pennac labels a textually
transmittable disease, a highly contagious one.68
Oh, and by the way, if you are still wondering whether dogs eat poppies,
then I am sorry to say you will have to read, or re-read, Madame Bovary, or else,
if you are impatient, read Nabokov’s lecture. ‘Do dogs eat poppies?’ was one of
the exam questions he gave in January 1957.69

Literature Cited

Barnes, Julian. ‘Writer’s Writer and Writer’s Writer’s Writer,’ London Review of Books 32
(2010), 7–11.
Baudelaire, Charles. ‘Madame Bovary par Gustave Flaubert.’ In Œuvres complètes, ed-
ited by Claude Pichois, vol. 1: 3–83. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990.
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1991.
Couturier, Maurice. ‘Nabokov and Flaubert.’ In The Garland Companion to Vladimir
Nabokov, edited by Vladimir E. Alexandrov, 405–12. New York: Garland, 1995.

65 Hippolyte Taine, De l’intelligence (Paris: Hachette, 1870), 94. ‘Mes personnages imagi-
naires m’affectent, me poursuivent, ou plutôt c’est moi qui suis en eux. Quand j’écrivais
l’empoisonnement d’Emma Bovary, j’avais si bien le goût d’arsenic dans la bouche, j’étais
si bien empoisonné moi-même que je me suis donné deux indigestions coup sur coup,
deux indigestions très réelles, car j’ai vomi tout mon dîner.’
66 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 95.
67 Les Nouvelles Littéraires, October 29, 1959. Quoted in Stacy Schiff, Véra (Mrs. Vladimir
Nabokov) (London: Random House, 1999), 255.
68 ‘Maladie textuellement transmissible.’ Bovarysm ranks as the reader’s sixth inalienable
right (Daniel Pennac, Comme un Roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 145).
69 Vladimir Nabokov Archive. Berg Collection.
184 Delage-Toriel

Couturier, Maurice. Nabokov ou La tyrannie de l’auteur. Paris: Seuil, 1993.

Couturier, Maurice. Nabokov ou La tentation française. Paris: Gallimard, 2011.
Delage-Toriel, Lara. ‘Ultraviolet Darlings’: Representations of Women in Nabokov’s Prose
Fiction. PhD Thesis, Cambridge University, 2001.
Flaubert, Gustave. Correspondance, edited by Jean Bruneau. Paris: Gallimard, 1988.
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Paris: Gallimard, 1999.
Fraysse, Suzanne. ‘Madame Bovary est-elle une mauvaise lectrice? L’éthique de la
lecture selon Flaubert et Nabokov.’ In Le bovarysme et la littérature de langue
a­ nglaise, edited by Nicole Terrien and Yvan Leclerc, 123–45. Rouen: Publications de
l’université de Rouen, 2004.
Gaultier de, Jules. Le Bovarysme. Paris: Mercure de France, 1921.
Gautier, Théophile. Mademoiselle de Maupin. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966.
Gracq, Julien. Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola. Paris: Gallimard, 1995.
Llosa, Mario Vargas. La orgía perpetua. Flaubert y Madame Bovary. Madrid: Taurus, 1975.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksander Pushkin. Translated
from the Russian, with a commentary, by Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Bollingen
Foundation, 1964.
Nabokov, Vladimir. King Queen Knave. London: Penguin books, 1993 [1968].
Nabokov, Vladimir. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1969 [1951].
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by
John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Russian Literature, edited, with an introduction, by
Fredson Bowers. New York, London: Harvest, 1981.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Strong Opinions. New York: Vintage International, 1990 [1973].
Nabokov, Vladimir. Selected Letters 1940–1977, edited by Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew
J. Bruccoli. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990.
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita, edited, with preface, introduction, and notes
by Alfred Appel Jr. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson letters, 1940–1971,
edited, annotated, and with an introductory essay by Simon Karlinsky. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001.
O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1965.
Pennac, Daniel. Comme un roman. Paris: Gallimard, 1992.
Schiff, Stacy. Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). London: Random House, 1999.
Taine, Hippolyte. De l’intelligence. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie, 1870.
Updike, John. Introduction to Lectures on Literature, by Vladimir Nabokov, edited by
Fredson Bowers, introduction by John Updike, xvii–xxvii. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1980.
 chapter 10

Of Words and Worlds: The Role of Proust’s

Aesthetics in Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature

Roy Groen

Abstract

This is not a study of the relationship between Nabokov’s texts and Marcel Proust’s
In Search of Lost Time. However, whereas previous critics focused predominantly on
­stylistic and thematic silhouettes of Proust in Nabokov’s novels, this c­ ontribution seeks
to ­focus more in particular on the distinctly Proustian reverberations that r­esound
in some of the central aesthetic beliefs and opinions underlying Nabokov’s critical
­analyses in the Lectures on Literature. Closely comparing fragments from both authors,
an effort is made here to lay bare not only the many ways in which the thoughts of
these two giants of modern literature are interrelated, but also, and perhaps more
­importantly, where and how they subtly differ from one another.

Vladimir Nabokov did not like to be compared to fellow authors. In his fore-
word to the translation of Invitation to a Beheading, he remarks that he ‘could
never understand why every book of mine invariably sends reviewers scurry-
ing in search of more or less celebrated names for the purpose of passionate
comparison.’1 One of the ‘more or less celebrated names’ that comes up, along
with Gogol and ‘Tolstoyevsky,’ is that of Marcel Proust. Many literary critics
have indeed suggested a link between the works of Vladimir Nabokov and
Marcel Proust’s magnum opus In Search of Lost Time, especially after ­Nabokov
decided to impart his famous list of ‘masterpieces of the twentieth c­ entury’
­during an interview in 1965: ‘My greatest masterpieces of twentieth ­century
prose are, in this order: Joyce’s Ulysses; Kafka’s Transformation; Bely’s P­ etersburg;
and the first half of Proust’s fairy tale In Search of Lost Time.’2
J.E. Rivers, in an article entitled ‘Proust, Nabokov, and Ada,’ states that
‘[t]hough Proust’s work obviously influences the shape and tone of Nabokov’s
fiction by its presence therein, it does not exert a direct influence upon Nabokov’s

1 Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading (London: Penguin Books, 2010), viii.

2 Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), 57.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_012

186 Groen

aesthetic philosophy or upon the formulation of his central themes.’3 He bases

this remark on a short survey of mostly literal references to Proust in a vari-
ety of works by Nabokov, and on Nabokov’s own statement that ‘he first read
Proust with his wife around 1935–1936, at which time […] he had already been
formed as a writer and was immune to outside influences.’4 Although Rivers
takes Nabokov’s assertion on the subject for granted, there is in fact ample
­reason for doubt.
Brian Boyd, for his part, cites Nikolay Rayevsky, an old friend of Nabokov, to
whom Nabokov allegedly said when asked whether he liked Proust: ‘not just
like; I simply adore him. I’ve read all twelve volumes through twice.’ This scene
occurred at least five years earlier, in 1930.5 Moreover, John Burt Foster Jr. and
Jane Grayson point out that Nabokov’s Kamera Obskura, the original Russian
version of Laughter in the Dark, contains a lengthy parody of Proust’s style and
thematic concerns – this book was published in 1933.6 Another ­reason for doubt
can be found in Jane Grayson’s revealing monograph on intra-­linguistic trans-
formations in Nabokov’s œuvre. She reports a 1934 interview where Nabokov
stated that he ‘loved Flaubert and Proust.’7 Nabokov added that, curiously,
during his Russian youth, he had a predilection for Western authors, whereas
now, living in the West, he felt more affiliated to the great authors from the
Russian tradition, such as Gogol and Chekhov. Grayson cites this interview to
emphasise once more that ‘Nabokov cannot be neatly fitted into any national
pigeon-hole,’ and this, as many critics have confirmed after her, is a very apt
conclusion.8
For our purposes here, the interview unearthed by Grayson serves as yet
another reason for treating Nabokov’s claim that he only started reading Proust
in the mid-1930s with some caution. It is difficult to establish (and ultimately
not very important) whether Nabokov consciously tried to hide something

3 J. Edwin Rivers, ‘Proust, Nabokov, and Ada,’ in Critical Essays on Vladimir Nabokov, ed.
Phyllis Roth (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1984), 141. The article by Rivers has been hailed as ‘the best
­overall ­account of Nabokov’s relation to Proust’ by John Burt Foster Jr. in his contribution
on ­‘Nabokov and Proust’ to The Garland Companion to Nabokov, ed. Vladimir E. Alexandrov
(New York: Garland, 1995), 480.
4 Rivers, ‘Proust, Nabokov, and Ada,’ 141.
5 Nabokov quoted in Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian Years (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990), 354.
6 See Jane Grayson, Nabokov Translated: A Comparison of Nabokov’s Russian and English Prose
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). For Foster’s take see his ‘Nabokov and Proust,’ 473.
7 Interview first published in Poslednie novosti (Latest News), 1934, cited in Grayson, Nabokov
Translated, 218. Nabokov’s exact wording, in Russian: ‘ya lyublyu Flobera i Prusta.’
8 Grayson, Nabokov Translated, 218.
Of Words and Worlds 187

from Rivers when the latter visited him in 1973 to talk about Proust, or whether
he had just temporarily forgotten ‘where his Muse was schooled.’9 Besides,
Nabokov’s assertion that he was already ‘completely formed as a writer’ by 1936
seems rather hard to believe. Such an assertion implies a rather remarkable
notion of the writer’s formation. A writer’s formation, it could be argued, does
not end at any definite point in time. Is it not in constant flux? And can we
really say it has ended before the last line of his last book has been written?
In an article on Nabokov’s alleged modernism, John Burt Foster Jr. cites
Proust’s Recherche as an important influence on the aesthetics of Pale Fire and
sees in Proust’s ‘artistic individualism’ a ‘corollary to [Nabokov’s] famous credo
of ­aesthetic bliss defined in the afterword to Lolita.’10 The aforementioned
J.E. Rivers draws strong parallels between Ada and the Recherche, and Chloé
Deroy in an article on ‘erudite incest’ in Ada stops to focus for a moment on the
meaning of ‘the mauve shades of Monsieur Proust.’11 A host of similar accounts
for other novels can be found in John Burt Foster Jr.’s chapter on ‘Nabokov and
Proust’ in the Garland Companion.12
Thus, a large number of critics assume that Proustian aesthetics, in one way
or another, have had some sort of effect on Nabokov’s novels; and the fact that
quite a lot of his characters (Humbert Humbert, Charles Kinbote, Van Veen –
to name but some of the more popular ones) explicitly refer to either Marcel
or Proust adds to the credibility of these assumptions. However, there is one
eminently Nabokovian character that critics have tended to overlook in their
search for Proustian connect: Vladimir Nabokov. That is to say: Vladimir
Nabokov as he presented himself in his lectures at Harvard, Wellesley, and
Cornell.
In an attempt to contribute to the line of inquiry opened up by the critics
mentioned above, it is precisely this ‘character’ (Nabokov the lecturer on
literature, aesthetics, and literary criticism) I want to study here. In more formal
terms, the aim is to offer a comparative study connecting Proust’s Recherche to
a series of documents that have been published as Nabokov’s Lectures. In what
follows, then, I will attempt to delineate the role of Proust’s aesthetics in

9 The expression is Nabokov’s own. It can be found in his 1933 poem ‘Bezumets’ (‘The
Madman’), written in Berlin and reprinted in Russian, French, and English in Vladimir
Nabokov, Poèmes et problèmes (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 88.
10 John Burt Foster Jr., ‘Not T.S. Eliot, but Proust: Revisionary Modernism in Nabokov’s Pale
Fire,’ Comparative Literature Studies 28/1 (1991): 64.
11 Chloé Deroy, ‘L’inceste érudit dans Ada,’ in Kaleidoscopic Nabokov, eds. Lara Delage-Toriel
and Monica Manolescu (Paris: Houdiard, 2009), 118–19.
12 John Burt Foster Jr., ‘Nabokov and Proust,’ in The Garland Companion to Nabokov, ed.
Vladimir E. Alexandrov. New York: Garland, 1995, 472–81.
188 Groen

Nabokov’s œuvre by a preliminary exploration of Nabokov’s Lectures on

Literature.
One of Nabokov’s most infamous literary opinions concerns the idea that
literature does not teach us anything about the world we actually live in.
‘[L]iterature,’ he argues, ‘belongs not to the department of general ideas, but
to the department of specific words and images.’13 Nowhere does Nabokov for-
mulate this idea more explicitly and elegantly than in his lecture on Gogol:

If you expect to find out something about Russia, if you are eager to know
why the blistered Germans bungled their blitz, if you are interested in
‘ideas’ and ‘facts’ and ‘messages,’ keep away from Gogol. The awful trouble
of learning Russian in order to read him will not be repaid in your kind
of hard cash. Keep away, keep away, keep away. He has nothing to tell
you. Keep off the tracks. High tension. Closed for duration. Avoid, refrain,
don’t.14

If literature does not teach us anything about the ‘real’ world, this is not due
to the fact that writers fall short in their descriptions of reality. On the con-
trary, for Nabokov it is the other way round: literary masterpieces have nothing
to tell us about the world of our daily lives because they offer us much more
than just descriptions of this world. Literary masters like Gogol (or Dickens or
Proust) create their own world, and their works will become like self-sufficient
universes with their very own explanatory cosmology. These universes are
wholly autarkic, and, if carefully crafted by the artist, have no connection to
anything outside them. It is this strong conviction about the self-sufficiency
of literary masterpieces that leads Nabokov to conclude that Gogol’s books do
not teach us anything about nineteenth-century Russia and that the inhab-
itants of Proust’s world are ‘of no social or historical importance.’15 This
idea, which replaces the silk curtain between the world of daily life and the
world of literature with an iron one, has some sweeping consequences for
Nabokov’s approach to the literary works discussed in his lectures. Nabokov
the lecturer refuses to digress on the social, political, and moral contexts of
novels. He also refuses to spend time on what he calls ‘general ideas’ or the

13 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, ed., with an introd. Fredson Bowers.
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 323.
14 Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, 60–61.
15 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 208.
Of Words and Worlds 189

‘morals’ (other) critics assume can be drawn from the novels he discusses in
his lectures.16
Thus Nabokov wholeheartedly declines to pay attention to anything but the
text of the novel itself. He is interested in the intricate details of the very special
worlds of the novels themselves, in their personal style and original ­methods
of craftsmanship, an approach that is rooted in his unshakeable belief in the
self-sufficiency of literary worlds:

We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the cre-
ation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is study that
new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new,
having no obvious connection with the world we already know.17

Accepting this premise is fundamental to understanding why Nabokov pro-

ceeds the way he does, why he does not stop to inspect ideas or why he never
once dwells on accounts of the ‘social climate’ of this or that period in literary
history. For if the work of art is indeed ‘invariably the creation of a new world,’
it would not make any sense to study it in relation to other fields of knowledge,
such as those of political or cultural history. We might want to check upon the
historian’s facts once we have fully studied the work in all its artistic original-
ity, but as readers in the process of reading a novel, we should not let ourselves
be distracted from what we are reading but by the occasional shiver of artis-
tic delight. Any questions concerning the work’s relation to other domains of
knowledge are to be postponed, possibly to be taken into account at a later
moment when the reading is done – but such questions are of secondary
importance to the student and reader of literature and as such remain beyond
the scope of literature and literary criticism itself.18
One of the works Nabokov studied with his students at Cornell was Proust’s
Du côté de chez Swann. His lectures on Proust start with barring from the class-
room any form of interest in the social or moral implications of the Recherche.
Nabokov wants the lectures to revolve instead around the central elements

16 See also Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 376: ‘I never could admit that a writer’s job was to
improve the morals of his country, and point out lofty ideals from the tremendous height
of a soapbox […].’ Or: Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Don Quixote, ed. Fredson Bowers,
introd. Guy Davenport (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), 1: ‘We shall do our
best to avoid the fatal error of looking for so-called “real-life” in novels. Let us not try and
reconcile the fiction of facts with the facts of fiction.’
17 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 1.
18 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 1.
190 Groen

of Proust’s style. Citing French literary critic Arnauld Dandieu, he carefully

reminds his students that the Recherche ‘is an evocation, not a description of
the past.’19 By examining the particularly Proustian way in which the world of
In Search of Lost Time is constructed, he tries to give his students an insight
into this ‘fairy tale’ universe. Much like an architect who, charged to renovate
an ancient church, begins with studying the building blocks and their relations
in the original construction, Nabokov starts his critical reconstruction of the
world of the Recherche by analysing the words of which it is ‘made’ and the
style that keeps it (and them) in place.
But let us not focus too much on the way Nabokov treats Proust here. The
pages devoted to Proust in the Lectures of Literature largely speak for them-
selves and Fredson Bowers’ editorial work has ensured they are accessible for
everyone to read. Here I would rather focus on my suspicion that Nabokov the
lecturer is not just a reader of Proust at the moment of analysing the R­ echerche
for his students, but that his readership extends well beyond these moments.
That is to say, I believe Nabokov’s reading of Proust actually informs his
­aesthetics even while discussing the other works of literature in his Lectures
on (Russian) Literature. Why? Because I think it can be argued that the central
element in the aesthetics underlying Nabokov’s approach to literary fiction in
the Lectures (i.e. his conviction that literary masterpieces are self-sufficient
worlds) can be traced to specific passages in Proust’s monumental novel.
In the beginning of the Recherche we are granted access to the recollections
of a man tossing and turning in bed.20 Half-asleep, half-awake, it is through the

19 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 208.

20 Proust has managed to create a unique atmosphere of quiet restlessness for the opening
page of his novel. On the one hand, the first two sentences make it clear to us that we
are going to be introduced to the intimate stillness of the narrator’s bedroom at night
(‘Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure. Parfois, à peine ma bougie éteinte, mes
yeux se fermaient si vite que je n’avais pas le temps de me dire: “Je m’endors.”’) On the
other hand, from the third sentence onward, we find out soon enough that this bedroom
is not the sanctuary of nocturnal serenity we expected it to be on the basis of the first two
sentences: ‘Et, une demi-heure après, la pensée qu’il était temps de chercher le sommeil
m’éveillait; je voulais poser le volume que je croyais avoir encore dans les mains et souf-
fler ma lumière; je n’avais pas cessé en dormant de faire des réflexions sur ce que je venais
de lire, mais ces réflexions avaient pris un tour un peu particulier; il me semblait que
j’étais moi-même ce dont parlait l’ouvrage: une église, un quatuor, la rivalité de François
Ier et de Charles Quint.’ Note the brusque difference between the intricate structure of
subordinate clauses stumbling over their commas in the third sentence in relation to the
relatively smooth flow of the first and second sentences. Note, also, how the logical con-
nector introducing the third sentence, ‘et’ is fully part of the stylistic trick Proust is playing
upon the reader here. Logically, one would expect a ‘mais,’ as the third phrase introduces
Of Words and Worlds 191

narrative thoughts, visions, and memories of this man that we are transported
in time and place from one childhood scene to the next over the course of the
opening pages of the novel. One of these transportations takes us to the scene
from the narrator’s youth, where he enjoyed a ‘lovely Sunday afternoon of
reading’ in the shadow of a chestnut tree standing in the garden of the f­ amily’s
residence in Combray.
At some point in the description of this scene, the young boy is momen-
tarily left to enjoy the soft breeze of the evocated garden by himself. The nar-
rator meanwhile expands upon the subject of reading and in the process he
successfully develops a veritable metaphysics of reading that deconstructs the
traditional ontological opposition between the concepts of reality and truth
on the one hand, and appearance and falsehood on the other. He states:

l’ingéniosité du premier romancier consista à comprendre que dans

l’appareil de nos émotions, l’image étant le seul élément essentiel, la sim-
plification qui consisterait à supprimer purement et simplement les per-
sonnages réels serait un perfectionnement décisif.21

And to explain what is so ingenuous about this, he adds:

Un être réel, si profondément que nous sympathisions avec lui, pour une
grande part est perçu par nos sens, c’est-à-dire nous reste opaque, offre
un poids mort que notre sensibilité ne peut soulever […]. La trouvaille
du romancier a été d’avoir l’idée de remplacer ces parties impénétrables
à l’âme par une quantité égale de parties immatérielles, c’est-à-dire que
notre âme peut s’assimiler.22

In other words, the so-called ‘real beings’ we encounter in daily life can never
actually become ‘real’ to us; we can never fully know these beings because they
are, in fact, too real. The characters we meet in novels, however, can become

an opposition. Proust, however, saves the surprise effect for later on in this sentence, so
as to make the turn introduced here even more brusque and unexpected. This all adds to
the ultimate harmony of form and meaning for this first trinity of sentences, which as a
whole sublimely conveys the staccato yet gradual phenomenon of waking up from sleep
unexpectedly in the middle of the night.
21 Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu (Paris: Gallimard (Pléiade), 1954), tome
1, 85. For an English translation, see: Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Volume i,
Swann’s Way, transl. Charles K. Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, rev. Dennis J. Enright
(New York: The Modern Library, 2003), 116.
22 Proust, Recherche, tome 1, 85; Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. i, 116.
192 Groen

known to us. We can become intimately familiar with fictional beings in a way
that is barred from us in what we call the ‘real’ world. And it is precisely because
these beings are part of a different world and governed by different laws that
we can see and learn matters about them that we tend to overlook in our every-
day world. For example, within the universe of fiction, we can study the furtive
flux of personal (non-)identity. In our everyday world we are often oblivious to
the fact that the people around us are constantly subject to change, especially
when we interact with them on a daily basis. The successful artist, however, is
able to create a universe that is governed by special temporal laws of its own.
This is why those who wish to find out what it means to be ‘a person’ might
actually want to turn to reading works of fiction before they turn their atten-
tion to ‘real’ life or to more empirical methods of enlightenment (e.g. science,
common sense, philosophy).
Further on in the same reflection, the narrator, while discussing the topic of
scenery, asserts:

ces paysages des livres que je lisais n’étaient pas pour moi que des ­paysages
plus vivement représentés à mon imagination que ceux que Combray
mettait sous mes yeux, mais qui eussent été analogues. Par le choix qu’en
avait fait l’auteur, par la foi avec laquelle ma pensée allait au-devant de sa
parole comme d’une révélation, ils me semblaient être – impression que
ne me donnait guère le pays où je me trouvais, et surtout notre jardin,
produit sans prestige de la correcte fantaisie du jardinier que méprisait
ma grand’mère – une part véritable de la Nature elle-même, digne d’être
étudiée et approfondie.23

The imaginative landscapes of novels are disconnected from the real world
just like the characters in a novel: they are not just ‘like real landscapes repre-
sented in a more vivid way to the imagination,’ but much more than that: they
are ‘an actual part of Nature herself, worthwhile of being studied for their own
sake.’ All this is in line with Nabokov’s statements about literary masterpieces
­creating original and self-sufficient worlds. Notwithstanding, the narrator of
the Recherche still attributes importance to visiting the places he reads about in
novels when he reveals that ‘[s]i mes parents m’avaient permis, quand je lisais
un livre, d’aller visiter la région qu’il décrivait, j’aurais cru faire un pas inesti-
mable dans la conquête de la vérité.’24 But although Proust’s narrator seems
to waver here, Proust himself had already explicitly carried the m ­ etaphysics

23 Proust, Recherche, tome 1, 86; Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. i, 119.
24 Proust, Recherche, tome 1, 86; Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. i, 119.
Of Words and Worlds 193

of reading presented in the Recherche to its logical conclusion some ten years
earlier in his preface to Ruskin’s Sésame et les lys, entitled Sur la lecture, when
he wrote:

Nous voudrions aller voir ce champ que Millet (car les peintres nous
­enseignent à la façon des poètes) nous montre dans son Printemps, nous
voudrions que M. Claude Monet nous conduisît à Giverny, au bord de
la Seine, à ce coude de la rivière qu’il nous laisse à peine distinguer à
travers la brume du matin. Or, en réalité, ce sont de simples hasards de
relations ou de parenté qui, en leur donnant l’occasion de passer ou
de ­séjourner auprès d’eux, ont fait choisir pour les peindre à Mme de
­Noailles, à Maeterlinck, à Millet, à Claude Monet, cette route, ce jardin,
ce champ, ce coude de rivière, plutôt que tels autres. Ce qui nous les fait
paraître autres et plus beaux que le reste du monde, c’est qu’ils portent
sur eux comme un reflet insaisissable l’impression qu’ils ont donnée au
génie, et que nous verrions errer aussi singulière et aussi despotique sur
la face indifférente et soumise de tous les pays qu’il aurait peints. Cette
apparence avec laquelle ils nous charment et nous déçoivent et au-delà
de laquelle nous voudrions aller, c’est l’essence même de cette chose en
quelque sorte sans épaisseur – mirage arrêté sur une toile, – qu’est une
vision.25

We might be so impressed by a landscape painted by an artist we admire, or so

deeply touched by a scene from a novel we adore, that we are tempted to visit
these places in the ‘real’ world. Proust warns us we would be wrong to give in to
such temptations. Our interest should never go out to the real-world cathedral
represented in the painting, but always only to the way in which the paint-
ing renders this cathedral in an original way. We should focus on the special
charm of the appearance, on the deceptive image it creates. It is this ‘appear-
ance’ which constitutes the essence of a work of art, and it is the deceptive
nature of the image it creates which merits investigation. The particular truth
of the work of is to be found precisely in the patient analysis of this deception.
The truth then, is not some sort of revelation with regard to this deception, but
rather an illumination of this deception itself, in which it becomes clear that
truth itself is a complex form of (highly complex and artistic) deception.
The passage above contains all the aforementioned elements of Nabokov’s
aesthetics: the worlds created by artists do not mimic Nature, they create new

25 John Ruskin, Marcel Proust, Sésame et les lys, précédé de Sur la Lecture (Paris: Éditions
Complexe, 1987), 34.
194 Groen

Natures, which in their turn may be just as deceiving. And when the work of
art manages to deceive as nature deceives, it starts to express and bespeak a
deeper truth. Like Proust’s description of the great artist as someone who does
not imitate or copy Nature, but creates an appearance that in its very decep-
tiveness vies with Nature’s own deceptiveness, just so Nabokov’s ‘great writer’
(to quote from his introductory notes on ‘Good Readers and Good Writers’) is
‘a great deceiver,’ who ‘follows the Arch-Cheat Nature’s lead.’ The great writer
does so not by imitating Nature, but by using the same sort of tricks and strata-
gems in creating an appearance that is deliberately deceiving. To use Nabokov’s
own allegorical metaphor here: ‘Literature was born not the day when a boy
crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray
wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf,
wolf and there was no wolf behind him.’26 It is precisely because great writers
create their own self-sufficient ‘worlds’ instead of simply ‘copying’ or ‘describ-
ing’ things from the world around them, that they are able to create a world
that is as truly deceptive as the world around us.
Of course one might wonder at this point whether Proust and Nabokov
use the word ‘world’ in exactly the same way. I would argue that they do. To
show that this is the case, let us take a rather brisk leap from Combray and the
­preface to Sésame et les lys to Le temps retrouvé and the oft-cited reflective part
at the end of the Recherche. After a long sequence of meandering thoughts and
artful reflections, Proust’s narrator arrives at his famous discovery: ‘La vraie
vie, la vie enfin découverte et éclaircie, la seule vie par conséquent réellement
vécue, c’est la littérature.’27 This discovery is connected to the narrator’s e­ arlier
musings on the metaphysics of reading, with the difference of course that
at this point in time the narrator has become aware of his true vocation as a
writer. In the first part of Du côté de chez Swann, we witnessed him laying out
the basis for his deconstruction of the opposition between fiction and reality;
in Le temps retrouvé this deconstruction is now in a sense carried through to its
(il)logical conclusion: the world of daily life is proclaimed to be ontologically
inferior to the world of fiction.
But how does the artist create these marvellous worlds – worlds more real
than what common sense has taught us to call the real world? Proust’s narrator
answers: by means of his style. It is by means of his purely personal style that
the artist is able to make us familiar with worlds whose existence we would
have been completely unaware of, had he not generously used his gift to intro-
duce us to them:

26 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 5.

27 Proust, Recherche, tome 3, 895; Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. vi, 298.
Of Words and Worlds 195

Par l’art seulement, nous pouvons sortir de nous, savoir ce que voit un
­autre de cet univers qui n’est pas le même que le nôtre et dont les ­paysages
nous seraient restés aussi inconnus que ceux qu’il peut y avoir dans la
lune. Grâce à l’art, au lieu de voir un seul monde, le nôtre, nous le voyons
se multiplier et, autant qu’il y a d’artistes originaux, autant nous avons de
mondes à notre disposition, plus différents les uns des autres que ceux
qui roulent dans l’infini, et qui bien des siècles après qu’est éteint le foyer
dont ils émanaient, qu’il s’appelât Rembrandt ou Ver Meer [sic], nous
­envoient leur rayon spécial.28

The artist gives us access to a new private universe which, without his or her
mediation, we would not have known. Every original artist creates an original
world, which is nothing like our own world, which is nothing like the tangible
ones, the ones ‘turning away into infinity.’ It makes no difference if the creator
of one of these worlds is no longer alive, as the world he has created for us still
invite us to explore them by the ‘special ray’ they send to us. Here, we have
Proust’s narrator minutely formulating the very principles which Nabokov
would use as the foundation for his lectures on literature some forty years later.
Both Nabokov in his lectures and Proust’s narrator hold that the truly great
artist is someone who manages to create a wholly original world, one that from
an artistic point of view has nothing in common with the world we live in.
In order to create such a literary universe, the artist must go beyond simple
descriptions of the ‘real’ world’s phenomena and events. Impressions and per-
ceptions need to be ‘translated’ and rendered to the reader by means of what
both writers call style. This should allow the artist, not to ‘recreate’ a world that
is not just a simple copy of the everyday world, but rather to create a new one,
governed by its own artistic laws. The truthfulness of this fictional world does
not depend on how well it describes or mimics the world we live in. On the
contrary: this fictional world competes for truth with the world we currently
live in. The outcome of this competition and the degree to which a work of
art is able to fall back on the self-sufficiency of the world it has created when
the historical world moves on, ultimately determines and defines the aesthetic
value of a work of art.
To summarise and finalise this thought, we may cite another famous pas-
sage toward the end of the Recherche, where Proust explains why ‘la littérature
qui se contente de décrire les choses’ does not represent literature in its highest
form:

28 Proust, Recherche, tome 3, 895; Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Volume vi, Time
Regained, transl. Andreas Mayor and Terence Kilmartin, rev. Dennis J. Enright and Joanna
Kilmartin (New York: The Modern Library, 2003), 299.
196 Groen

On peut faire se succéder indéfiniment dans une description les objets

qui figuraient dans le lieu décrit, la vérité ne commencera qu’au moment
où l’écrivain prendra deux objets différents, posera leur rapport, analogue
dans le monde de l’art à celui qu’est le rapport unique, de la loi causale,
dans le monde de la science et les enfermera dans les anneaux néces-
saires d’un beau style, ou même, ainsi que la vie, quand en rapprochant
une qualité commune à deux sensations, il dégagera leur essence en les
réunissant l’une et l’autre pour les soustraire aux contingences du temps,
dans une métaphore, et les enchaînera par le lien indescriptible d’une
alliance de mots.29

Compare this to the way Nabokov expresses himself in his reflections on ‘Good
Readers and Writers,’ elegantly arguing that:

The real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man
asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has
no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The Art of
writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of
seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction. The material of this world
may be real enough (as far as reality goes) but does not exist at all as an
accepted entirety: it is chaos, and to this chaos the author says ‘go!’ allow-
ing the world to flicker and to fuse. It is now recombined in its very atoms,
not merely in its visible and superficial parts.30

Like Proust, Nabokov asserts that reality serves as pure potentiality for the art-
ist. It is there for him or her not to copy or to describe, but to recreate. The
artist’s task is to mould the clay of reality into something that invariably tran-
scends it, into something that is infinitely more real than reality: a creation of
one’s own. Both Proust and Nabokov believe that writers realize such creations
by means of their ‘style’ – which for them is always more than a question of
technique. Proust states that ‘Le style pour l’écrivain [...] est une question non
de technique, mais de vision.’31 Nabokov follows suit: ‘Style is not a tool, it is
not a method, it is not a choice of words alone. Being much more than all
this, style constitutes an intrinsic component or characteristic of the author’s
personality.’32 The quality of a work of literature is thus determined by the
degree to which the ‘enfermement’ of the real ‘dans les anneaux nécessaires

29 Proust, Recherche, tome 3, 889; Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. vi, 289–90.
30 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 2.
31 Proust, Recherche, tome 3, 895; Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. vi, 299.
32 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 59.
Of Words and Worlds 197

d’un beau style’ (Proust) or the ‘recombination of atoms’ by means of an ‘origi-

nal style’ (Nabokov) succeeds.
The juxtapositions of Nabokov’s assertions on aesthetics in the Lectures on
Literature and Proust’s insights in the metaphysics of reading and the nature
of art should make us suspicious of J.E. River’s cool conviction that Proust did
not have any role to play in the formation of Nabokov’s ‘aesthetic philosophy.’33
That said, Nabokov certainly does not copy or imitate Proust’s aesthetics. On
the contrary, the arguments above indicate that it would be more apt to say that
Nabokov quite consistently takes Proust’s logic all the way through to its logi-
cal end point in the Lectures on Literature. For nowhere does he simply offer a
simple (re)description of Proustian aesthetics; instead, even in his Lectures on
Literature, we find him ‘triumphantly mixing metaphors,’ making up wolverine
parables as he goes along. Even with respect to the subject of aesthetics and
literary criticism, we find him re-describing and recreating from the universe
of Proustian aesthetics his own personal world of Nabokovian lectures, which,
as we know both from the testimonies of his students and from reading them
ourselves, were unlike any other academic class on literature.
Lastly, one mystery remains unsolved: who is the mysterious ‘fellow who
sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with
the sleeper’s rib’ to whom Nabokov refers in his Lectures on Literature? Who
does the lecturer have in mind when he speaks of the ‘good author,’ who has
‘no given values to his disposal’ and knows that the only values that count are
those that he ‘must create himself?’ I propose he is none other than Marcel
Proust, whose narrator, as mentioned above, is encountered by the reader toss-
ing and turning in bed in the opening pages of the Recherche. Struggling to get
back to sleep, he takes us along a series of mnemonic peregrinations where the
nooks and crannies of his lost childhood are explored against the background
of a clair-obscure room with shifting walls and shivering limits. It is from his
magical bed in this strange room, which constantly seems to turn on its axis,
that the narrator, only half-awake (or still half-asleep, perhaps) tells us that at
times ‘comme Ève naquit d’une côte d’Adam, une femme naissait pendant mon
sommeil d’une fausse position de ma cuisse.’34 Indeed, Proust did not hesitate

33 It should be remarked in this context that it is no coincidence that when one of ­Nabokov’s
most insightful readers, the philosopher Richard Rorty, writes that ‘Nabokov was not
­interested in imitating reality; he was interested in changing it by changing himself and
so changing his readers, making them people who could do things and feel things they
had not been able to do or feel before,’ this phrase would remain true if Nabokov’s name
is replaced by that of Proust. Richard Rorty, Introduction to Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
(New York: Everyman’s Library, 1992), xvii.
34 Proust, Recherche, tome 1, 4; Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. i, 3.
198 Groen

to tamper with Marcel’s metaphorical rib. And upon closer inspection it might
be surmised that not only did he tamper with the ribs of his characters – he
may also have had a curious habit of posthumously meddling with the mind
of a certain Russian-American college professor preparing a series of highly
original lectures on the lost art of reading literature.

Literature Cited

Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian Years. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1990.
Deroy, Chloé. ‘L’inceste érudit dans Ada.’ In Kaleidoscopic Nabokov, edited by Lara
Delage-Toriel and Monica Manolescu, 118–28. Paris: Houdiard, 2009.
Foster, John Burt Jr. ‘Not T.S. Eliot, but Proust: Revisionary Modernism in Nabokov’s
Pale Fire.’ Comparative Literature Studies 28/1(1991): 51–67.
Foster, John Burt Jr. ‘Nabokov and Proust.’ In The Garland Companion to Nabokov,
­edited by Vladimir E. Alexandrov, 472–81. New York: Garland, 1995.
Grayson, Jane. Nabokov Translated: A Comparison of Nabokov’s Russian and English
Prose. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Strong Opinions. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature. Edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by
John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Russian Literature, edited, with an introduction by
Fredson Bowers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Don Quixote, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction
by Guy Davenport. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Poèmes et problèmes. Paris: Gallimard, 1999.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Invitation to a Beheading. London: Penguin Books, 2010.
Proust, Marcel. A la recherche du temps perdu. Paris: Gallimard (Pléiade), 1954.
Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: Volume I, Swann’s Way. Translated by Charles K.
Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by Dennis J. Enright. New York: The
­Modern Library, 2003.
Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: Volume VI, Time Regained. Translated by Andreas
Mayor and Terence Kilmartin, revised by Dennis J. Enright and Joanna Kilmartin.
New York: The Modern Library, 2003.
Rivers, J. Edwin. ‘Proust, Nabokov, and Ada.’ In Critical Essays on Vladimir Nabokov,
edited by Phyllis A. Roth, 134–56. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1984.
Rorty, Richard. Introduction to Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov, v–xvii. New York:
­Everyman’s Library, 1992.
Ruskin, John et Marcel Proust, Sésame et les lys, précédé de Sur la Lecture. Paris: Éditions
Complexe, 1987.
 chapter 11

Vladimir Nabokov on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Gerard de Vries

Abstract

Somehow Nabokov selected Stevenson’s popular story together with James Joyce’s
and Marcel Proust’s main novels, a choice that has puzzled some critics. Nabokov
praises Stevenson’s style, the originality of his vision and the magic that he detects in
Stevenson’s story. In his discussion, he appreciates aspects that deviate from Stevenson’s
intentions. Surprisingly, he refrains from discussing the story’s literary genealogy,
­probably to emphasise its originality. It is argued in this contribution that the super-
natural in Stevenson’s story probably goes a long way to explain Nabokov’s partiality.

Nabokov’s lecture on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde comprises
about twenty pages, half of which are used for ample quotations from
Stevenson’s text, connected by some retelling. Nabokov begins his reading with
presenting the story’s plot skilfully in only two sentences; his gift for concision
is unparallelled. Nabokov’s discussion of the story concentrates on three sub-
jects: Stevenson’s style; the nature of Jekyll’s metamorphosis into Hyde; and
the sort of evil Jekyll possesses and is condensed in Hyde.

ii

Nabokov was probably well acquainted with Jekyll and Hyde. In The Gift, he
relates that the protagonist had been reading Stevenson’s novel for three
months with a German girl to instruct her in English.1 Nabokov’s lecture

1 Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 164–65. See also
­Stephen H. Blackwell, Zina’s Paradox (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 132 and Brian Boyd, ‘New
Light on Nabokov’s Russian Years,’ Cycnos 10/1 (1993), 8.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_013

200 de Vries

has been discussed by Andrew Jefford, apparently a devotee of Robert Louis

Stevenson’s work. He writes that Nabokov fails to give Stevenson’s ‘major’ con-
tribution to the literature of ‘doubles’ due consideration.2 Andrew Field notes
that there is ‘considerable judgmental tolerance’ for Stevenson.3 Joseph Frank
in his review of Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature devotes only one page (out
of twenty four) to this essay. He refers to Edmund Wilson who told Nabokov
that ‘Stevenson is second-rate. I don’t know why you admire him so much,’ and
comments that ‘Nabokov hardly explains his admiration.’4

iii

For his course on ‘Masters of European Literature,’ Nabokov selected six

authors. Four of them, Austen, Dickens, Flaubert and Joyce, have a canonised
reputation. Franz Kafka’s is a more remarkable name, unless we realise that
Nabokov could not omit German literature, and that he detested the prose of
Goethe and Thomas Mann. But why did he select Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde?
He considered Treasure Island, Stevenson’s most popular story, ‘poor stuff,’
Jekyll and Hyde ‘the one masterpiece he wrote,’ and thought its style ‘even
more florid’ than his own.5 In his lecture, he says that Jekyll and Hyde was
­visualised by Stevenson in a dream, which leads Nabokov to link this story
with Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Kahn,’ which he considers one of the finest poems ever
written.6
Like most readers, I enjoyed Stevenson’s adventure and mystery stories
when I was young. Having reread Jekyll and Hyde and having remembered the
solution of its mystery, I now find it a rather plain story not quite free from
Victorian mannerism. Stevenson’s ‘too celebrated “style” was due to a love of
pose together with an ingrained artificiality of the kind that made him wear

2 Andrew Jefford, ‘Dr. Jekyll and Professor Nabokov: Reading a Reading,’ in Robert Louis
Stevenson, ed. Andrew Noble (London, Totowa: Vision and Barnes & Noble, 1983), 64–65.
3 Andrew Field, The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Crown Publishers, 1986),
277.
4 Joseph Frank, ‘Lectures on Literature,’ in The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed.
Vladimir E. Alexandrov (New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1995), 246.
5 Quoted in Vladimir Nabokov, Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson letters, 1940–
1971, ed., annot., and with an introd. essay Simon Karlinsky (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 2001), 273; and Alfred Appel, Jr., ‘Remembering Nabokov,’ in Vladimir Nabokov,
A ­Tribute, ed. Peter Quennell (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979), 24.
6 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 180.
Vladimir Nabokov on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde 201

long hair and velvet coats,’ writes George Sampson.7 Compared to Nabokov’s
short novel The Eye, which has very much the same length and the same sub-
ject (the dissolution of the protagonist’s personality), it is hard to find anything
in manner or matter which distinguishes Stevenson’s story favourably.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published in 1886. Until he
published Treasure Island in 1883, Stevenson was primarily a writer of essays
and short stories. Before his early death in 1894, he published many novels but
left Weir of Hermiston, which is universally regarded as his masterpiece, unfin-
ished. Nabokov’s admiration for Stevenson’s fiction seems to be confined to
Jekyll and Hyde; he never refers to Weir of Hermiston.
In his lecture, Nabokov tells his students that Stevenson’s style is so persua-
sive that it ‘will lead to such a state of mind in which the reader will not ask
himself whether this transformation [of Jekyll becoming Hyde] is possible or
not.’8 Of course, an entirely convincing style can captivate readers to such a
degree that they do not question events which are considered impossible in
daily life; nobody will object to the appearance of the father of Hamlet as a
ghost. But Stevenson’s story seems by far not as captivating as Shakespeare’s
tragedy. Nor is this test of credibility of real importance as the incident of
the transformation and its nature is only disclosed at the very end of the
novel.

iv

Stevenson meant his novel to be read as an allegory, he even rewrote it with this
objective in mind, but this is precisely the interpretation which Nabokov dis-
misses most forcibly. Stephen Gwynn, whose biography is frequently referred
to by Nabokov, gives a lengthy quotation from the authorised biography by
Graham Balfour, Stevenson’s cousin, where this reworking into an allegory is
discussed.9 But Nabokov dissents. ‘If we consider,’ Nabokov says, this story ‘as
an allegory – the struggle between Good and Evil within every man – then this
allegory is tasteless and childish.’10 Clearly, Nabokov is looking in Stevenson’s
story for something alien to the author’s intention.

7 George Sampson, The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1970), 688.
8 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 188.
9 Stephen Gwynn, Robert Louis Stevenson (London: Macmillan, 1939), 129 (see also 133 and
171); James Pope-Hennessy, Robert Louis Stevenson (London: Cassell, 1974), 180.
10 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 251.
202 de Vries

He also tries to add another layer to the story which it obviously lacks. He
argues for example that as Hyde represents only the evil part of Jekyll, the
good in Jekyll must still remain. And it is this positive part, Nabokov says,
which exerts a pull on Hyde to return as Jekyll. But this is not the explanation
advanced by Stevenson. The only reason for Hyde to reappear as Jekyll is that
Jekyll is a safe hiding place. By becoming Jekyll, Hyde can avoid being captured
for his murder of Carew. What Hyde fears are ‘the terrors of the scaffold.’11
Stevenson is most vague about the kind of evil that has enthralled Jekyll.
As he mentions the possibility of blackmail and as much attention is given
to the will of Jekyll (worth a quarter of a million Pound Sterling) it might
be connected with money. The reference to ‘Queer Street,’ a term indicating
financial problems, supports this reading.12 Stephen Gwynn suggests that
these secret pleasures involve sexual excesses with women of easy virtue, as
does Jenni Calder, who thinks it likely that Stevenson had in mind the taverns
and brothels of Edinburgh’s underworld, which he frequented in his youth.13
Nabokov has a different explanation. ‘The all-male pattern that Gwynn has
mentioned may suggest by a twist of thought that Jekyll’s secret adventures
were homosexual practices,’ he suggests.14 It is true that apart from the pass-
ing presence of some females all characters are men and, most likely, bach-
elors as well. With respect to Treasure Island (which has no females either)
Gwynn writes that ‘when women are left out, problems of conduct are greatly
simplified.’15 Indeed, all the commerce between the characters, although most
of them intimate friends, is of a business-like nature. Nabokov’s suggestion
might have been prompted by his own ideas, as the homosexuality of the pro-
tagonist of The Eye is strongly emphasised and might in a way be explanatory
for the splitting of his identity.
The perfect reader, Nabokov says in the introductory essay to his Lectures
on Russian Literature, approaches a work of fiction by identifying himself with
‘the mind that conceived and composed that book.’16 Such a reader might

11 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), 91 (see also 96: ‘[h]is terror of the gallows’).
12 Stevenson, Jekyll and Hyde, 33.
13 Gwynn, Robert Louis Stevenson, 130–31; Jenni Calder, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Life Study
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 11–12.
14 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 194.
15 Gwynn, Robert Louis Stevenson, 99.
16 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, ed., with an introd. Fredson Bowers
(London: Pan Books, 1993), 11.
Vladimir Nabokov on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde 203

have noticed that Stevenson, until The Master of Ballantrae, ‘never had girls or
women in his novels’ as James Pope-Hennessy noted.17 Similar to the theme of
Jekyll and Hyde is that of Stevenson’s story ‘Markheim,’ about a criminal who,
after a murder, meets his double, clearly representing his better half: ‘Evil and
good run strong in me, haling me both ways.’18 Nor did Nabokov mention that
Stevenson (together with William Ernest Henley) wrote a play about Deacon
Brodie. In the eighteenth century, Brodie was a highly respected citizen of
Edinburgh who led a double life as he was the leader of a gang of criminals,
for which he was arrested and hanged.19 I suppose that Nabokov was not inter-
ested in such base sources and that he preferred to see the story as the result
of purely artistic inspiration as his extravagant comparison with Coleridge’s
poem shows.
This may also explain the passage in which Nabokov traces the origins of
the names of Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll, Nabokov notes, comes from ‘icicle’ and
he connects ‘Hyde’ with ‘hydatid,’ the Greek for ‘water.’ In this way Nabokov
relates the transformation in Stevenson’s story with the element of water with
its unparallelled number of manifestations and its capacity to metamorphose,
which are so crucial for understanding Shade’s quest in Pale Fire.20 These
manifold qualities of water have often been employed by Nabokov in magical
ways, but they are unrelated to Stevenson’s story, as Nabokov was well aware:
‘Stevenson knew nothing of this point of view.’21
In the last paragraph Nabokov recounts the way Stevenson died. Stevenson
had gone to the cellar to fetch a bottle of wine, returned and, just before losing
his consciousness, said to his wife: ‘Do I look strange?’ Nabokov, whose par-
tiality for patterns is well known, weaves these incidents into the design of
Stevenson’s story, especially ‘the wine theme and the transformation theme
of his fantasy.’22 One can demur to this passage by saying that Stevenson was
actually helping his wife in the kitchen, but a more puzzling point seems to be
that it is hard to discern a wine theme in the first place.23

17 Pope-Hennessy, Robert Louis Stevenson, 194.

18 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Great Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson (New York:
Pocket Books, 1952), 163.
19 Gwynn, Robert Louis Stevenson, 121; and Pope-Hennessy, Robert Louis Stevenson, 114.
20 Gerard de Vries, ‘“Mountain, not Fountain”: Pale Fire’s Saving Grace,’ The Nabokovian 63
(2009): 39–52.
21 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 182.
22 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 204.
23 Gwynn, Robert Louis Stevenson, 260; Pope-Hennessy, Robert Louis Stevenson, 267.
204 de Vries

It looks as if Nabokov’s appreciation of the story is dominated by a preference

for supernatural phenomena, which also accounts for his praise for the stories
and novels of H.G. Wells. But his admiration is not complete: he complains that
the ‘allusions’ to the ‘dreadful vices’ are ‘vague’ and ‘unspecified.’ ‘If,’ Nabokov
says, ‘we are really being told “never mind what the evil was – just believe it
was something very bad,” then we might feel ourselves cheated and bullied.’24
However, as far as Hyde is concerned there is nothing vague about his crimes.
His victims are totally innocent and have no relationship whatsoever with
Hyde. Hyde seems to be driven by pure evil, that is evil erratic in incidence
and devoid of any self-interest. Although the question whether this kind of
evil (can) exist(s) is an intriguing one, it could have been of little interest to
Nabokov, whose artistic world was dominated by some sort of coincidence and
coherence.
Nabokov’s comment that the reader might have felt cheated and bullied,
is, although quite plainspoken, the only critical interruption in his otherwise
very laudatory discussion of Stevenson’s story. But Nabokov offers his students
a second opinion. In his lecture on Kafka he revises his view on Stevenson’s
story by comparing it to Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ (or, as Nabokov prefers, ‘The
Carrick’) and Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis.’ He now thinks that its moral is pre-
posterous, that the transformation theme has no proper setting, that the story
lacks unity, that the secondary characters are all commonplace and that there
is no human passion involved in Jekyll’s plight.25 After this long list it is to no
avail that Nabokov adds that he does not at all ‘mean that Stevenson’s story is
a failure.’ But, he concludes, the story has ‘only two dimensions,’ which seems
hardly a less disastrous judgement.26
What we see is a kind of rise and decline of a story in a critic’s assessment.
The transformation theme must have fascinated Nabokov to such a degree that
at first he was inclined to disregard its shortcomings. That Stevenson man-
aged to write a story about such an unreal and outlandish subject, and did
this in such a way as to make the story an extremely popular one was enough,
I think, to ignite Nabokov’s admiration. As characters who dissociate into two
or multiple personalities are a dominant feature of many of Nabokov’s novels,
Stevenson’s example might have enthused him.

24 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 193.

25 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 252–54.
26 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 255.
Vladimir Nabokov on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde 205

vi

The Eye, Nabokov’s shortest novel, is comparable to Jekyll and Hyde in so far its
protagonist perceives his alter ego, a person called Smurov. But unlike Hyde this
Smurov can exist simultaneously with his principal, and unlike Hyde, Smurov
is rather a fool than a crook. Smurov seems to be a medium for the protagonist
to learn more about himself, to establish his real identity, and the novel is in
fact a report of his ‘quest’ for ‘the real Smurov.’27
The emergence of Smurov as a double is the beginning of a further dis-
solution. Everyone Smurov meets has a different impression of his character
and in this way every encounter results in another Smurov. For this reason
Smurov says: ‘[…] I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors
that reflect me.’28 Curiously, this awareness is highly similar to the attention
­Stevenson gave to what other people might think of him. This concern was
so strong that, according to his biographer Pope-Hennessy, it ‘made him feel
that he only existed by his reflections in other people’s eyes.’29 Such feelings
might have caused Stevenson to write that Jekyll guesses that ‘man will be ulti-
mately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent
denizens.’30
Another interesting case is Clare Quilty, the villain, or rather one of the two
scoundrels in Lolita. Quilty is certainly a sort of Hyde to Humbert, but he is so
much more than the essence of Humbert’s perversity. Apart from this role he
is Humbert’s rival in the pursuit of Dolly, and his competitor in the display of
their linguistic proficiency as well. But the most damaging impact Quilty has
on Humbert is the observation he made just before he is killed. Quilty, whose
life seems to equal a continuous indulgence in sex and alcohol, never crossed
the line of imprisoning his victim, unlike Humbert. ‘You were not an ideal step-
father,’ Quilty says, ‘and I did not force your little protégé to join me.’31 Quilty
opposes his principal, like a shadow overshadowing its maker. As a double
Quilty is far more interesting than Hyde, whose sole role is to be a very bad
person.

27 Vladimir Nabokov, The Eye (London: Panther Books, 1972), 92.

28 Nabokov, The Eye, 105.
29 Pope-Hennessy, Robert Louis Stevenson, 127.
30 Stevenson, Jekyll and Hyde, 82; see also Gwynn, Robert Louis Stevenson, 131.
31 Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, ed., with pref., introd., and notes Alfred Appel,
Jr. (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 301.
206 de Vries

vii

There is one omission in Nabokov’s discussion of Stevenson’s story that deserves

attention. This regards the fact the fact that Nabokov neglects the impact literary
traditions had on Jekyll and Hyde. Nabokov emphasises that Stevenson’s story
and Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ are ‘fantasies’ as they ‘depart in their subject
matter from what is commonly called reality.’32 And although Nabokov argues
in some detail that there is no such thing as ‘objective reality,’ he nonetheless
qualifies both stories as ‘specific fantasies.’33 In Ada, H.G. Wells’ The Invisible
Man is heralded as ‘one of the greatest novels of English literature,’34 an instance
of praise not entirely void of extravagance. Published about a decade later, it
mirrors Stevenson’s story in many ways. The hero learns, like Jekyll, how he can
change his daily appearance, and, like Hyde, is eventually not able to make this
change undone. Clustering Stevenson’s and Kafka’s stories together, as Nabokov
does, is to deny the constitutional differences between them. Stevenson’s story
belongs, avant la lettre, to the ‘science fiction’ that made Wells famous. The
precursor of this genre is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1816), a novel inspired
by the scientific discoveries of, amongst others, Luigi Galvani and Erasmus
Darwin, Charles Darwin’s grandfather. In her ‘Introduction,’ Shelley men-
tions ‘the experiments of Dr Darwin’ as well as ‘galvanism’ as novelties which
prompted her imagination to write this novel. Peter Raby calls Jekyll and
Hyde Stevenson’s ‘rewriting of Frankenstein,’35 while The Invisible Man can be
regarded as the rewriting of Jekyll and Hyde. The plot of all three stories were
engendered in a ‘laboratory.’36
Kafka’s story has an entirely different genealogy. It stems from German
romanticists like Ludwig Tieck and E.T.A Hoffmann, who originated the ‘jux-
taposition of dream life and real life,’ which subject was adopted by Nikolay
Gogol and subsequently followed by Dostoyevsky.37 Mr. Golyadkin, the protag-
onist of Dostoyevsky’s novel The Double identifies himself as ‘an utter insect’
and Mr. Prokharchin in Dostoyevsky’s eponymous story hides himself like

32 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 252.

33 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 253.
34 Vladimir Nabokov, Ada (New York: Vintage International, 1990), 203.
35 Peter Raby, Bright Paradise. Victorian Scientific Travellers (London: Pimlico, 1997), 239.
36 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (New York: Signet Classic, 1965), 49; Stevenson, Jekyll and
Hyde, 83; H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds & The Invisible Man (London: Octopus Books,
1987), 186.
37 D.S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964),
152.
Vladimir Nabokov on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde 207

Kafka’s protagonist Gregor Samsa ‘underneath [his] bed.’38 Roman Struc, in

discussing Kafka’s indebtedness to Dostoyevsky’s great novels like The Brothers
Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, writes that ‘Dostoevsky’s and Kafka’s
views of man are predicated on the notion of a basic ineffability of man.’39
Stevenson’s and Wells’ scientists abuse their superior knowledge to the detri-
ment of their environment and try to inaugurate a ‘Reign of Terror.’40 They are
usurpers and victimisers, while Kafka’s and Dostoyevsky main characters are
inferior creatures, defenceless victims.
It seems highly unlikely that Nabokov was not perfectly aware of these dis-
tinctions, as he was greatly interested in influences by predecessors, a subject
he called ‘literary evolution.’ In his study on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin he traces
numerous (probable and possible) influences in great detail: references to
for example classical literature range from ‘Aeschylus’ to ‘Zeus.’41 Obviously
Nabokov wishes to emphasise the intuitive creative impulse expressed in these
‘fantasies’ in order to ‘take upon us the mystery of things.’42 Tracing the ­lineage
of Stevenson’s and Kafka’s stories might have toned down their visionary power
which Nabokov wished to highlight.

viii

In his lecture on Stevenson’s story, Nabokov neglected some of the recom-

mendations he thought imperative for a good reader. He was mistaken about
a detail (Nabokov calls Jekyll ‘fat’ while he is only ‘large’); he complicated
Hyde’s motive to return as Jekyll (as is discussed above) and he was not well
acquainted with Stevenson’s oeuvre (since the absence of female characters
is not specific for Jekyll and Hyde, there is no reason to discuss it within the
context of this singular story). Nabokov presented a number of speculative
interpretations which most likely never entered or left Stevenson’s brain. It
seems that the novelty that Stevenson introduced in this story, the idea that

38 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground/The Double, trans. Jessie Coulson
(London: Penguin, 1972), 161; Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Poor Folk and Other Stories, trans. David
McDuff (London: Penguin, 1988), 242.
39 Roman S. Struc, ‘Kafka and Dostoevsky as “Blood Relatives,”’ Dostoevsky Studies, accessed
January 23, 2017, sites.utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/02/111.shtml, 112.
40 Wells, The Invisible Man, 207.
41 Vladimir Nabokov, Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin, trans. from the
Russian, with a comm. Vladimir Nabokov (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975),
vol. 4, 3; vol. 4, 108.
42 Quoted from King Lear in Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 251.
208 de Vries

someone can become someone else, is simply the main source for Nabokov’s
initial admiration.
This is not the first time that Nabokov was carried away by only a part or
a theme of a literary work. In 1921 Nabokov wrote an essay on Rupert Brooke
with an exclusive focus on the theme of the ‘hereafter’ in Brooke’s work.
D. Barton Johnson comments that ‘so intent is Nabokov on this orientation
that he misreads several of Brooke’s poems and badly misrepresents what we
know of Brooke’s beliefs.’43 To be sure, although Nabokov’s lecture fails to be a
helpful introduction to Stevenson’s story, there is hardly anything in the pres-
ent lecture that detracts from the merits of Jekyll and Hyde. On the contrary,
if the lecture would have been subtitled as ‘Some ways how Stevenson’s story
could be made more interesting’ its text would be a better match.

Addendum: R.L. Stevenson and Pale Fire

Fredson Bowers mentions that in ‘vn’s Stevenson folder there are four pages
of typed quotations from Stevenson’s Essays in the Art of Writing.’44 The ones
that Bowers reproduces are all taken from the first essay, ‘On Some Technical
Elements of Style in Literature,’ and especially from the second of its five parts,
called ‘The Web.’ In this section, Stevenson argues that ‘the true business of
the literary artist is to plaid or weave’ a pattern or a web (the ‘logic’ or the
‘arguments’ of the text) as well as a ‘fabric’ or ‘texture’ of such literary qual-
ity as becomes the pattern. The equivalence of web and texture is compared
by Stevenson to the act of ‘two oranges kept simultaneously dancing in the
air.’45 Peculiar greatness is achieved by artists like Shakespeare who not only
keep the oranges in the air but manage to do this in such a way that ‘a rare and
special pleasure’ is rendered by ‘now contrast[ing] [...], now combin[ing]’ both
components ‘comparable to that of counterpoint.’ Of course this may recall
lines 806–810 of John Shade’s poem ‘Pale Fire,’ which contain the same set
(or oranges); ‘web,’ ‘texture’ and ‘contrapuntal theme.’ However, for Shade these
expressions refer not only to his art, but to his philosophical search of the here-
after as well. Nabokov, who used textile imagery in many of his novels, most

43 Donald Barton Johnson, ‘Vladimir Nabokov and Walter de la Mare’s “Otherworld,”’

in Nabokov’s World. Volume 1: The Shape of Nabokov’s World, eds. Jane Grayson, Arnold
McMillen, and Priscilla Meyer (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 76.
44 Footnote in Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 180.
45 Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays in The Art of Writing (London: Chatto and Windus, 1912),
8–20.
Vladimir Nabokov on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde 209

probably derived this from the Moira, the Greek mythological personifications
of fate as they spin and cut the thread of human life, who left many traces in
West-European literature. Yet, there is an incident in Stevenson’s oeuvre that
might have a bearing on Pale Fire. In the ‘Story of the Young Man with the
Cream Tarts’ (the first story of the collection titled The Suicide Club), a deadly
game is played by dealing cards to the club members; whoever receives the
‘ace of spades, which is the sign of death’ will be killed, and this is exactly what
happened to Gradus, the villain in Pale Fire.46

Literature Cited

Appel, Alfred Jr. ‘Remembering Nabokov.’ In Vladimir Nabokov, A Tribute, edited by

Peter Quennell, 11–33. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979.
Blackwell, Stephen H. Zina’s Paradox. New York: Peter Lang, 2000.
Boyd, Brian. ‘New Light on Nabokov’s Russian Years.’ Cycnos 10/1 (1993): 3–9.
Calder, Jenni. Robert Louis Stevenson: A Life Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Poor Folk and Other Stories. Translated by David McDuff. London:
Penguin, 1988.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Notes from the Underground/The Double. Translated by Jessie
Coulson. London: Penguin, 1972.
Field, Andrew. The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov. New York: Crown Publishers, 1986.
Frank, Joseph. ‘Lectures on Literature.’ The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov,
edited by Vladimir E. Alexandrov. New York, London: Garland Publishing, 1995,
234–58.
Gwynn, Stephen. Robert Louis Stevenson. London: Macmillan, 1939.
Jefford, Andrew. ‘Dr Jekyll and Professor Nabokov: Reading a Reading.’ Robert Louis
Stevenson, edited by Andrew Noble, 47–72. London, Totowa: Vision and Barnes &
Noble, 1983.
Johnson, D. Barton. ‘Vladimir Nabokov and Walter de la Mare’s “Otherworld.”’ In
­Nabokov’s World. Volume 1: The Shape of Nabokov’s World, edited by Jane Grayson,
Arnold McMillen, and Priscilla Meyer, 71–87. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
Mirsky, D.S. A History of Russian Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964.
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Eye. London: Panther Books, 1972.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr Pushkin. Translated
from the Russian, with a commentary, by Vladimir Nabokov. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975.

46 Robert Louis Stevenson, The Suicide Club (London: Pan Books, 1948), 24.
210 de Vries

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by

John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Vintage International, 1989.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Ada. New York: Vintage International, 1990.
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Gift. New York: Vintage International: 1991.
Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita, edited, with preface, introduction, and notes
by Alfred Appel, Jr. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Russian Literature, edited, with an introduction by
Fredson Bowers. London: Pan Books, 1993.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson letters, 1940–1971,
edited, annotated, and with an introductory essay by Simon Karlinsky. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001.
Pope-Hennessy, James. Robert Louis Stevenson. London: Cassell, 1974.
Raby, Peter. Bright Paradise. Victorian Scientific Travellers. London: Pimlico, 1997.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Signet Classic, 1965.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Essays in The Art of Writing. London: Chatto and Windus, 1912.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Suicide Club. London: Pan Books, 1948.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Great Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson. New York:
Pocket Books. 1952.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories.
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979.
Struc, Roman S. ‘Kafka and Dostoevsky as “Blood Relatives.”’ Accessed January 23, 2017.
sites.utoronto.ca/tsq/DS/02/111.shtml.
Vries, Gerard de. ‘“Mountain, not Fountain”: Pale Fire’s Saving Grace.’ The Nabokovian
63 (2009): 39–52.
Wells, H.G. The War of the Worlds & The Invisible Man. London: Octopus Books, 1987.
Afterword: (Flipping) Nabokov in the Classroom
Jürgen Pieters

The central focus of this collection is on Nabokov the reader rather than
Nabokov the teacher – for obvious reasons, I hasten to add. After all, Nabokov’s
teaching was all about his reading, and that was what he wanted his students to
learn first and foremost: to become good readers. What makes a good reader, as
Nabokov’s opening essay to the Lectures on Literature makes clear, is the ability
to distinguish good writers from their lesser peers. How to read and whom to
read: Nabokov’s lectures are founded on the teacher’s absolute conviction that
he knew perfectly well, and definitely better than others, the answer to those
two central questions. In the end, as several of the contributions to this collec-
tion have shown, Nabokov wanted his students to become the sort of reader
that he as their teacher represented – nothing more, nothing less. In the brief
afterword to this collection, I want to assemble a number of testimonials to
Nabokov’s teaching – by former students, but also, and primarily, by the author
himself looking back on his teaching years in several of the interviews that are
collected in Strong Opinions – and to reflect on his use of the lecture format.
To be clear from the start: I am not writing the afterword to this collection on
Nabokov’s lectures from the perspective of a qualified specialist in pedagogy
(which I am not, for better or for worse) but from that of a literature professor
who, to a large extent, shares with his subject the aesthetic ideals that underlie
Nabokov’s reading method, but who lives and works in an altogether different
moment in time, both in terms of the governing academic regime and of the
literary text’s cultural capital and social prestige.1
It is not easy, obviously, to set Nabokov’s teaching practice apart from his
reading practice and to assess it separately. Whenever he expresses his views
on teaching, be it in the published lecture notes or in the interviews of Strong
Opinions, his pedagogical point is usually subservient to the subject of his
teaching, the literary text that is at the heart of the classroom experience. What
Professor Nabokov wanted to offer his students was not ­knowledge about
authors and their writings (even though there are moments in the lectures
where he does give them that sort of ‘banal’ information), but the ­‘enjoyment’ of

1 The author wishes to thank Ben Dhooge for his encouraging comments on earlier drafts of
this text.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi 10.1163/9789004352872_014

212 Pieters

a literary masterpiece. ‘In my academic days,’ as Nabokov states in an ­interview

in Vogue that appeared late in 1969,

I endeavored to provide students of literature with exact information

about details, about such combinations of details as yield the sensual
spark without which a book is dead. In that respect, general ideas are
of no importance. Any ass can assimilate the main points of Tolstoy’s
­attitude toward adultery but in order to enjoy Tolstoy’s art the good
reader must wish to visualize, for instance, the arrangement of a railway
carriage on the Moscow-Petersburg night train as it was a hundred years
ago. Here diagrams are most helpful. Instead of perpetuating the preten-
tious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings,
instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s
intertwining itineraries clearly traced. Without a visual perception of
the larch labyrinth in Mansfield Park that novel loses some of its stereo-
graphic charm, and unless the façade of Dr. Jekyll’s house is distinctly
reconstructed in the student’s mind, the enjoyment of Stevenson’s story
cannot be perfect.2

This quotation tallies with other passages from the lectures that are cited
in several contributions to this volume and it pinpoints the ultimate goal of
Nabokov’s teaching with the clarity of repetition. In order to ‘enjoy’ Tolstoy
and Stevenson, as the above quotation shows, one needs to read them in the
proper way. The passage also makes clear that Nabokov’s teaching was ­targeted
towards inducing the particular aesthetic experience readers have when the
book comes alive in their visual imagination. Such experiences never fail
to cause what the Professor in his definition of good readership famously
­described as the ‘tingling [of the] spine.’3

2 Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions (New York: Vintage, 1990 [1973]), 156–57. Investiga-
tive journalist Edward Jay Epstein, who claims for some time to have served as Nabokov’s
assistant at Cornell, confirms the professor’s knack for visual details in recalling an essay-
assignment he was once given: ‘Describe the train station in which Anna first met Vronsky.’
Edward Jay Epstein, ‘An A from Nabokov,’ The New York Review of Books, April 4, 2013, accessed
May 15, 2017, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/04/04/a-from-nabokov/. ‘All my ques-
tions were impelled by only one purpose,’ Nabokov told Time in 1969: ‘to discover at all cost
if the student had thoroughly imbibed and assimilated the novels in my course.’ (Nabokov,
Strong Opinions, 129).
3 Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 4. For an excellent analysis of Nabokov’s ‘Phenomenology
of the Spine,’ see Leland de la Durantaye, Style is Matter. The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov
(Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 2007), 56–65.
Afterword: (Flipping) Nabokov in the Classroom 213

Nabokov’s teaching simply took for granted the aesthetic views that his
reading method was based upon. These underlying convictions were never
really questioned nor otherwise problematized in the course of the lectures.
Their authority, embodied in the super-reader that professor Nabokov did
not mind to impersonate – with an amount of self-irony that confirmed that
authority, rather than undermine it – was not meant to be a topic for further
reflection. Now and again, in the course of the lectures, Nabokov interrupted
his r­eading of the text at hand for a brief meta-critical excursion, but these
moments rarely if ever led to an explanation as to why the lecturer’s convic-
tions should be considered any good or, as the case might be, better than other
perspectives on the text.
Nabokov’s lectures, therefore, should in no way be taken as an apology for
literature. Such a perspective would after all presuppose a critical exposition
of the rationale behind the teacher’s ideas on reading literature. Instead, the
lectures provide us with straightforward and self-evident formulations of a
dogma. It is hardly coincidental that in his ‘Introduction’ to the Lectures on
Literature, John Updike resorted to the same term, when he pointed out that his
(second) wife – who got a bachelor’s degree from Cornell in 19594 – remained
a staunch believer ever since she was first introduced to Nabokov’s articles of
literary faith in the last course he taught in Ithaca:5 ‘She cannot to this day take
Thomas Mann seriously,’ Updike wrote, ‘and has not surrendered a jot of the
central dogma she culled from Literature 311–312: “Style and structure are the
essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.”’6
The general effect of Nabokov’s aesthetic revelations on the ever-growing
student-population that attended his lectures is difficult to assess. His remi-
niscences of ‘the great fraternity of C-minus,’7 as he put it in the famous 1964
Playboy-interview with Alvin Toffler, support the suspicion that not all of his
­students may have been sufficiently open to their professor’s aesthetic beliefs,
let alone that they understood the subtleties of the system these convictions
originated in. Of course, most of the students who in later life expressed their
vivid memories of the ‘Dirty Lit’-course did so fondly, in the same spirit as the

4 Jack De Bellis, The John Updike Encyclopedia (Westport, ct: Greenwood Press, 2000), 473.
5 Adam Begley, Updike (New York: Harper Collins, 2014), 365.
6 John Updike in his ‘Introduction’ to Lectures on Literature, by Vladimir Nabokov, ed. Fredson
Bowers, introd. John Updike (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), xxiii. Martha
Ruggles Bernhard appears to have been a model student (‘a genius’), whose exam Nabokov
graded with an exceptional ‘97’ (Updike, ‘Introduction,’ xxiv). The anecdote is also men-
tioned by Updike’s biographer, who cannot help but notice the added interest of Professor
Nabokov’s approval for the young author: ‘Who could resist a mistress who’d been certified a
genius by Vladimir Nabokov?’ (Begley, Updike, 365.)
7 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 22.
214 Pieters

s­ econd Mrs. Updike. Some sixty years after the event, Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg, also a Cornell alumna, still spoke warmly of ‘the best European
literature course anyone could have taken anywhere.’8 Ross Wetzsteon, who
became an editor at The Village Voice and whom Nabokov considered ‘one of
[…] the best students in [his] Cornell classes,’9 recalls several things that we
have come to see as typical of Nabokov’s teaching: the importance he attached
to good translations of the texts that he and his students were reading in English
(a penchant that resulted in numerous corrections of the translations he used
in class); the teacher’s elaborate drawings on the blackboard; the memorable
exam questions that urged Nabokov’s students to pay attention to seemingly
unimportant details (‘“What color was the bottle containing the arsenic with
which Emma poisoned herself?”’10); and the presence of Véra, ‘always seated
in the front row,’11 listening lovingly and attentively to every single word her
husband uttered as he was reading out the handwritten lecture notes that she
no doubt helped him prepare.12
Wetzsteon’s tribute to Nabokov’s teaching is one of the sources behind the
short 1989 film of Nabokov’s lecture on Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ that is
also discussed by Vivian Liska in her contribution to this volume.13 The film,
directed by Peter Medak, stars Christopher Plummer and it consists of a selec-
tion of passages from the Kafka-lecture and a few lines from Nabokov’s essay
on ‘Good Readers and Good Writers.’ Plummer gives an interesting dramatic
impression of Nabokov’s teaching, which, however, we should not mistake
for the actual experience – not simply because ‘Nabokov’ arrives in the class-
room unaccompanied by Véra (his ‘assistant’ as he apparently called her),

8 The Cornell Chronicle’s website features a videotaped interview with Ruth Bader
Ginsburg in which she talks about Nabokov’s course, beginning around 8’02”: John
Craig, ‘Ruth Bader Ginsburg Reminisces about her Time on the Hill,’ Cornell Chronicle,
September 22, 2014, accessed May 15, 2017, http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/09/
ruth-bader-ginsburg-reminisces-about-her-time-hill.
9 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 294.
10 Ross Wetzsteon, ‘Nabokov as Teacher,’ in Nabokov. Criticism, Reminiscences, Translations
and Tributes, eds. Alfred Appel, Jr. and Charles Newman (Evanston, Il.: Northwestern
­University Press, 1970), 245.
11 Wetzsteon, ‘Nabokov as Teacher,’ 245. In Edward Jay Epstein’s recollection, Véra was
­always ‘[f]acing [Nabokov] on the stage.’ (Epstein, ‘An A from Nabokov’).
12 The notes were for the most part not typed out, as Brian Boyd points out: Brian Boyd,
Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years (New York: Vintage, 1993 [1992]), 172. In contrast,
Nabokov claims that ‘[e]very lecture [he] delivered had been carefully, lovingly handwrit-
ten and typed out’ (Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 104).
13 The film can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgEy7aGLUBs.
Afterword: (Flipping) Nabokov in the Classroom 215

but ­especially because of the lecturer’s teaching style.14 In Medak’s movie,

Plummer’s Nabokov delivers large parts of the actual lecture seemingly
impromptu, perambulating through the classroom, even moving between the
rows of seated students in Cornell’s Goldwin Smith Hall, where the Professor
had his office on the third floor.15 The only occasions at which he sits down
during the film are those in which, facing the camera in close-up, he reads pas-
sages from Kafka’s text in the translation of Willa and Edwin Muir. In reality
however, if Nabokov’s descriptions of his own lecturing style are anything to
go by, he was usually standing at a lectern, occasionally moving to what he
referred to as ‘the ­greyboard,’ but most of the time reading from his lecture
notes, ‘leisurely,’ as he puts it in his 1967 interview with Herbert Gold for The
Paris Review, ‘­sometimes stopping to rewrite a sentence and sometimes repeat-
ing a paragraph.’16 ‘Although at the lectern,’ he recalls in the 1962 interview
with which Strong Opinions opens, ‘I evolved a subtle up and down movement
of my eyes, there was never any doubt in the minds of alert students that I was
reading, not speaking.’17 Plummer’s Nabokov, in contrast, speaks rather than
reads; and he cracks more jokes, or at least receives more chuckles from his
youthful audience, than the original Vladimir Nabokov allegedly did.18 ‘When
I lectured in colleges, I’d prepare even topical jokes weeks ahead and nobody
laughed,’ Nabokov is quoted as saying in Brian Boyd’s account of his Cornell
years.19
‘[H]e was such a superb actor,’ Ross Wetzsteon writes in his recollection of
Nabokov’s teaching practice, ‘that no one knew he wrote out his lectures, word
for word, down to the wryest “asides.”’20 Peter Medak’s film not only tries to
document that practice, it also portrays an age in which the lecture was the
standard format of academic instruction and in which ‘teaching’ and ‘lectur-
ing’ were near-synonyms. Nabokov claims to have had no interest at all in any
intellectual interaction with his students.21 While this is no doubt true, the fact
in itself probably did not make him stand out among his colleagues, since the

14 Boyd, The American Years, 173.

15 http://www.fs.cornell.edu/tours/default.cfm?tour_id=50, accessed May 15, 2017.
16 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 104.
17 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 5.
18 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 104.
19 Boyd, The American Years, 172. In Medak’s film, I would argue, Plummer’s Nabokov
is ­closer to Pnin’s teaching style (‘amateurish and light-hearted’) than to that of Pnin’s
­creator. Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin (London: Penguin Books, 1960 [1957]), 9.
20 Wetzsteon, ‘Nabokov as Teacher,’ 242.
21 ‘My method of teaching precluded genuine contact with my students. At best, they regur-
gitated a few bits of my brain during examinations’ (Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 104).
216 Pieters

usual teaching format at the time did not presuppose that interaction. In most
American universities during the 1950s, the lecturer did all the talking and
the students simply took down what was being said in an effort to retain the
knowledge that was transmitted to them. This is indeed what we see Nabokov’s
students doing in Medak’s film, with some desperation even. Nabokov must
have been aware of the difficulties that his complex and precise prose
presented for those who wished to make more than a mental note of every-
thing he said and of exactly how he said it. ‘I welcomed the few shorthand
experts in my audience,’ he admitted to Herbert Gold, ‘hoping they would
communicate the information they stored to their less fortunate comrades.’
And he added, in complete jest, one might be tempted to think: ‘Vainly I tried
to replace my appearances at the lectern by taped records to be played over the
college radio.’22
Nabokov repeated the same “joke” in his 1969 interview with Time-reporters
Martha Duffy and R.Z. Sheppard, who at one point during their conversation
in Montreux wanted to know whether their interviewee would ‘ever want to
teach or lecture again.’ Nabokov’s response sounds unsurprisingly decisive:
‘No. Much as I like teaching, the strain of preparing lectures and deliver-
ing them would be too fatiguing today, even if I used a tape recorder. In this
respect I have long come to the conclusion that the best teaching is done by
records which a student can run as many times as he wants, or has to, in his
soundproof cell.’23 This response goes to show that Nabokov was not merely
being facetious when he expressed his desire to be replaced, as a teacher, by
a tape recorder. As a matter of fact, his response to the question of Time’s
­reporters makes clear that for Nabokov the challenge of teaching was primarily
located in the preparation of his lectures. That is where, for him, the creative
­thinking took place – not in the classroom, which was, after all, merely a stage
for ‘delivery,’ not a place where the mind could continue its thinking. ‘Mind
you, I loved teaching,’ he told Alvin Toffler, ‘I loved Cornell, I loved composing
and delivering my lectures on Russian writers and European great books.’24
Again, the distinction is clear: there is the phase of the composition of the
lecture (concerned with thinking through its structure, but above all with the
careful and exact way of phrasing the point that the teacher will be making)
and then there’s the phase of the delivery. The latter is not entirely unimport-
ant, of course, but what will be delivered in class is in fact scripted to the
­minutest detail, including the manner of delivery. I have quoted Ross Wetzsteon

22 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 104.

23 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 124.
24 Nabokov, Strong Opinions, 21.
Afterword: (Flipping) Nabokov in the Classroom 217

as s­aying that Nabokov was a ‘superb actor’ and that the lectures were in
more than one respect like a theatrical performance: there was no room for
­improvisation, nor, heaven forbid, for any interruption by or interaction with the
audience.
Rereading Nabokov’s lectures in preparation of this afterword, I kept being
reminded that things have changed in so many respects since the moment
of their original delivery. For most of us, reading these texts several decades
after the event, the voice of the lecturer has changed significantly. Vladimir
Nabokov has become one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated authors,
a ‘good writer’ no less canonical than those whose masterpieces he analysed
so brilliantly. We should not forget that at the moment of the lectures’ first
delivery, Nabokov was not yet the author of Lolita, Pale Fire or Ada, to mention
his most celebrated titles, nor yet the domineering voice that speaks to us so
authoritatively in the interviews of Strong Opinions. Among his original audi-
ence, many would have been unaware that their teacher had already published
several novels, both in Russian and in English.25
While Nabokov’s own cultural capital has increased unmistakably between
now and then, that of his courses’ topic seems to be somewhat on the decline.
Literature clearly no longer has the sacrosanctity it enjoyed in the heydays of
New Criticism, when Nabokov was teaching his courses. It is no longer seen as
the self-evident province of ‘the best which has been said and thought in the
world’ (Matthew Arnold); more often than not, literary writings are being dis-
cussed in academic programs alongside other forms of popular culture (mov-
ies and music videos, pop-lyrics and rap) and programs that focus exclusively
on the study of literature tend to broaden the scope of their topic to all forms
of literary output, high and middlebrow literature, fantasy, chick lit and young
adult fiction. In such an environment, Nabokov’s tastes would be seen as no
less elitist than the views on which he founded his reading method. It would be
considered problematic, nowadays, perhaps even politically incorrect, to limit
a ‘Great Books’ course to works by European masters without discussing the
social and political ramifications of the aesthetic ideology behind the selec-
tion that Nabokov made. Between his era and ours the idea of the canon has
been the topic of fierce debates26 – just imagine the position Nabokov might
have taken, had he been one of the participants. Chances are that he would

25 As Ross Wetzsteon puts it: ‘those of us who took [Nabokov’s] courses in the early ‘50s
didn’t have the vaguest notion that he’d written a single word of fiction.’ Wetzsteon,
‘Nabokov as Teacher,’ 241.
26 See, for instance, John Guillory, Cultural Capital. The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
218 Pieters

have sided with the likes of Harold Bloom, who in his much reviled book on
The Western Canon argued with similar aplomb for the priority of aesthetic
criteria in the definition of artistic quality.27
Courses on ‘Great Books’ are still being taught, of course, but at the risk of
generalising too much, I would argue that nowadays the average approach dif-
fers significantly from Nabokov’s. Quite often such courses are strongly focused
on the historical and contextual analysis of literary writings (where the texts
become vehicles for cultural history), or, alternatively, they serve as platforms
for the different perspectives one might take on these texts, among them some
that Nabokov would have definitely abhorred, like those of the Marxist and
the psychoanalytic schools. In the latter type, Nabokov’s approach would be
taken as one among many, and both its advantages and disadvantages would
be held up for close inspection. This is, in fact, my own classroom experience
with Nabokov’s lectures: students of literature tend to see the great value of his
aesthetic approach, but they want to complement it with sufficient attention to
the text’s contextual historicity. Whenever I do Nabokov’s ‘little quiz’ with them
(the one with the ten definitions of the good reader), the requirement that ‘[t]
he reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle’28 of the text is
always among my students’ four definitions that make up the best of readers.
What has also changed between Nabokov’s time and my own are classroom
mores. I find it hard to imagine that university students would be willing to
occupy the same chair week after week in the auditorium, let alone allow
themselves to be addressed by the number of that chair.29 I also find it hard
to imagine Nabokov being invited to join courses where team-teaching is the
rule rather than the exception, or being asked to submit his essay questions to
be approved by a group of his peers. How I would love to witness (mind you,
not participate in) a discussion about the usefulness of knowing the colour of
the eyes of this or that novelistic heroine. Also, what would his response be to
a student council’s request to limit the reading list of his course to an agreed
standard, defined by the sheer number of pages? What would his thoughts be
on a course about the masterpieces of European Literature where students are
not expected to read novels at all or, if so, only in selected excerpts?
Still, if Nabokov had been teaching half a century later, his dream about being
replaced by a tape recorder or some other technological equipment would

27 Harold Bloom, The Western Canon. The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 1994).
28 Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, 3.
29 Edward Epstein testifies to the veracity of Nabokov’s requirement: ‘Mine was 121.’ Epstein,
‘An A from Nabokov.’
Afterword: (Flipping) Nabokov in the Classroom 219

­defi­nitely have come true. Nowadays, his lectures would be made easily available
to his audience in different audio- and/or video-formats, either provided
institutionally or recorded individually by students. After an initial run of the
course, the lecture-materials would even have provided excellent stuff for an
experiment in what is now known as ‘flipping the classroom.’ In that excit-
ing new format, students would be encouraged to work through the lectures
individually before class, while in class the collective time of the classroom-
moment would be dedicated to confronting Professor Nabokov with all sorts
of queries of potential interest, both for the students and for their teacher.
While it is not very likely that Nabokov would have enjoyed such an approach,
I do believe that it would have raised the pedagogical effect of his teaching,
not only in the sense that his students would have come to the classroom bet-
ter prepared, but also because the approach would have forced Nabokov to
be more explicit or maybe even less authoritarian about some of the stances
that he takes. The interactive approach would ideally have urged him to defend
and think through some of his positions, not with the usual dismissive irony
that characterizes many of the ‘interviews’ in Strong Opinions, but in the more
vulnerable mode which as readers of Nabokov’s novels we recognize as part
of the author’s broad register, but which the voice of the teacher of Nabokov’s
lectures shows very few traces of.
The pedagogical format of the ‘lecture’ has regularly come under discussion
in the past few decades and pedagogues have by now sufficiently identified its
many pros and cons.30 Nabokov’s lectures, I would say in conclusion, exem-
plify both the disadvantages of the format and its unique productivity. There
are no doubt better ways to engage students more actively in the aesthetic
criticism that Nabokov propagated in the classroom (smaller discussion
groups with pre-set assignments and room for a more problem-led analy-
sis of the teacher’s reading method), but the possibility of students directly

30 A number of recent ‘defenses’ of the lecture offer a good survey of the discussion. See,
for instance, Adam Kotsko, ‘A Defense of the Lecture,’ Inside Higher Ed, November 20,
2009, accessed May 15, 2017, https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/11/20/defense-
lecture; Alex Small, ‘In Defense of the Lecture,’ The Chronicle of Higher Education, May
27, 2014, accessed May 15, 2017, http://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Defense-of-the-
Lecture/146797; Miya Tokumitsu, ‘In Defense of the Lecture,’ Jacobin Magazine, February
26, 2017, accessed May 15, 2017, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/lectures-learning-
school-academia-universities-pedagogy. For arguments that found the opposite view see
Craig Lambert, ‘Twilight of the Lecture,’ Harvard Magazine, March-April 2012, accessed
May 15, 2017, http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/03/twilight-of-the-lecture); Salman
Khan, ‘Why Long Lectures Are Ineffective,’ Time, October 2, 2012, accessed May 15, 2017,
http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/02/why-lectures-are-ineffective/.
220 Pieters

experiencing the teacher’s ‘mind at work’ gives the lecture-format a unique

value – ‘[a] lecture represents scholarship in action,’ Frank Furedi argues in
defence of the format.31 True, Nabokov did prepare his lectures thoroughly in
advance, and the preparation left little to no room for the sort of improvisation
that can make attending a lecture (or giving one, for that matter) a particularly
exciting experience.32 Still, in an œuvre that is known for the elusive presence
of its maker, the author’s lectures on Russian and European literature bring us
as close as we can get to the impressively good reader that Nabokov definitely
was. More than half a century after they were first delivered, the lectures that
have been the object of analysis in this volume continue to fascinate. While I am
sure that much more remains to be said about them (if only about those of
Nabokov’s lectures not discussed in the present volume), it is to be hoped that
this collection of articles will play a significant role in further explorations of
Nabokov’s work in general and of his fondness in particular for the writings
of the Russian and European giants that he lectured on and that, like him, so
many of us continue to cherish and value.

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Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon. The Books and School of the Ages. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994.
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years. New York: Vintage, 1993 [1992].
Craig, John. ‘Ruth Bader Ginsburg Reminisces about her Time on the Hill.’ Cornell
Chronicle, September 22, 2014. Accessed May 15, 2017. http://www.news.cornell.edu/
stories/2014/09/ruth-bader-ginsburg-reminisces-about-her-time-hill.
De Bellis, Jack. The John Updike Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.
De la Durantaye, Leland. Style is Matter. The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov. Ithaca,
London: Cornell University Press, 2007.

31 Frank Furedi, ‘In praise of the university lecture and its place in academic scholarship,’
The Guardian, December 10, 2013, accessed May 15, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/
higher-education-network/blog/2013/dec/10/in-praise-of-academic-lecture.
32 ‘I have always been a wretched speaker,’ Nabokov claims in the opening pages of Strong
Opinions: ‘My vocabulary dwells deep in my mind and needs paper to wriggle out into
the physical zone. Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle.’ Nabokov, Strong
Opinions, 4.
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Epstein, Edward Jay. ‘An A from Nabokov.’ The New York Review of Books, April 4,
2013. Accessed May 15, 2017. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/04/04/a-from
-nabokov/.
Furedi, Frank. ‘In praise of the university lecture and its place in academic scholarship.’
The Guardian, December 10, 2013. Accessed May 15, 2017. https://www.theguardian
.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/dec/10/in-praise-of-academic-lecture.
Guillory, John. Cultural Capital. The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Khan, Salman. ‘Why Long Lectures Are Ineffective.’ Time, October 2, 2012. Accessed
May 15, 2017. http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/02/why-lectures-are-ineffective.
Kotsko, Adam. ‘A Defense of the Lecture.’ Inside Higher Ed, November 20, 2009. Accessed
May 15, 2017. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/11/20/defense-lecture.
Lambert, Craig. ‘Twilight of the Lecture.’ Harvard Magazine, March-April 2012.
Accessed May 15, 2017. http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/03/twilight-of-the-lecture.
Medak, Peter dir. The Metamorphosis: A Study – Nabokov on Kafka. Kingston
­International Communications, Inc., 1989.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature, edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by
John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.
Nabokov, Vladimir. Pnin. London Penguin Books, 1960 [1957].
Nabokov, Vladimir. Strong Opinions. New York: Vintage, 1990 [1973].
Small, Alex. ‘In Defense of the Lecture.’ The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 27,
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-Lecture/146797.
Tokumitsu, Miya. ‘In Defense of the Lecture.’ Jacobin Magazine, February 26, 2017.
Accessed May 15, 2017. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/lectures-learning
-school-academia-universities-pedagogy.
Wetzsteon, Ross. ‘Nabokov as teacher.’ In Nabokov. Criticism, Reminiscences, Translations
and Tributes, edited by Alfred Appel, Jr. and Charles Newman, 240–46. Evanston, Il.:
Northwestern University Press, 1970.
Index

Artistic delight 63, 84–85, 86, 172, 175, ‘A Dreary Story’ 158
189, 212 ‘Anna on the Neck’ 153
Austen, Jane 7, 10, 20, 35–42, 47, 200 ‘In the Ravine’ 148, 157
Structure 36, 42 Plays 156
Style 41 ‘The Duel’ 152
Mansfield Park 35–42, 173, 212 ‘The Gull’ 152
Northanger Abbey 42 ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ 152, 158
‘The New Villa’ 148
Bakhtin, Mikhail 52 Chekhov, Mikhail 4
Balzac, Honoré de 28, 85 Chernyshevsky, Nikolay 125
Belinsky, Vissarion 124–25 Chukovski, Kornei – see Chukovsky
Bely, Andrey 101, 102, 126, 128, 134, 136, 185 Chukovsky, Korney 136, 138, 142–44,
Benstock, Bernard 106 147
Bloom, Harold 217 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 200, 203
Borges, Jorge Luis 46 Cornell University 1, 6–8, 19, 22, 24, 35, 46,
Bowers, Fredson 1–2, 5, 7, 8, 47, 48, 87, 136, 71, 101, 103, 105, 117, 137, 167, 168, 187, 189,
142, 159, 190, 208 213, 215, 216
Boyd, Brian 2, 6, 7, 8, 22, 24, 36, 111, 112, Creation 20, 25, 36, 44–45, 58, 70, 79, 82, 83,
159, 185 84, 85, 88, 89–94, 95, 106, 108, 128, 173,
Bunin, Ivan 136–37, 146 176, 188–89, 192, 193–95, 196, 197
Creative process – see Creation
Campbell, Joseph 104 Criticism
The Hero with a Thousand Faces 104 Biographical approach 20–26, 40–41,
Canon(isation) 7, 35, 36, 46, 125, 139–40, 45, 58
143, 217 Freudian / psychoanalytical approach 65,
Cervantes, Miguel de 4, 10–11, 44–58 70–71, 117, 135, 136
Don Quixote 4, 7, 10–11, 44–58, 173 Mythological / symbolic ­ approach ­65–66,
Characterisation / characters 19–33, 37, 39, 69–70, 89, 104–05
41, 48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56, 89, 129, 179, 191 Religious-philosophical approach 65,
Chekhov, Anton 7, 12–13, 47, 103, 125, 129, 150
135–163, 186 Sociological / historical approach 23,
Anglo-American criticism on 141–42, 45, 52–54, 58, 63, 64–65, 89, 111–14, 122,
143, 145, 156, 158 124–25, 128, 133, 135, 137, 148–49, 150,
Biography 138, 142–45, 153 155, 172, 173, 188, 189
Canonisation 139–40, 143 See also Reader
Early Soviet criticism on 140–41, 143,
145, 156, 158 Davenport, Guy 48
Émigré criticism on 140–42, 143, Dickens, Charles 7, 35, 47, 188, 200
145–47, 148, 149, 156, 158 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 6, 7, 47, 116, 125, 136,
Late Soviet criticism on 143, 158 137, 138, 185, 206–07
Nineteenth-century criticism 143, Style 138
148–49, 156, 158 Crime and Punishment 137, 207
Pre-Soviet criticism on 144, 148–49, The Brothers Karamazov 207
156, 158 The Double 137, 206–07
Style 150–51, 152–53, 158 Durantaye, Leland de la 62, 67, 84
224 Index

Eikhenbaum, Boris 128, 134 Finnegans Wake 116

Ellmann, Richard 105, 108 Ulysses 12, 26, 101–19, 185

Field, Andrew 7, 200 Kafka, Franz 7, 9, 11, 14, 47, 60–73, 84, 101,
Flaubert, Gustave 7, 9, 11, 13, 20, 28, 47, 79, 102, 108, 170, 185, 200, 204, 206–07, 214
80, 85, 86–96, 103, 107, 116, 137, 150, 157, ‘Conversation with the Supplicant’ 61, 62
167–83, 186, 200 ‘Description of a Struggle’ 60
Structure 87–89 ‘In Our Synagogue’ 61
Style 94, 97, 150, 175 ‘The Metamorphosis’ 11, 60–73, 84, 108,
Madame Bovary 11–12, 13, 79, 86–96, 170, 185, 204, 206–07, 214
167–83 ‘The Top’ 61
Form 79, 80, 81, 86–91 ‘The Worry of the House Father’ 60
Freud, Sigmund 103 Kain, Richard M. 105, 106, 107, 114
Frye, Northrop 104 Kotzebue, August von 36, 37, 38
Das Kind der Liebe 36, 37, 38
Genette, Gérard 31, 90 Krayny, Anton – see Gippius, Zinaida
Geneva School 76–77
Gerhardi(e), William 151–55 Laughlin, James 1, 130
Gilbert, Stuart 105 Lavrin, Janko 150, 157
Gippius, Zinaida 158 Lermontov, Mikhail 3, 4, 5, 130
Goethe, Wolfgang von 200 A Hero of our Time 130
Gogol, Nikolay 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 47, 64, 121–34, Levin, Harry 7, 9, 47, 103, 105, 106
136, 137, 139n23, 150, 153, 177, 185, 186, Literary experience – see Reader
188, 204, 206 Literary mastery – see Writing
Biography 127–28, 132, 133
Poshlost 122, 129–30 Mann, Thomas 116, 200
Style 128–29, 150, 153 Maupassant, Guy de 152, 156, 157
Dead Souls 122, 127, 129, 130, 131, 177 McLean, Hugh 9, 136, 137, 147, 159
The Government Inspector 122, 127, 129 Medak, Peter 71, 72, 214
‘The Overcoat’ 204, 122, 123, 127, 204 Nabokov on Kafka 71, 214
Gorky, Maksim 47, 125, 136, 138, 139n18 Merezhkovsky, Dmitry 158
Canonisation 125, 140 Metaphor 64–65, 69–70, 81, 96, 158, 196
Style 138, 139n18 Mirsky, Dmitry 132, 136, 148, 156
Grossman, Leonid 157 Moscow Art Theatre 138

Harvard University 7, 47, 121, 187 Nabokov, Nicolas 3

Hutchins, Patricia 105, 106 Nabokov, Véra 2, 3, 4, 5, 109
Hybridisation of genres 125, 127, 133 Nabokov, Vladimir
Artistic laboratory 1, 8, 12, 115–17, 118,
Inchbald, Elizabeth 37, 38, 39 122, 125–26, 128, 133, 137
Lovers’ Vows 36, 38–39 As teacher 2, 3–8, 9, 45, 48, 63, 71, 104,
Intention (authorial) 28, 39–40, 45, 53, 85, 114–15, 168, 176, 177, 187, 190, 201,
86, 91, 92, 93, 94, 176–77, 180 211–20
Exile 52, 102
James, Henry 12, 137, 150–51, 154 Fondness for textual detail 12, 13, 48,
Style 150–51 62, 68, 72, 88, 95, 101, 105, 107–08, 112,
Joyce, James 7, 9, 12, 25–26, 29, 47, 86, 129, 152, 153, 168, 178, 182, 189, 207,
101–19, 185, 200, 212 212, 214
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young On cruelty 47, 49, 55
Man 114 The author as enchanter 63, 71
Index 225

Use of drawings in class 47, 68, 72, 88, A la recherche du temps perdu 10, 13,
111, 169, 214 19–33, 185–98
Use of translations in class 45, 131, Contre Sainte-Beuve 24, 25
168–71 Jean Santeuil 28
Ada 21, 24, 119, 125, 187, 206, 217 Pushkin, Aleksandr 3, 4, 5, 7, 45, 127,
Bend Sinister 5 136, 171
Conclusive Evidence – see Speak, Memory Eugene Onegin 7, 45, 171, 207
Eugene Onegin 7, 45, 125, 130, 133, 171, 207
‘Good Readers and Good Writers’ 44, 47, Reader 22, 37, 45, 46, 48, 52–53, 57, 58, 76,
107, 181, 194, 196, 214 77–78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87–88,
Invitation to a Beheading 185 90–92, 93, 96, 123, 135, 139n18, 142, 177,
Kamera Obskura – see Laughter in the Dark 181, 191, 194, 200, 201, 204
King, Queen, Knave 171 Academic reader 103, 173
Laughter in the Dark 186 Average reader 95, 123–24, 176, 211
Lolita 6, 7, 11, 14, 30–31, 44, 46, 48, 54–57, Bad reader 21, 180, 211
63, 102, 109, 116, 117, 118, 119, 168, 172, 173, Contemporary reader 136–37, 140, 142,
175, 180, 183, 187, 205, 217 147, 200
Look at the Harlequins 125 Creative reader / ideal / perfect 45,
Pale Fire 22, 23, 111, 125, 187, 203, 46, 63–64, 76, 77–78, 81–84, 88, 91,
208–09, 217 96–97, 122–24, 133, 176, 178, 202–03,
Pnin 7, 24, 111, 119, 132 207, 213, 217
Nikolai Gogol 12, 121–34 Emotional reader 84
Speak, Memory 1, 5, 171 Good reader 44, 48, 211, 212, 217
Strong Opinions 111, 117, 169, 211, 217, 219 Passive reader 88
‘The Art of Literature and Common- Solemn reader 123–24
sense’ 7, 75, 80 see also Criticism
‘The Art of Translation’ 131 Reading – see Reader
‘The Art of Writing’ 4 References / citations 21, 105–08, 127–29,
The Eye 14, 201, 202, 205 129, 142, 197
The Gift 125, 199 Rousset, Jean 75–97
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight 28–29,
121 Schelling, Friedrich von 49
Three Russian Poets 5 Shakespeare, William 53, 171, 201, 208
‘The Servile Path’ 131 Hamlet 201
Narration / narrator 19, 23, 40–41, 57, 79, 87, Shelley, Mary 206
90, 133, 178, 192 Spitzer, Leo 80
New Criticism 103, 104, 117, 217 Stanford University 3–4, 137
Némirovsky, Irène 156 Stendhal (Beyle, Marie-Henri) 28
Stevenson, Robert Louis 14, 199–209, 212
Painting 24, 28, 75–76, 80, 81, 82, 86, 193 Essays in the Art of Writing 208
Parker, Stephen Jan 159 Markheim 203
Phenomenology 45, 75–97 The Master of Ballantrae 203
Plummer, Christopher 71–73, 214–15 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Poetics – see Style Mr. Hyde 14, 64, 199–208, 212
Point of view / perspective 20, 25–26, 27, 28, The Suicide Club 209
29–30, 40, 87–90, 92, 94, 95 Treasure Island 200, 201, 202
Multiplicity 28, 30 Weir of Hermiston 201
Poshlost 122, 129–30 Structure 19, 36, 42, 45, 48, 79, 87–89, 91, 92,
Proust, Marcel 7, 9, 10, 13, 19–33, 47, 85, 86, 95, 177
101, 102, 116, 170, 177, 185–98 Structuralism 79, 177
226 Index

Style 19, 41, 45, 71, 80, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 109, Updike, John 6–7, 24, 213
113, 122, 128–29, 138, 139n18, 150–51,
152–53, 158, 172, 175, 178, 190, 194, 195, Veresayev, Vikenty 126, 134
196
Swiss school – see Geneva school Weir, Charles / ‘Dirty Lit’-course 6, 22, 101,
103, 213
Theme – see Structure Wells College 3
Tolstoy, Lev 4, 6, 7, 47, 111, 125, 138, 139, Wells, H.G. 206, 207
139n18, 153, 171, 185, 212 The Invisible Man 206
On Chekhov 152, 157 Wellesley College 1, 3–6, 121, 132, 137, 187
Style 138, 139n18, 153 Wilson, Edmund 1, 35, 39, 40, 103, 105, 106,
Anna Karenina 111, 153, 170, 173, 177, 116, 121, 139, 151, 154, 170, 200
179–180 Writing – see Creation
Translation 45, 130–31, 168–71, 214
Turgenev, Ivan 4, 47, 125, 136, 137, 138
Tyutchev, Fyodor 3, 5