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American Clan of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
Worlds in Regression: Some Novels of Vladimir Nabokov by D. Barton Johnson; VladimirNabokovReview by: Julian West. ConnollyThe Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 30, No. ii (Summer, 1986), pp. 295-297Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European LanguagesStable URL: http://world wide web.jstor.org/stable/307616 .Accessed: 12/06/2014 23:49
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Reviews 295
BnaiHMHp Ha60KOB. HepenucKa c cecmpoid. Ed. Helene Sikorski. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985.
125 pp., $7.50 (newspaper).
Since Nabokov'southward death in 1977, we have seen the appearance of much Nabokoviana-some important, some less so. Zinaida Saxovskaja's Vpoiskax Nabokova (Paris, 1979) shed calorie-free on the European period of the author's emigration. The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, brilliantly edited by Simon Karlinsky (New York, 1979), are an invaluable source of information near the homo and his piece of work during the American years. The present drove of letters (1945-74) between Nabokov and his youngest sis, Elena, adds very little to our noesis of his work, although it farther enhances our view of Nabokov the man.
The letters begin with the reestablishment of contact at the end of Earth War II. Elena, her husband, and her adored son are in Soviet-occupied Prague in straitened circumstances and in fright of repatriation. Elena refers obliquely to their peril past allusion to Nabokov'southward hero, Cin- cinnatus, of Invitation to a Beheading. Her mental attitude toward Soviet Russia is evoked by refer- ence to The Gift. The correspondence on both sides is mostly current family news, although nostalgic childhood memories (which Nabokov drew on for the autobiographical essays that became Speak, Memory) are besides prominent in the earlier letters. Elena was about thirteen when Nabokov left domicile and hence followed his career at a distance. Nonetheless, her occa- sional literary asides testify her to be a expert reader of both his Russian and English work. She is certainly ane of the few to discover the encryption of Zina Merc's name in the verse text of The Gift, and she ofttimes laments the failure of critics to grasp aspects of her brother's writing. The Sikorskis managed to immigrate to Switzerland in 1947, but the twenty-3-year separation of blood brother and sis came to an stop only in 1959, not long before the Nabokovs' terminal return to Europe.
The letters (with some deletions) have been rather skimpily edited and annotated by Helen Sikorski. In compensation, the book is enriched by a number of family photographs and Nabokov's floor plans of some of his residences. The collection is rounded out by five letters from the writer to his youngest brother, Kiril. In two of these, the xxx-one-twelvemonth-old author offers critiques of the piece of work of the aspiring young poet.
The nerveless letters present a side of Nabokov that the public rarely glimpsed. They are perhaps best seen equally minor footnotes to the portraits of the author constitute in Andrew Field's Nabokov: His Life in Function (New York, 1977) and in Brian Boyd's forthcoming biography.
D. Barton Johnson, Academy of California, Santa Barbara
D. Barton Johnson. Worlds in Regression: Some Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985. 10, 233 pp., $vii.50 (paper), $25.00 (cloth).
Recent months have witnessed a remarkable rise in the number of works devoted to Vladimir Nabokov. D. Barton Johnson'south Worlds in Regression, which contains twelve of his previously published or forthcoming articles on Nabokov, is 1 of the most engaging of these. Johnson possesses that refreshing yet relatively rare chapters to write cogently on the significance of small details and to synthesize his observations into broad critical theories. He pursues a center course between those who stress the games-playing attribute of Nabokov'southward art and those who probe its moral or philosophical implications. Adopting the premise that Nabokov'southward oeuvre offers a recurring exploration of what he has called the "two worlds" theme, Johnson argues that the pervasive patterning that runs throughout the author's fictional world must be viewed as an keepsake of the presence of a higher, controlling authorial consciousness. This in plow, Johnson suggests, implies the existence of a "more than all-encompassing world" above the
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296 Slavic and Due east European Periodical
authors' world (2). Such a claim is conjectural, since Nabokov himself remained reluctant to divulge his beliefs nigh the cosmic order. Still, he repeatedly explored the theme in his piece of work, and Johnson'south hypothesis has much to recommend information technology.
Johnson employs an inductive method in his essays, proceeding from an analysis of specific detail to the construction of general hypotheses. He follows a like design in the organiza- tion of his book. Begining with comments on the edifice blocks of Nabokov'southward fiction-the letters of the alphabet, he concludes with an investigation of Nabokov'south handling of decease and the hereafter. His essays display a wide range of critical interests, with a detail emphasis on shut textual readings and the utilize of language. This is especially evident in the two essays on Invitation to a Beheading, where Johnson makes a number of stimulating obser- vations nearly alphabetic icons. Noting the utilise of the Slavonic letter of the alphabet names az and izica, he points out the semantic significance of the word az, the visual significance of the letter izica, and the religious connotations of these Slavonic equivalents of alpha and omega. Later he looks at the treatment of the two worlds theme in the novel as reflected past the opposition found in such lexical pairs equally tut/tam and etot/tot.
This attending to language and detail also informs Johnson's ii essays on Ada. In the start he decodes the multilingual puns generated by the Scrabble game given to Van and Ada by one Baron Klim Avidov (an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov); in the second he focuses on the theme of incest, finding evidence that incest occurred not but in Van and Ada's generation, only in previous generations too. Johnson views the theme of multigenerational incest as an apt metaphor for Nabokov's fine art itself, which draws inspiration from earlier generations of literary cosmos as well as from earlier periods of the author's ain work. The critic's talent for imaginative detective piece of work surfaces again in his discussion of Pale Fire. Addressing the debate over the identity of Shade and Kinbote, Johnson posits the intriguing theory that Kinbote is actually the American scholar V. Botkin, a dull professor who has created for himself a more than dashing identity every bit the exiled Zemblan male monarch Charles Ii, now posing as Charles Kinbote.
Johnson utilizes a variety of outside sources to illuminate Nabokov'due south fiction. Examining the chess motif in The Defense he uncovers an interesting parallel between the absence of Lulin's fiancee at two critical moments in his life with a double-rook sacrifice occurring in a real chess-player's career. He ultimately decides that Lulin is non so much a player in a chess game as a pawn in a chess problem. In subsequent essays he investigates the left/right dichotomy in Await at the Harlequins in light of Martin Gardner'due south book The Ambidextrous Universe, and studies Bend Sinister as a novel about the nature of consciousness with instructive references to such figures equally Archimedes.
In his last essays Johnson looks at the story "Ultima Thule" for answers to the question of what lies beyond death, a fundamental concern of Nabokov's oeuvre. Does death hateful the cessation of all consciousness, or is there some kind of transcendence and communion with a realm of infinite consciousness? Works such as Curve Sinister and "Ultima Thule" intimate that the latter view is right. If and so, Johnson concludes, then in the mythology of "Ultima Thule," Nabokov weaves "the design of his ain immortality" (219).
Johnson's insights into Nabokov's methods are suggestive, and they spur his readers to like analyses. At one bespeak in his commentary on Invitation to a Beheading he probes the relationship between the Russian initials of the prisoner Cincinnatus and the executioner Pierre and observes that the H of the executioner is barred at the top, while the U of Cincinna- tus is open--"foreshadowing his rising to a very different world" (33). This ascertainment invites further speculation. Looking more closely at H and ane, one notes that the latter letter has an extra appendage. To arrive conform exactly to the model of H i would accept to lop off this bagginess: this is a precise counterpart of Pierre's intention of beheadi
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