A Shaggy Dog Story about NABOKOV
& MARIE CORELLI
One of my interests is books
Nabokov read in childhood and youth. Several seriocomic publications have come
out of this. One of the of these,
nicely illustrated, may be found on ZEMBLA: „Volodya’s Readings in English: 1899-1911” (or
something similar); others pieces
in print include Rupert Brooke,
Walter de Mare, and Mayne Reid. The following notes are to intended to spare
researchers the drudgery of reading Marie Corelli in pursuit of Nabokovian
links. As is often the case, there were some amusing sidelights along the
way that I recount
below.
In Speak, Memory, IV-4 (p.431) Nabokov recounts the series of his nannies and governessess. Near the end, we find: "There was one awful person who read to me Marie Corelli's The Mighty Atom. In The Library of America edition Boyd adds a note: „The novel (1896) warned against the dangers of atheism, as Nabokov notes in the Russian version of his autobiography, Drugie berega ”(699). The Russian version adds a bit more information: Помню еще ужасную старуху, которая читала мне вслух повесть Марии Корелли "Могучий Атом" о том, что случилось с хорошим мальчиком, из которого нехорошие родители хотели сделать безбожника. [I also recall a terrible old woman who read aloud to me Marie Corelli's THE MIGHTY ATOM about what happened to a good lad whom his bad parents wanted to make into an atheist. [Trns. by editor].
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I have not read this cautionary tale but learned a bit more about it in a book review by Mark Williams at http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue81/mag-print-81.html:
In The Mighty Atom (1906), for example, a rich atheist excludes religion from his son's education, and the boy's tutors -- teaching a Victorian version of the big bang theory -- explain that the universe resulted from a primordial atom's explosion. When his mother leaves his autocratic father and a little girl he loves dies, the heartbroken boy hangs himself after praying to the highest power he knows of -- the Mighty Atom.
The power of this epic is reflected in an item drawn
from the webpage of the English village of Driffield that reports
this sad item (http://www.driffieldtoday.do.uk):
100 Tears
ago today...Sept. 20, 1902
STRANGE
SUICIDE: A young
man named Gosse, aged 19, the son of a clergyman, has committed suicide under
sensational circumstances. He had been reading Marie Corelli’s novel The Mighty
Atom. Before retiring to rest he said to his mother, who was lying ill, ‘That
boy actually hung himself with a sash’, referrring to a character in the book.
The following morning, the youth’s body was found hanging in his bedroom. He had
attired himself in his father’s cassock on which was a cross made of sticks. On
his dressing table was a prayer book, open at the burial service. In a letter,
the deceased said: ‘This is not self murder. I have long wanted to become a
monk. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. If thy life offend thee, give it
back to him who gave it to thee. I ask that a cross be put on my breast in my
grave. Bury me in this holy robe.’ The coroner read to the jury the description
of the hanging scene in the book which the unfortunate youth described to his
mother.
"It shouldn't be surprising, then, that Marie Corelli became Queen Victoria's -- and England's -- favorite author with her first novel in 1886, A Romance of Two Worlds. [I should insert here that she was also the favorite of Alexandra, wife of Russian Tsar Nicholas II (DBJ)]. The heroine visits a utopian Saturn, a technologically fantastic Jupiter, and the universe's center, where God dwells as electricity. In Corelli's novels, primitive science fiction and spiritualism blend bizarrely. After her death in 1924, many of Corelli's fans believed she'd predicted wireless technology; during television's early days, the "telly" became "the Marie" in Cockney rhyming slang. Marie Corelli's popularity is a weird historical footnote...."
The title A Romance of Two Worlds rang a faint bell. A long time ago in Indiana, in my sci-fi-reading youth, I pulled this Victorian gem off the shelf of my father’s library, read, and promptly forgot it. Oddly, I – of the atrocious memory – can remember the exact case and shelf location but recalled nothing of the novel apart from Corelli's name and the title.
I am among those Nabokovians who have
argued that "a two world" vision underlies much of VN's fiction. Recently
noticing VN's passing reference in Speak, Memory to
Corelli, I thought of The
Romance of Two Worlds and idly wondered if there might be any
echoes in his work. After all, Nabokov had lived in England during Corelli's
last years and she was a popular writer that
Nabokov had been aware from
childhood. Checking my copy of the printed catalogue of the Nabokov
family library (1904 with a 1911 supplement), I learned that it included a
number of Corelli books: Ardath (a sequel to the 1886 A Romance of Two Worlds) and Barabbas – both in English-language
editions published in Leipzig -- the former in 1889. I would guess it was in the
Tauchnitz edition for travelers.
The supplement adds only Free
Opinions (
I haven’t the patience to provide a synopsis of A Romance of Two Worlds or Ms. Corelli’s bio but those interested in doing term papers should refer to the URL below.
http://www.shopmandala.com/bookbymarcor.html
http://www3.shropshire-cc.gov.uk/corelli.htm
http://www.abacci.com/books/book.asp?bookID=2013
I gather there has been a resurgence of interest in Corelli among the New Age set and you will be glad to know that several of her novels have been reprinted.
Conclusion: Nabokov may well have read Corelli’s Romance of Two Worlds. I see no reason to think it had any role
in his “two worlds” cosmology nor do I find allusion to it in
D. Barton Johnson