Suellen Stringer-Hye: This article was published
several years ago.
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/17/nabokov/JM: After
James Twiggs acquainted me with
Lev Grossman's 2000 article on
"The Gay Nabokov," my original query ( an attempt to understand the
words S.Karlinski quoted from "Speak Memory" as a "tribute" to Sergey)
was substituted by a different one.
Lev Grossman's article is remarkable!
Phyllis A.Roth ("Toward the Man behind the Mystification) took
"Speak Memory" as a point of departure for her investigation about "the
concept of absolute artistic control," before she advances towards "the specific
sources of the satisfaction gained by the artistic transformation of personal
experiences." She introduces, at this point, "the transformative and cathartic
functions of Nabokov's writing about homosexuals" which "clearly find their
imperatives in Nabokov's memories of his brother Sergey and Unkle Ruka."
Roth notes that "Nabokov never uses the term "homosexual" when describing them"
(Sergey and Uncle Ruka), although she mentions that Andrew Field
"corroborates its accuracy."
She also quotes the entire paragraph that ends with "the mere recognition
of such a want can neither replace nor redeem."*
J.Aisenberg [in relation to the information
about B.Boyd's approximation bt Lucette and Sergey, in "Ada"]: "...with
both Lucette and Ada, Nabokov seems to have been parodying a set of complex
readerly expectations. The two sisters are slyly described in terms of
types...Nabokov's playing with one of the structuring principles of so many
melodramatic works: the principal of oppositional characters: good girl/ bad
girl... [he] turns everything upside down...My point is that when a book
like this plays so intricately and sophisticatedly with literary genres it's
probably dangerous to think the characters bear much of a relationship to people
in the author's real life."
JM: It's the first time that I hear about this
fascinating idea about Ada and Lucette as having been "slyly described in
terms of types." It clarifies various issues without simplifying
them. And yet, Van's avoidance of Lucette still remains a puzzle since Lucette
was the only "tabbo" he could respect in his overall dissolute
life**.
.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
* Ian McEwan's novel "Atonement" is a startling example
of successful authorial control over plot and reader. He turns one of his
characters (Briony) into an unreliable narrator and, thorugh her,
he adds a double twist to the process of redemption. Briony deceives the
reader into accepting the veracity of a happy ending in her story only
to reveal, in the end, that she'd been lying about the events related
to her sister and the man both loved. At the same time, she brings
herself to confess her deceit without giving up her project of "atonement"
which, actually, the confession about her second
lie destroys.
As I see it, Vladimir Nabokov avoided similar pitfalls when he
recognized, in his Memoir, that redemption, in relation to his obliteration
of Sergey, was impossible.
**Vladimir Nabokov was fascinated by vice: repeated numbers, events,
irrational actions; uncanny (or trivial) coincidences; intimations of
immortality and of the transcendent - as these
are encountered in life's "vicious circles." And, once
again, James Twiggs acquainted me with an instigating essay on Henry
James's "The Turn of the Screw" [ David S. Miall, "Designed Horror: James's
Vision of Evil in The Turn of the Screw," in Nineteenth Century Fiction, vol.
39, No.3, 1984, pp 305-27], in which the essayist compares reports about
apparitions, obtained from the Proceedings of the Society of Psychical
Research, particularly the Morton Case, with the jamesian governess.
Miall's arguments offer valuable insights into the artistic choice
of "ghostly presences," as an aesthetic resource to deal with "Evil"
- as we may also discern in Nabokov's "Pale Fire."
For him Henry James's attempt to express Evil without "the
comparative vulgarity" as encountered in
scientific "ghost-reportings", engenders the feeling of the "uncanny" as an
expression of emotional and aesthetic values
in James's novel. Although Miall dismisses the freudian
theory about "sexual repression," most of his arguments stem
from Freud's articles about "the uncanny" (Unheimlich) and the
"death drive" and his instigating interpretation was also helpful when I
envisioned Lolita's "abduction from normal childhood" and the overall
sense of "evil isolation" I always experience when I read this
novel.