[Discussing Nabokov's criticism of
freudian symbolism...]
JM: Nabokov's abhorence of
"symbolism" (against the "rejected lover" willow-icon that
shimmers on Lucette's clothes) was recently brought up once again, by
Thomas Karshan, in the February 4, 2011 review, "Nabokov in bed":
(Nabokov)" ...despised the 'symbolism racket in schools' and the 'computerized minds' it attracts and creates. He
said 'I do not believe in any kind of
interpretation', deprecated the literature of ideas...He
satirized the code-breaking state of mind that seeks symbols
everywhere...For this Nabokov, the ideal reader is not Kinbote, but
Kinbote's belletristic uncle Conmal, who spends two happy years reading
in bed. Conmal is the reader as passive instrument, an Aeolian harp on
which the finest half-tones of art can be sounded*." For Karshan, "Like
most recent Nabokov critics, Naiman belongs to the Kinbote, not the
Conmal school. Where he differs from them is in his rebellion against
Nabokov's authority, and his willingness to attend to the sexual
element in Nabokov's writing (strangely ignored in most criticism)."
What strikes me over and over is how
imprecisely the term "symbolism" is employed whenever it is quoted or
re-applied. It is often used indifferently as synonimous of "icon",
"sign", "index," whereas the eminently symbolic dimension of language
is not sufficiently considered and the world of "correspondances" is
overly stressed. Karsham's notes that "Kinbote's logomania heroically
demonstrates that love of fleeting minutiae which Nabokov considered
essential to poetry, reading and happiness," but, when he places Naiman
among other Nabokov critics, he situates him in "Kinbote's school" with
a disparaging intention, considering that Nabokov's "ideal reader"
is like a passive Aeolian harp, like Kinbote's uncle Conmal. Karshan
doesn't dwell over Conmal's failings and distortions as a translator
and, above all, over the distinction between a "love of
fleeting minutiae" by someone afflicted by "logomania", and something
of the same as it may be found in normal individuals.
Besides, did Nabokov in fact, as Karshan
maintains, see the love for details as something "essential to poetry,
reading and happiness", instead of emphasizing its roots in
"curiosity," a quality expected in readers and in non-readers as
well? In TRY, biographer Brian Boyd recognizes that, for Nabokov, "art
requires curiosity, tenderness toward all that is frail in the world"
and, in a wikiquote (which doesn't indicate its source), Nabokov
moves even further: "Curiosity is insubordination in its purest
form." As I see it, "curiosity" is the drive that lies behind the
unceasing search for minutiae in the world of nature, art and words
(including symbols), with their ever-shifting images and invigorating
connections.
However, I gladly endorse Karshan's views
that "From Bend Sinister (1947) onwards, Nabokov's novels all establish
a powerful authorial presence, only to equate it with tyranny and
cruelty, and to set against it the possibility of a subversive
counter-reading which must endure the derision which that authorial
presence orchestrates...Like Joyce's Finnegans Wake, a book Nabokov
engaged with closely while all the time decrying it, Nabokov's American
novels flirt shamelessly (and shamefully) with the play of language,
all the time courting the dangers that play poses to their own
authority...Eric Naiman is right not to submit to the critical tyranny
of Nabokov's authorial presence (a presence which is mocked in the
novels themselves)...But by reducing Nabokov's perversity to a system
of hidden dirty words Naiman replaces one literalism with another and
reduces Nabokov's protean textual eroticism to something overt,
knowable, fixed...And there can be no virtue, perverse or chaste, in
treating all of Nabokov's novels as if they have the same verbal
texture and are to be read in the same way."
Another valuable information, for me**, is
in Karshan's critical view of Maar: "In Speak, Nabokov, Maar sets out
to 'take into account the person whose soul and imagination are
crystallized in the art'. This formulation, however, bodes ill for a
study of a writer who believed that the real life of an author is a
refraction of his art...Behind it all lies Maar's fatal fascination
with the chimera of an underlying unity in Nabokov's life and art, in
the light of which superficial distinctions melt away. This chimera is
unquestionably a major theme of Nabokov's art, but as a terror which he
set himself against. Here, it is Maar's guiding principle. .. In so
doing he inverts...Nabokov's intent: not to deny but to assert the
proliferating individuality of every person, thought, and artwork."
............................................................................................................................................................
* Karshan's full quote, when he compares
Naiman's book to Rowe's: "by reducing Nabokov's perversity to a system
of hidden dirty words Naiman replaces one literalism with another and
reduces Nabokov's protean textual eroticism to something overt,
knowable, fixed...And there can be no virtue, perverse or chaste, in
treating all of Nabokov's novels as if they have the same verbal
texture and are to be read in the same way. The funny thing is that
this has all happened before, in 1971, when W. W. Rowe published a
remarkably similar book, finding "wick" in "wickedly folded moth" and
"man" in "manipulate". Nabokov's reply was crisp and definitive: "in 1971, when W. W. Rowe ook, finding "wick" in
"wickedly folded moth" and "man" in "manipulate". Nabokov's reply was
crisp and definitive: "The various words that Mr. Rowe mistakes for the
'symbols' of academic jargon, supposedly planted by an idiotically sly
novelist to keep schoolmen busy, are not labels, not pointers, and
certainly not the garbage cans of a Viennese tenement, but live
fragments of specific description, rudiments of metaphor, and echoes of
creative emotion. The fatal flaw in Mr. Rowe's treatment of recurrent
words, such as 'garden' or 'water', is his regarding them as
abstractions, and not realizing that the sound of a bath being filled,
say, in the world of Laughter in the Dark, is as different from the
limes rustling in the rain of Speak, Memory as the Garden of Delights
in Ada is from the lawns in Lolita." Naiman quotes this passage
but attempts no answer to it, which is hardly surprising, since it is
unanswerable..."
** - Not that my opinion matters, except if
taken as a stimulus that may ellicit other opinions, more curiosity and
thoughts. Outside the realm of "Art" ( and "Science" to a lesser
degree, as observed by Nabokov in relation to the shifting paradigms of
science), critical views should be more than authoritative blessings or
curses, but ways to enrich the reader's own critical capacity. Thanks
to Carolyn Kunin who retrieved and posted the Karshamnreview to me.