In Strong Opinions, Nabokov wrote: "No, I
shall never regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle -
its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of
the other, depending on the way you look....There is a queer, tender charm about
that mythical nymphet." (1964)
While reading Sarah Funke Butler's "Nabokov’s Notes" in The Paris review on
line (February 29, 2012), I found a quote in which Nabokov describes art in
a "looking glass" in an intriguing way, should one relate it to
what he'd said about the composition of Lolita:"The mistakes and misstatements in [Wilson’s review] form an
uninterrupted series so complete as to seem artistic in reverse, making one
wonder if, perhaps, it had not been woven that way on purpose to be turned into
something pertinent and coherent when reflected in a looking glass
"
There are all kinds of mirrors (flat and curved ones) and these
present different kinds of distorted images, which have to be looked
at from a specific perspective so that the imagetic information they
reflect can be recovered. Quite often Nabokov resorts to convex
surfaces (a samovar, the roof of an automobile. Even rear-mirrors are
important in more than a metaphorical way...). At least once, in PF's
foreword, the pauline lines related to "in a mirror, darkly", are cited (also in
part) and an azure sky reflected on a windowpane is shown to
be deathly. There are inverted images (isn't there a scene
in which Van reads the headlines 'Crimea Capitulates' from a
flat mirror lying behind Demon?), a profound familiarity with
some of the "adventures through the looking glass." and there are
reversions ("the underside of the weave", in PF). Most of the time Nabokov
writes about optical phenomena and yet, in LATH, the mental operation
of imagining the world from different spacial orientations, gains a special
inclusion.
In Lolita, Nabokov asserts that the book comprises the
simultaneous composition and solution of a beautiful puzzle, because
they are a mirror view of the other.
This seems to be unrelated to what he detailed concerning Edmund Wilson's
mistakes and misstatements unless, in irony, he were suggesting that there
was a conscious purpose, as in an artistic composition, reflected
by EW's misapprehensions. It would be quite fascinating
should an instrument, that allowed the reader to "revert" some of the
scenes, or spirit in Lolita,.exist. Such as the
reconstitution of the mangled faces and objects impressed on
a cilinder when they are placed on a flat mirror in an anamorphosis.
Stephen Blackwell suggested an added "reference
to the "nonnons" from ITAB, which are exactly what VN is describing re: Wilson
here." How could I have forgotten all about that! When I tried
to retrieve a past discussion at the N-L, I was surprised and thrilled
by Dmitri Nabokov's participation in the discussion. The themes were
related to Nonnons, Nitkto, Anamorphosis Dmitri Nabokov's second
contribution is particularly wonderful ( as in "To return to the question of
the state of nature before the origin of this concept [of species], and imagine
the immeasurably distant times when "the specimen reigned supreme," we can, with
the aid of parlor verse, if not of armchair science, indistinctly perceive this
undulating, iridescent world, and nature's first attempts at stabilizing
something." )
A selection of the discussions.(they are not reproduced in chronological
order and some of the exchanges were not available to me):
1. Victor Fet on Nikto Botkin (15 October 2006)
"It probably was Andrew Field who first noticed "Nikto" in Botkin in his
"VN" (1986, p. 346). He thought that extra "b"["Nova Zembla, poor thing, with
that B in her bonnet" as VN wrote before] went to "Zembla"! (that would be a
nice Scrabble move). "Nabokov, of course, strongly denied all this," Field wrote
(!). "Nikto b" was also already mentioned in NABOKOV-L rather long time
ago (see exchange below). On the other hand, did anybody notice that "Nikto
Botkin" ["Nobody
Botkin"] forms a perfect palindrome? You only have to
substitute "V." (Botkin's first name) for Nikto. Or, if you wish Nikto to
be the last name, make an anagram "B. NIKTO" and, as a bonus, read "B." in
Russian where it is of course "V." There is a nice Botkin article on Zembla by
Josh Kaplan,'A Delineation of Botkin's Role in Pale Fire, & His Fate
Beyond'." (
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/kaplan1.htm)
2 .Abdellah Bouazza on Netki/ nonnons/
anamorphosis in Invitation (Sat, 14 Oct 2006)
"Nonnons" See page 135 of the 1st ed. of INVITATION TO A BEHEADING, where
Cecilia C. describes them.
[EDNOTE. Jenefer Coates spoke about nonnons
as exemplary of VN's aesthetic and use of allusion at the Nice conference last
June. --
3. Dmitri Nabokov on Netki/ nonnons/..
"Bravo,Abdel!
There it is on page 135, big as life. I don't recall which one of us made this
nice translational find, but strongly suspect it was my father...."
4.
George Shimanovich on Netko/ nonnons/ PF (15 Oct
2006)
"I think that is what happened to Kinbote (Botkin) in PF. In his
delusional self he searched and found Zembla's reflection in Shade's poem. Alas,
when the mirror image dissipated that ugly thing remained. Belatedly he
recognized that reflection worked the other way: the art reflected him. Isn't
that when he killed himself? *
In VN's oeuvre art and consciousness
convincingly win when challenged by cruelty (Bent Sinister), tyranny (Invitation
to Beheading), banality (e.g.Cloud, Castle, Lake), delusions of all sorts and
sources (Pale Fire).Isn't that most recurring theme of VN's? Other than that,
there is no polyphony here - all by design, including red herrings and short
cirtcuts. MPD hype is ours. The uniqueness of PF is that this counterpoint
spilled out from the novel into criticism - that is to us.
Here is the full quote:
"
Nonnons, absolutely absurd
objects, shapeless, mottled, knobby things, like some kind of fossils -- but ...
when you placed one of these incomprehensible, monstrous objects so that
it was reflected in the incomprehensible, monstrous mirror, everything was fine,
and the shapeless speckledness became in the mirror a wonderful, sensible image;
flowers, a ship, a person, a landscape." Note "a person, a landscape".
Zembla anyone?
I copied it from chapter 'Artistic reality' of 'O Window in
the Dark! The Early Career of Vladimir Nabokov' by Michael Fleming
http://www.dutchgirl.com/foxpaws/biographies/O_Window_in_the_Dark!/nabokovbiNabokov
explicitly describes in the "Invitation to the beheading" some kind of "puzzles"
(I don't know how it is called in the english translation, in Russian it was
called "netki", "net" means "no") which included a strange shape and an equally
strange curvy mirror, such that only in this mirror you may see a beautiful
object instead of the strange thing. "Nonnons"
5. Jansy Mello on Nekti/ nonnons/ Nice (15 Oct
2006)
"I'll try to look into "netki" and "nonnon" and check
"Invitation".Sergei's description fits exactly with the kind of
anamorphosis I had in mind...I wonder how often VN applied "anamorphosis" in his
writing - and I mean not in a description or by direct mention, but
through verbally distorted images that only mirrors or doubles make us see them
( I'd never thought about echoes and symmetries in that sense. What of Shade,
Gradus and Kinbote/Botkin, now?). Would these fascinating names ( still
rather vague to me: netki & nonnons) apply to some kind of "double negation"
...ED Note: I'll invite Jenefer Coates to contribute to the
discussions of "nonnons," however. There's a similar description I
have always liked of a samovar in Ada, "which expressed fragments of its
surroundings in demented fantasies of a primitive genre" (p. 89, Vintage
ed.). -- SES]
6. Dmitri Nabokov on anamorphosis (15 Oct
2006)
"...The reason for this post, however, is Jansy's most recent,
interesting entry. I wonder if she finds a nexus between the phenomena she
mentions and what follows: The duration of a species, its sitting as a
model, its presence before nature' s mirror, cannot be measured in increments of
time that would presuppose radical changes incompatible with the preservation of
its idea. To say that, over the centuries, one species evolves into another by a
genealogical line is to disrupt, to the same degree, the basic idea of species,
as would admitting that between two extant species intermediate forms were to be
represented as well. Yet the appearance of species is unarguable; and neither
the evolutionist "how" nor the metaphysical "whence" can be answered until we
agree to admit it was not species that evolved in nature, but the very concept
of species. To return to the question of the state of nature before the
origin of this concept, and imagine the immeasurably distant times when "the
specimen reigned supreme," we can, with the aid of parlor verse, if not of
armchair science, indistinctly perceive this undulating, iridescent world,
and nature's first attempts at stabilizing something. A crawling root, the
extremity of a tropical creeper vivified by the wind, turned into a snake solely
because nature, noticing movement, wished to reproduce it, as a child amused by
the flight of a forest leaf picks it up and tosses it back into the air. But it
is only in nature's fingers
that the leaf could turn into a Kallima. It would
be more accurate to say, though, that it was not the work of the wind, but
some energizing, thought-engendering rotation -- not just the earth's rotation,
but the even force that so festively animates the Dance of the Planets that is
the universe.."
7. Leona Toker "Nabokov in Hebrew:
Invitation to a Beheading"
"In the fall of 1995 "Invitation to a Beheading" was published in Hebrew by
"HaKibutz Hameuhad." The translator is Peter Kriksunov, originally from the
USSR, whose command of modern Hebrew and of its stylistic potentialities is
quite stunning. The translation makes excellent reading: Kriksunov has managed
to keep all the Nabokovian interplay of stylistic registers as well as most of
the elegance and emotional effect. He has produced an excellent nonce creation
to render the "nonnons"; but the charge on which Cincinnatus is arrested is
rendered as "epistemological
turpitude," an interpretation of the Russian
"gnoseologicheskaya gnustnost,'" rather than of the English "gnostic turpitude."
Some of Kriksunov's separate lexical choices might have been different had he
been more attentive to the English version and to the English-language critical
studies of the novel. But whatever connotations may be regarded as lost in his
version of the text, the loss in partly compensated by Biblical echoes (e.g.
from Isiah) of which even modern Hebrew tends to be quite productive and which
are thematically quite appropriate in a novel about the fall of a
kingdom. The issue of gnosticism and related themes is dealt with in the
Afterword written by Maya Kaganskaya. The afterword is followed by an analytic
narratological essay by Menahem Perry, who is also the editor of the
book. "
"Nonnenmacher" is sometimes thought to refer to the "nonnons" of Invitation
to a Beheading. See for example Leona Toker's Nabokov: The Mystery of Literary
Structures, pp. 120-21. If I am not mistaken the detail of Nonnenmacher and his
ten-volume History of Art was added only in Nabokov's revised 1938 translation,
which puts it quite close in time to the composition of ITAB.
..................................................................
* I promised to find the title of a book about Art and Perversion by
Joyce McDougall. No wonder I couldn't find it in the internet since the
work I was looking for is:"Ethique et esthetique de la perversion (L'Or
d'Atalante)", by Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel (1984). There is no special
entry about pedophilia and, after I leafed through the book, I discovered that
it will not be of interest the N-L participants. However, by some
particular mnemic trick, I found a chapter devoted to Oscar Wilde and
some of his tales and writings. In "The Decay of Lying" there's a
reference to a dialogue between Cyril and Vivian in which they discuss
nature's imperfections and the wonders of "ars gratia artis". Janine
Chasseguet-Smirgel connects Wilde's "The Young King" (1888)
to "The Birthday of the Infanta," by discussing the abundance of
lavish mirrors and the delusions of grandeur, suddenly reverted into ugliness
and horror. They seem to be in a similar spirit as the one reported by
George Shimanovich, in relation to Kinbote's reaction to Shade's "Zembla".I read
these tales a long time ago so I'm uncertain if they fit into this extension
of our original subject, but they can be read independently of
J.C.Smirgel's psychoanalytic
ideas.