The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (New York Review Books Classics)

by Leys, Simon

  * * *

  There is no need to continue with this inventory of nonsense. Even coming, as they do, from eminent writers, such claims are inane; coming from Michaux they are terrifying. How could this irreducibly free spirit have calmly swallowed propaganda addressed by criminals to idiots? How could this utterly original poet have changed into a yes-man thinking in clichés and writing in slogans? How could such a master of insolence fall to his knees and fill the air with fake incense?

  What happened?

  What happened, quite simply, is that Michaux turned into a Frenchman!

  But whoa! Don’t let me be misunderstood. I am not silly enough to think that the nation that produced Rabelais and Hugo, Montaigne and Pascal, Stendhal and Baudelaire is in any way lacking in literary intelligence (even if, when it comes to Maoism, some members of the French intellectual elite have easily beaten the world record for stupidity). No, what I am saying is something quite different.

  If there is one thing that Belgians are absolutely convinced of it is their own insignificance. Paradoxically, this vouchsafes them an incomparable kind of freedom—a salutary disrespect, a blithe impertinence bordering on the ingenuous. The ant has no qualms about walking across an elephant’s foot; and there are little birds that go pecking inside the crocodile’s gaping mouth (the crocodile does not mind—after all, it saves him brushing his teeth). To put it another way, the Belgian is a sort of court jester: since nothing he says can be taken seriously, he can say whatever he likes. Throughout the first half of his long existence, this was how Michaux spontaneously saw himself. A reader largely unacquainted with Michaux, or one whose knowledge of A Barbarian in Asia was confined to the samples of self-censorship that I provided above, might even suppose that Michaux’s work must amount to an odious racist tract produced by the colonial-imperial era. Michaux must have fallen victim himself to this misapprehension of the uninformed reader when, later, after he had turned into a Frenchman, he re-read his writings; indeed he acknowledged this when he said that he felt “embarrassed” and “ashamed” and undertook to cut all the passages that offended his newfound sense of the proprieties.

  The truth is that Michaux’s most ferocious barbs were aimed at his compatriots, which is quite natural inasmuch as he knew the Belgians full well, and did not like them. But when, amidst his Asiatic travels, he published a journal article, a funny and pitilessly accurate short essay on Argentina and the Argentines, the splenetic reaction of the Buenos Aires press staggered and dismayed him. He immediately vented his confusion in a vehement and telling letter to a South American woman friend. Clearly, he did not understand how these Argentines, whom he liked very much, could take umbrage at his statements, for as a Belgian he was quite used to hearing far worse things said about his own country.

  Michaux settled down in Paris at twenty-five. He had fled Belgium; in the early days he returned as little as possible, and eventually not at all. But—and this is significant—in order to write Ailleurs (1928), one of his major works, he felt the need to spend six months at a hotel in Antwerp. In Paris, indiscernibly and gradually, his life became more livable; he began to enjoy an intelligent, sociable and agreeable type of existence. Solitary and withdrawn as he was, there was nothing wild about Michaux. His circle of acquaintances, though hardly fashionable, was by no means narrow. Cioran, who had friendly feelings for Michaux, and who knew him well (though affection never blunted the acuity of Cioran’s judgement), gently applied to him Jean-Louis Forain’s cruel description of “a hermit who knows the railway timetable.”

  When I say that Michaux became French, I am not, of course, talking about a change of passports, which is inconsequential, but rather about adopting a different attitude: he was now entitled to bestow certificates of good conduct and medals for meritorious contributions, be it to Mao’s China or to post-war Japan (something that would never have occurred to him while he was still Belgian). But at the same time he was obliged to mind his language. An arrogant Belgian is a contradiction in terms—a notion whose very evocation is laughable. But arrogance is something the suspicion of which the French must continually beware. In foreign parts, among disinherited indigenous people, the French are often led willy-nilly to parade their national identity like some kind of holy sacrament that must never be dishonoured.[10] Thus Michaux, being a decent man, felt a moral obligation to censor A Barbarian in Asia.

  In the end Michaux forgot his own principles—“Always keep a reserve stock of maladaptation” and “There are sicknesses which leave nothing at all of a man who is cured of them.”

  Delivered from his Belgianness, he cut himself off from the central inspiration of his genius, but he now lived with less difficulty. Perhaps, indeed, he eventually succeeded in finding a kind of happiness. Even if his readers were thereby the losers, who can blame him?

  POSTSCRIPT

  A reliable source, whose information comes from someone close to Michaux, tells me that, at the very end of his life, for a foreign edition of A Barbarian in Asia, Michaux urged his translator to use not the revised but the original version of his book. If this information is correct—and I have no reason to doubt it—then we must conclude that Michaux eventually became aware of the error he had made in rewriting his masterpiece. And, further, that the choice of the Pléiade editors, which served to ratify and consecrate this error, is all the more deplorable for it.

  THE SINS OF THE SON

  The Posthumous Publication of Nabokov’s Unfinished Novel

  The bitterness of an interrupted life is nothing compared to the bitterness of an interrupted work: the probability of a continuation of the first beyond the grave seems infinite by comparison with the hopeless incompleteness of the second. There perhaps it will seem nonsense, but here all the same it remains unwritten.

  —VLADIMIR NABOKOV, 1965

  unpublished, unfinished Russian continuation of The Gift

  WHEN WRITING novels, Vladimir Nabokov proceeded in a very peculiar fashion: he used first to form in his mind a complete vision of the entire work, and then would start to jot down, on filing cards, a first draft of disconnected fragments without logical or chronological order. These cards—of a size slightly smaller than a standard postcard—carried each, on the recto side only, a short passage (from one line to one or two paragraphs) couched in his large and fairly legible handwriting. Some cards stood in isolation, presenting one detached sentence—an idea, a descriptive touch; others formed numbered sequences of sustained narrative (twenty-odd cards in two instances). In a second stage, he would shift and assemble the cards, elaborating a tentative structure, sketching links and connections, weaving together the various threads of the plot. The composition would progressively take shape, till a continuous, final, clean draft could be established, welding together all the earlier elements into a seamless whole.

  Nabokov began work on his last novel in 1975, but he was soon interrupted by a series of accidents and deteriorating health. At the time of his death (1977), the first stage of the process was not even half complete; what remains is only a set of 138 filing cards—which, if printed continuously in standard book-format, would scarcely fill thirty pages.

  What should have been done with these 138 filing cards? As his son, Dmitri, recalls, during his final illness on his hospital bed Nabokov instructed his wife, the admirable Vera, that should the book “remain unfinished at his death, it was to be burned.”

  The devoted widow could not bear to execute this instruction to the letter—it would have entailed the destruction of what was for her a most precious memento—but she respected her husband’s will in its essential aspect: she never disclosed these uncorrected fragments to the reading public. After her death in 1991, Dmitri Nabokov, only son of the extraordinary couple, became sole custodian of the Nabokov literary estate. Eighteen years later, after having done “a great deal of thinking” (described in a convoluted and obscure paragraph in his introduction), he finally decided to have them published in the present form as The Ori
ginal of Laura: A Novel in Fragments: a large, luxurious volume presenting, on 138 cardboard pages printed on only one side, detachable facsimile reproductions of the 138 filing cards; each card occupies the upper half of a page, with its contents reproduced in printed form on the lower half.

  If the reader so wishes, he can detach any card (or all of them) by simply pressing along the frame. Then, having the cards in hand, he becomes free to shuffle or re-arrange them in whatever order he deems to be closer to Nabokov’s original design (or finds more pleasing to his own personal taste). Without its cards, the book, now hollowed out, can be shelved back in your library: its outer aspect remains unchanged, yet it now conceals a cavity in which you can conveniently store your last will, your house keys, a small flask of old Calvados or your wife’s favourite earrings.

  * * *

  But what of Nabokov’s original design? Laura is the main character of a novel-within-the-novel; she is based on Flora, mistress of the author of the novel-within-the-novel. Flora also has a husband, an elderly neurologist who is conducting an experiment upon himself involving a new method of mental suicide by progressive self-obliteration from consciousness, starting at the tips of his toes. Flora had a Lolita-type experience in her childhood with a lodger of her mother’s, a middle-aged pervert called this time not Humbert Humbert, but Hubert Hubert. Yet it would be utterly unfair and unwise to reduce a literary experience to the mere unravelling of some incomplete plot lines—one might as well watch on a screen the performance of a great violinist with the sound switched off.

  What, then, of the literary experience? The 138 filing cards can easily be read in a sitting. The dominant impression is one of confusion and frustration—actually it brought irresistibly to my mind Balzac’s description of “the unknown masterpiece” in his philosophical short story of the same title. An old painter, called Frenhofer, has been working for ten years on what he believes will be his ultimate masterpiece. Young artists are in awe of his genius and worship the bedazzling skill of his brush; they are burning with desire to contemplate his latest work, but Frenhofer keeps his studio tightly locked at all times. One day, however, two disciples are finally admitted inside. They are flabbergasted. The unknown masterpiece is standing on its easel, but at first they can see nothing. “The old man is playing a practical joke on us!” said one. “I can only see a chaos of colours, a jumble of bizarre lines—the whole thing is but an incoherent wall of paint!” Coming closer, they discover in one corner of the canvas the extremity of a bare foot still untouched by the surrounding anarchy—but what a foot! Delicate, feminine, alive! With a mixture of admiration and consternation they stare at this tiny fragment of pure perfection afloat in the midst of an unspeakable disaster.

  The 138 Nabokovian filing cards present a similarly puzzling assemblage. There are, here and there, a few echoes of his sharp wit, flashes of the familiar fireworks. In these spots one recognises the master’s hand, but too often these faint traces are a reminder not so much of his old magic as of his less endearing mannerisms. For instance, one card attempts a pointless debunking of a series of major modern French writers, lumped together simply because, apart from sharing an alleged “mediocrity,” their patronyms start with the letter M. Thus, on this asinine basis, Michaux finds himself gratuitously paired with Montherlant (misspelt by Nabokov as “Montherland”!)—whereas, in actual fact, these two writers have nothing in common but their literary genius. This sort of petulant self-importance was detected long ago by Hannah Arendt, who wrote to Mary McCarthy:

  There is something in [Nabokov] which I greatly dislike, as though he wanted to show you all the time how intelligent he is. And as though he thinks of himself in terms of “more intelligent than.” There is something vulgar in his refinement, and I am a bit allergic to this kind of vulgarity because I know it so well, know so many people cursed with it.

  Arendt adds that the book of Nabokov which she admires above all is his “long essay on Gogol” (Nikolai Gogol, Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1944), a slim volume that is in fact a flamboyant manifesto of Nabokovian literary aesthetics. However much I love Pnin and admire Lolita, I confess I am in full accord with Arendt’s preference.

  * * *

  Why publish now (against Nabokov’s clear and clear-sighted instructions!) these fragmented, tentative, unfinished, uncorrected and largely uninspired drafts?

  After Nabokov’s death, his widow was first in charge of the administration of his literary estate, until her own death fourteen years later. Vera’s own attitude concerning this particular issue deserves all our attention, for no other human being could have been more qualified, both on moral and on aesthetic grounds, to take the right decision in such a matter.

  When Vera first met Vladimir (in 1923) they were both young Russian exiles, wandering through Europe—she was twenty-one, he twenty-four. Both were highly educated and exceptionally gifted. They had experienced similar tragedies, and they shared the same precarious existence in a time of great turmoil. They fell in love, married and, for more than half a century, they virtually never parted, however briefly, from each other’s company: they were inseparable. Witnesses who had the privilege to observe them at close range during their very last years marvelled at the evident freshness and intensity of their mutual love. From the outset Vera had recognised Vladimir’s genius; her faith never wavered. When critical acclaim and huge international success finally crowned Nabokov’s literary art (it came fairly late in life, with the publication of Lolita in 1955), it was no surprise to Vera—it merely confirmed what she had always known. With her intelligence and her cosmopolitan culture, she could have had a career of her own; yet, from the start, she decided to put herself completely and exclusively at the service of Nabokov’s creative activity. She became not only his first reader and literary adviser, but also his secretary, typist, agent, driver, assistant, translator, public relations manager, telephonist, editor—and muse. Though she deliberately made herself invisible to the eyes of the public (inasmuch as this was feasible for such a radiant beauty), her relationship with her husband was anything but subservient; Nabokov admired her and relied upon her judgement. Without doubt, some theorists with an agenda will sooner or later conclude that Nabokov’s books were actually written by Vera (in fact, she wrote part of his correspondence); yet such stupidity may unwittingly contain a subtle truth: he wrote his books, but she made him. Without Vera, what sort of books would he have written? No one can tell, though surely they would have been the work of a different man.

  Vera had her own opinions, which Nabokov greatly valued. Twice she prevented him from burning the manuscript of Lolita, and she succeeded in persuading him to pursue a work of which he had despaired. Her respect for his writing was scrupulous and uncompromising; during Nabokov’s academic career, for example, when some illness prevented him from giving a lecture, Vera would act as substitute teacher, reading to the class the lecture he had drafted, without allowing herself to modify a single comma.

  * * *

  Regarding The Original of Laura, however, Vera followed only half of Nabokov’s instructions. Love prevented her from destroying drafts handwritten by her husband; but taste and literary judgement prevented her from publishing them.

  Eighteen years after his mother’s death, Dmitri finally decided to publish these posthumous fragments. It would be impertinent for us to speculate on his motivations. He was close to his parents; his affection and admiration for his father are evident, as is his devotion to his father’s works; he spent much time preparing editions and translations of Nabokov’s writings. Anyway, Dmitri’s love and dedication are not the issue here. The question is: what about his taste and judgement?

  In this field, he once had a notorious lapse. At the time of the international triumph of Lolita—as a film adaptation was being prepared—young Dmitri (he was twenty-six at the time) had the idea to stage in Italy (where he was pursuing his opera-singing career) a fake casting contest for the part of Lolita. In Vladimir Nabokov: T
he American Years, Brian Boyd writes (drawing on Dmitri’s own words, as quoted in Vladimir’s selected letters and Dmitri’s published memoirs):

  For two days his Milan apartment was invaded by “decidedly postpubescent aspiring nymphets, some with provincial mothers in tow.” When his father saw a magazine photograph of the “finalists” surrounding Dmitri on his oversized satin-covered bed, he cabled his son at once to stop “the Lolita publicity” immediately. And he sent a stern letter, warning Dmitri that such a puerile stunt could only harm his own career.

  Of course, Dmitri was duly contrite afterwards. This youthful indiscretion took place nearly fifty years ago; it would be far-fetched to invoke it today against the old man who recently took the initiative to publish The Original of Laura. Still, one may regret that on this occasion, no stern fatherly cable could have come in time to put a quick stop to this enterprise.

  CUNNING LIKE A HEDGEHOG*

  In memory of Jean-François Revel (1924–2006), man of letters, man of integrity, friend

  G.K. CHESTERTON, whose formidable mind drew inspiration from a vast culture—literary, political, poetical, historical and philosophical—once received the naïve praise of a lady: “Oh, Mr. Chesterton, you know so many things!” He suavely replied: “Madam, I know nothing: I am a journalist.”

  The many enemies of French philosopher Jean-François Revel often attempted to dismiss him as a mere journalist which, of course, he was among many other things, and very much in the Chestertonian fashion.

  At first it may seem odd to associate these two names: what could there be in common between the great Christian apologist and the staunch atheist, between the mystical poet and the strict rationalist, between the huge, benevolent man-mountain and the short, fiery, nimble and pugnacious intellectual athlete (and, should we also add, between the devoted husband and the irrepressible ladies’ man)? One could multiply the contrasts, yet, on a deeper level, the essence of their genius was very much alike.