Nabokov in America

by Robert Roper

  Chapter Fifteen

  1 blown up far too high: The writer Edward Dahlberg said about Wilson, “He never ceased to show me kindnesses … and [was] quite ready to help a writer provided that he felt that he was superior to him.” Meyers, 448–49. Lillian Hellman noted Wilson’s gallantry toward women, but with an uppity man, as she explained to book reviewer Joseph Epstein, who then paraphrased her comments, “he would have to knock you down intellectually by demonstrating that he knew more about your subject than you did, had read key books you hadn’t in languages you didn’t know, and otherwise establish himself as the brightest guy on the block.” Ibid., 449; Epstein, “Never Wise—But Oh, How Smart,” New York Times, August 31, 1986, section 7, 3.

  2 books he liked: Karlinsky, DBDV, 24.

  3 did not take extensive notes: Beinecke. Such notes are conspicuous by their absence at the large Wilson archive at Yale.

  4 “Is there any chance”: DBDV, 312.

  5 “I have been aiming”: Ibid., 312.

  6 “dealt with the roots”: Ibid., 25. Karlinsky was born in Harbin, China, and emigrated to Los Angeles in the late thirties. “In Memoriam,” University of California, http://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/inmemoriam/simonkarlinsky.html.

  7 “You aren’t good at this”: DBDV, 210. Wilson’s advice to N. mirrors his advice to Malcolm Cowley, who remained Stalinist too long, and who needed to move on before he humiliated himself. Christopher Benfey, “Malcolm Cowley Was One of the Best Literary Tastemakers of the Twentieth Century. Why Were His Politics So Awful?” New Republic, February 28, 2014, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116499/long-voyage-selected-letters-malcolm-cowley-reviewed.

  8 writer of aesthetic trifles: Gift, 255. The author read Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is To Be Done? in translation in college, an experience of staggering boredom.

  9 “When in the mornings”: Ibid., 333.

  10 “Fyodor climbed aboard”: Ibid., 163.

  11 “A truck went by”: Ibid., 362.

  12 it does present itself: The argument about Chernyshevsky and his thought is not confined to one section of the book; N.’s criticism of novels of ideas and the social conditions of “the post-war generation” is there from the start, from chapter 1.

  13 “You have no idea”: Ibid., 210.

  14 An art of narcissism: N. was “a man who disdained to let moral questions suffocate his fiction.” Kopper, 64. He felt acutely a need to escape from the operatic charnel house of Russian history. He, for one, was not going to undergo his historical suffering and then ostentatiously wear it, as others had. As a result, he can appear trivial next to Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, Akhmatova—the gallery of those who stayed and suffered and barely survived.

  15 one of the three best: Boyd 2, 293.

  16 “the filthiest book”: John Gordon, “Current Events,” Sunday Express (London), January 29, 1956, 6; Schiff, 212–13.

  not been mentioned: Boyd 2, 293.

  “I am extremely irritated”: DBDV, 331.

  17 “all offensive books”: Graham Greene, “The John Gordon Society,” The Spectator (London), February 10, 1956, 182.

  18 society actually met: Boyd 2, 295.

  19 “shocks because it is great art”: Harvey Breit, “In and Out of Books,” New York Times Book Review, March 11, 1956, 8. The source of some of the sentiments quoted by Breit was Harry Levin, and N. thanked him for his kind words in a letter that November: “I shall always remember your kindness to her [Lolita] on the Harvey Breit episode.” Houghton.

  20 “foul little flurry”: DBDV, 331.

  21 Gallimard … Nouvelle Revue: Boyd 2, 295.

  22 publishers now contacted: Schiff, 213.

  23 Longy School: Nadia Boulanger was at the school from 1938 to 1945; she taught composition to Aaron Copland, Quincy Jones, and John Cage, among others.

  24 “My first MG”: D.M., “Close Calls,” 311. Dmitri’s father, when a student at Cambridge in 1920, similarly failed to produce in a timely fashion a translation that his father had arranged for him to do. Boyd 1, 178.

  25 nervously supporting his hopes: Véra to Berkman, June–July 1955, Berg. “The Longy School gave Dmitri all sorts of tests,” Véra wrote. “They find him very good and full of excellent promise and strongly recommend that he study voice and music. I am quite reconciled to the idea that this will be an experimental year.”

  26 “very wonderful”: SL, 155.

  27 would supervise: Ibid., 156.

  28 “I have a piece”: Berg, July 1, 1955.

  29 “The contract (if passed)”: Ibid.

  30 “Your father”: Berg, December 5, 1962.

  31 “expects”: Berg, July 1, 1955.

  32 “Also, please review”: Berg, June 8, 1956.

  33 “love for moving things”: Berg, Véra’s notes on Dmitri, 1950.

  34 hard to bear: Boyd 2, 83.

  35 “She is one of our”: Berg, March 10, 1955.

  36 put her name forward: Berg, October 10, 1956. In his letter to Henry Allen Moe of the Guggenheim Foundation, recommending her, N. also puts himself forward, asking for a third grant, this one to complete studies of “lepidopterous fauna of the Rocky Mts.” SL, 189. The Foundation turned him down.

  37 get behind it: Berg, February 2, 1959.

  38 worshipful: Berg, November 14, 1955.

  39 “installments are superlative”: Ibid.

  40 some of the same friends: Berg, Véra letter of February 2, 1959.

  41 “all the way South”: Berg, August 10, 1959. She stayed at hotels, not motels, because cheap hotels were clustered around bus stations. The “filthiest” she found was in Butte, Montana.

  42 explorations by writers: Heany, 127–93. Other notable books in this vein are Travels with Charley (1962), by John Steinbeck, and Going Away: A Report, a Memoir (1962), by Clancy Sigal.

  43 “What I … learn”: Berg, November 14, 1955.

  44 problematic as a model: Berkman’s story “Blackberry Wilderness,” in the book of the same name (1959), is nominally Nabokovian in being about an artist. In tone it suggests a fable by Hawthorne. N. himself seems to appear on pp. 149–50. Blackberry Wilderness (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1959).

  45 “I’ve been delighted”: Berg, January 16, 1958. Berkman reviewed N.’s story collection Nabokov’s Dozen for the New York Times, September 21, 1958. She notes that the author often focuses on small people crushed by history and that he gets many, many tonal “hues” in each story. “One may observe of Mr. Nabokov’s mind that he perceives experience not in the tone of a single shade (black or white) but as a spectrum.” N. asked her to take over his classes at Cornell in spring ’59, but she could not, as she was on her way to Stanford on a writing fellowship.

  46 “specific detail”: DBDV, 331.

  47 “characters had a kite of meaning”: Ibid., 321. McCarthy seems unironic in her use of the term “haziness.” In ’62, she reviewed Pale Fire in discerning and awestruck terms in the New Republic.

  48 “somehow Mind is involved”: PF, 227. The speaker is Kinbote.

  49 metaphysical speculation: Henry James’s ghost stories posit the existence of lowly spirits but seem agnostic about a higher spiritual realm. Twain deals with ghosts humorously and stays out of churches. Emersonians no longer, they are not in search of “spiritual facts”—indeed, the concept has become oxymoronic.

  50 not unknowable: Fluck, 24.

  51 two chapters of a never-to-be-completed novel: N., Russian Beauty, introduction to “Ultima Thule,” 147.

  52 something more: Berg.

  53 “Hurricane Lolita”: The term appears in Véra and Vladimir’s page-a-day notebook, Berg, but is also to be found in the poem “Pale Fire,” line 680, commentary on p. 243.

  54 “sophisticated spiritualism”: Boyd 2, 306.

  55 “insular kingdom”: Ibid. N. predicts, in ’57, that in a few years a “President Kennedy” will be involved with the king’s search for sanctuary.

  56 “to Colorado”: Ibid., 306–7. Kinbote, af
ter the events of the novel, goes to a western state and holes up in a motor court, à la the Nabokovs; it’s in a town called Cedarn, “in Utana, on the Idoming border.” PF, 182.

  57 novel’s central conceit: Kinbote may be someone else, but for purposes of narrative simplicity he will here be called Kinbote. N. later wrote, “I wonder if any readers will notice the following details: 1) that the nasty commentator is not an ex-King and not even Dr. Kinbote, but Prof. Vseslav Botkin, a Russian and a madman 2) that he really knows almost nothing about ornithology, entomology and botany 3) that he commits suicide before completing his Index.” Berg, notebook for 1962. This raises the issue of a book escaping its author’s intent. N. held in high regard the poem (“Pale Fire”) he composed for the book. Schiff, 277–78. But Kinbote at times seems not so impressed. PF, 263, 286, 296–97.

  58 “the most perfect novel”: Boyd 2, 425.

  59 “Two pages into”: Ibid., 425–26.

  60 novels of which Nabokov was aware: Boyd 2, 398.

  61 The humbling: Considering where his books always sold the most, and where he said he found wonderful readers, N. was addressing an American readership. Therefore, it is the American reader who is being humbled.

  62 “Although these notes”: PF, 28.

  63 “wise in such cases”: Ibid., 28.

  64 “brilliant achievement”: Boyd 2, 439.

  65 “few better things to offer”: Ibid., 440.

  66 other writers: Kernan, 102–4.

  67 “my name / Was”: PF, 48.

  68 “Maud Shade was eighty”: Ibid., 40. Light verse is a case of “the form happily driving the expression.” Chiasson, 63.

  69 “When I’d just turned eleven”: PF, 38.

  70 like Wordsworth’s: The poet referred to “The Prelude” as “the poem on the growth of my own mind.” Norton Anthology, 230.

  71 he told an interviewer: SO, 18.

  72 “abstract bric-a-brac”: PF, 67. Pale Fire also includes sincere-sounding comments from Kinbote on prejudice, on how blacks and Jews ought to be referred to. Ibid., 216–18.

  73 “democracy of ghosts”: Pnin, 136.

  74 “cradle rocks”: SM, 19.

  75 “colossal efforts”: Ibid., 20; Alexandrov, 23–24.

  76 “everything that happens”: SM, 218.

  77 “taps his knee”: Ibid.

  78 seems present in: Alexandrov, 187.

  79 “plexed artistry”: PF, 63.

  80 “Existence, or”: Ibid., 69.

  81 “There was a time”: Ibid., 39.

  82 “may not be a beauty”: Ibid., 44.

  83 “no use, no use”: Ibid.

  84 “still the demons”: Ibid., 44–45.

  85 “Are we quite sure”: Ibid., 49.

  86 “ruby ring”: Ibid., 49–50.

  87 contrapuntal movement: Kinbote, in his commentary to lines about the parents watching TV as the daughter drowns, observes that “the synchronization device has been already worked to death by Flaubert and Joyce.” Ibid., 196.

  88 Charles Xavier Vseslav: Ibid., 306.

  89 “distant northern land”: Ibid., 315.

  90 “Oh, I did not expect”: Ibid., 296–97.

  91 “I was the shadow of the waxwing”: Ibid., 33. Probably this is a cedar waxwing; the more colorful Bohemian waxwing is a bird more of the American Northwest and western Canada. Birds of North America, 240–41. Waxwings are eerily perfect, as if made not of feathers but of some seamless stuff.

  92 “All colors made me”: Ibid., 34.

  93 “How fully I felt nature”: Ibid., 36.

  94 “And from the inside, too”: Ibid., 33.

  95 “no desire to twist”: Ibid., 86.

  96 “I turned to go”: Ibid., 23.

  97 “We shall now go back”: Ibid., 123, 125. N.’s use of kingship in Pale Fire miscalculates American readers slightly—kings are for us only to be deposed, are conclusively anachronistic—but he might have been writing already for a world readership, not an American one.

  98 “Well did I know”: Ibid., 97–98.

  99 “One day I happened”: Ibid., 24.

  100 “His laconic”: Ibid., 20–21.

  101 “Dear Jesus”: Ibid., 93.

  102 “a very loud amusement park”: Ibid., 13, 15.

  103 he chooses Popian prosody: This is not really odd, since Shade is a Pope scholar. He may be, like other writers, so captured by his own learning as to be unable to choose otherwise. Boyd 2, 443–44.

  104 wisdom in its own failure: Kernan, 124–25.

  105 “desponder”: Ibid., 173.

  106 “frozen mud”: Ibid., 258.

  107 “moments of volatility”: Ibid., 173.

  108 “admiration for him”: Ibid., 27.

  109 “an organic miracle”: Ibid.

  110 “Clink-clank, came the horseshoe”: Ibid., 289.

  111 “Solemnly I weighed”: Ibid. Kinbote is awed but perfectly willing to twist the meaning of the manuscript and invent his own lines.

  112 “enchantment and”: Ibid., 246. N. describes the landing zone as a “hay-feverish” field with “rank-flowering weeds.” They are probably ragweed. “Up to half of all cases of pollen-related allergic rhinitis in North America are caused by ragweeds,” and the yellow flowers are indeed rank. “Ragweed,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragweed.

  113 “phantom companion”: Ibid., 233. The author experienced this delusion descending from Mount Humphreys, Sierra Nevada, 1987.

  114 such a friend: Another friendship in the poem is between Shade and local farmer Paul Hentzner, who “knows the names of things.” Ibid., 185.

  115 mountain-minded: Ibid., 62. “I love great mountains,” says Shade on p. 52.

  116 “How serene … first full cowbell … lacy resistance … Mr. Campbell … mountain mead … strip naked”: Ibid., 119, 140, 139, 139, 140, 142. The puzzling exhaustiveness of this account expresses, perhaps, N.’s Shade-like love of great mountains and Dmitri’s ardent attraction to them also. Mountaineers often tell long and exhaustive stories.

  117 “pinhead light”: Ibid., 140.

  118 “dark Vanessa”: Kinbote refers to the insect, Vanessa atalanta, as a “memento mori,” and one that has been fluttering throughout the book settles on Shade’s sleeve just before he is shot to death. Ibid., 290. Most likely the famous photo of Walt Whitman with butterfly—fake butterfly—on finger had nothing to do with this.

  119 “I came among these hills”: Norton Anthology, 156.

  120 a beautiful passage: PF, 57, lines 662–64.

  121 repetition of similar lines: Ibid., 143, 239.

  122 a fantastic gloss that takes off: Boyd argues that Shade wrote all of Pale Fire, including the commentary presented as the work of Kinbote. Boyd 2, 443–56. The present author rejects Boyd’s reasonable thesis as reductive.

  123 “I am capable”: Ibid., 289. The drive to arrive at an inarguable solution to a book like Pale Fire is understandable, but unresolved mysteries, messy half solutions, also attract. There is an argument to be made from laziness. N. told an interviewer that “reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence … unattainable. You can know more and more … but you can never know everything … it’s hopeless.” In another context, he recommended that “we have the humility and the hard sense to recognize that the real world always escapes us.” Bloom, 99. Kinbote, despite his claim to be incapable of writing verse, may be the author of persuasively Shadeian lines. “We all are, in a sense, poets,” he tells Eberthella Hurley, a local faculty wife. PF, 238. He also adduces many variant lines to Shade’s poem, and in the novel’s tendentious index he seems to admit to having written several: “the Zemblan King’s escape (K’s contribution, 8 lines), 70; the Edda (K’s contribution, 1 line), 79; Luna’s dead cocoon, 90–93; children finding a secret passage (K’s contribution, 4 lines), 130.” PF, 314.

  124 transcendental verses: Kernan, 104–5. Shade is “in that surprising American way of Emerson and Thoreau
… a mystic and a visionary, irreligious but persuaded that beyond this seen world there is another unseen, that life here is but a step on the way to a transcendental beyond.” Ibid.

  125 “Gradually I regained”: PF, 297.

  126 “large, sluggish man”: Ibid., 286. N. might have felt sluggish following ten years of archival work on Eugene Onegin. The description is actually of Conmal, Duke of Aros, the first, crude translator of Shakespeare into Zemblan. Ibid., 306.

  127 disagrees with Shade’s skepticism: Ibid., 224–27.

  128 “in an elevated state”: Ibid., 258.

  129 “all at once”: Ibid., 259.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1 “thick batch of U.S. roadmaps”: Laura, introduction.

  2 “violins but trombones”: Field, Life in Part, 32. N. speaks of a throb in “Inspiration.” SO, 310.

  3 ex-San Francisco bohemian: Hagerty, Life of Maynard Dixon, passim.

  4 Dixon’s widow: Edith Dale to Véra, February 9, 1956, in Boyd 2, 698n30. Dixon’s previous wife was the photographer Dorothea Lange.

  5 drive to the southeast: SL, 186. Nabokov was very fond of his “beautiful little cottage.” Ibid. To Wilson he described the “Pink, terra-cotta and lilac” crags nearby that formed a “sympathetic background to the Caucasus of Lermontov”—he was finishing Dmitri’s translation of A Hero of Our Time, with Véra’s help. DBDV, 333.

  6 famously empty: U.S. Census, 1950. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_United_States_Census#State_rankings.

  7 poet’s death in a duel: EO, vol. 3, 43–51. N.’s explanation of the Lenski-Onegin duel in the poem and of the famous duel on January 27, 1837, in which Pushkin was shot by Georges d’Anthès has a tone of grave simplicity hardly to be found anywhere else in the Nabokov canon.