Subject
VN Bibliographical Survey
Date
Body
EDITOR'S NOTE. The following remarks were prepared for a talk at the
University of Washington. They are quite informal and lack documentation.
I offer them here with the thought that they may be of use to Nabokovian
neophytes--if such exist among the subscribers to NABOKV-L. If need be, I
can supply full citations.
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618
----------------------------------------
Johnson --1
THE STATE OF NABOKOV STUDIES
Nabokov studies began in 1916 when Nabokov's poem "Osen'"
was singled out for special notice in the Tenishev school magazine.
My remarks today, however, will start some 40 years later. With the
American appearance of Lolita in 1958, the critical floodgates opened
and the deluge has now continued for over thirty-five years. I would
like to start my remarks with a rough-hewn statistical survey. There
are at present around 115 volumes of VN criticism. Perhaps 60 are
monographs devoted entirely to VN; 20 are collections of articles by
various hands; 10 are on VN and other writers (Borges, Beckett, and
Barth lead the pack), and about a dozen are reference books. Dis-
sertations? Circa 150, of which 16 have become books. Nabokov is the
major topic of a hundred of these. Articles? The MLA CD-ROM, which
only goes back to 1980, contains about 700 entries. (For comparative
purposes, I might mention that Nabokov's coevals Faulkner, Hemingway,
and Fitzgerald rate about 1800, 1200, and 400 respectively.) For the
entire history of Nabokov studies, my estimate for worthwhile critical
items is not far from a 1000.
A rough check of the MLA data base (again post-1980 only) shows
the following distribution of critical focus: Lolita - 90+ items; PF -
75; Ada - 50; Pnin - 30; Bend Sinister, RLSKn, and Sp., M - about 25
each. For the Russian works: The Gift and Invitation to a Beheading
rate about 20 apiece; and Despair and Laughter in the Dark -- about
10. The figures for the Russian works are probably considerably
understated since many of them are also discussed in the course of
critical monographs as well as in articles. Add perhaps 15 for each
Russian title. Recent statistics collected by Gene Barabtarlo show
some shift of focus: over the five years 1987-1992, article studies of
Lolita and Ada have dropped by 40-odd percent, while those for Pale
Fire and The Gift have increased by 34% and 50% respectively.
I would now like to turn to a quick survey of Nabokov criticism by Johnson --2
decade. The fifties was of course dedicated to the Lolita scandal
which flared up again with Kubrick's 1962 film. The sixties was, in a
sense, the Nabokov decade. It was ushered in by Lolita; Pale Fire pro-
vided one of its most critically admired novels; and the 1969 Ada
brought it to a rollicking close. Bracketed by these new works, a
dozen translations of the Russian novels and English reprints kept
Nabokov's name in the public eye. How many authors get to publish the
formidable output of a lifetime in a single decade? All this against
the brilliant background of a mainstream represented by Updike, Bel-
low, and the early Roth; and then there were the "Beats," those
spiritual children of Henry Miller --Ginsberg, Kerouac, Kesey, and
Burroughs; and those we now call the postmodernists -- Barth, Coover
Hawkes, Pynchon, et al.
The sixties also marked the beginning of Nabokov scholarship.
Dieter Zimmer produced the first bibliography in 1963. Page Stegner's
1967 dissertation-book Escape into Aesthetics on the English novels,
and Andrew Field's more inclusive 1967 Nabokov : His Life in Art
defined the field in the terms announced by their titles. Alfred
Appel, who had been Stegner's mentor at Stanford, and Carl Proffer, a
young Slavist at IU, soon followed with volumes that were both essays
and extended annotations of Lolita. The first Nabokov dissertations
appeared in 1967. Nabokov dissertations of the 60s included those of
Stegner, Carol Williams, and Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Steve Parker,
who had been a student in Nabokov's classes at Cornell, was also among
the "first generation." It is an oddly significant fact that several
of Nabokov's first academic critics would become novelists on their
own. Stegner and Field both published rather Nabokovian novels, while
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer and Bobbie Ann Mason, who was soon to write a
dissertation on ADA, became prominent (and very UN-Nabokovian)
novelists. Living proof that Nabokov is a writers' writer.
The Seventies brought 20-odd monographs and collections. The Field
bibliography and Sam Schuman's critical bibliography supplied scholars
with much needed research tools. W. W. Rowe added to Carl Proffer's Johnson --3
study of Nabokov's style, while two European dissertation-books made
detailed (and still badly under appreciated) critiques of Nabokov's
language: Jessie Lokrantz' The Underside of the Weave (Uppsala, 1973)
and Jurgen Bodenstein's The Excitement of Verbal Adventure (Heidel-
berg, 1977). General surveys were offered by Julian Moynahan (one of
the first to advocate the uxorious Nabokov), Morton, Fowler, Lee;
Hyde in England, and Couturier and Zinaida Shakhovskaya in France.
Another landmark in Nabokov studies came in 1978 when Steve Parker
founded the Nabokov Society and launched the twice-yearly Nabokovian.
The society, through its newletter and through panels that it arranged
at MLA and AATSEEL meetings did much to create a community of Nabokov
scholars that brought together specialists in Russian and English lit-
erature.
The Seventies also saw some 47 dissertations of which at least 37
were half or more devoted to VN. Twelve of these became books. Apart
from those already mentioned, dissertations by Julia Bader, Bobbie Ann
Mason, Lucy Maddox, Brian Boyd, Annapaola Cancogni, and Ellen Pifer
became books. I would also mention another dissertation that wasn't
published, but should have been: Jonathan Sisson's on "Cosmic Syn-
chronization and Other Worlds in the Works of VN" which was belatedly
discovered by Vladimir Alexandrov. (A portion of it appears in the
current NABOKOV STUDIES.) The seventies also marks the start of the
shift from the critical paradigm of Nabokov the stylist to Nabokov the
humanist. Moynahan's booklet, essays by Martin Green, and Ellen
Pifer's book all took this last approach. Nabokov was also coming
under the scrutiny of a series of influential critics who saw him as a
cardinal figure on the American and international literary scene.
George Steiner, Tony Tanner, Robert Alter, and Robert Adams all pub-
lished books taking Nabokov as a paradigmatic figure--the last of the
great modernists, or as godfather to the new post-modernist gener-
ation: Barth, Coover, Hawkes, Pynchon. International points of
reference were Beckett, Borges, Kafka, etc.
The Eighties produced 35 VN books. The most important new research Johnson --4
tool was Michael Juliar's Bibliography, while Norman Page's Nabokov:
The Critical Heritage provided a handy survey of journalistic review-
articles that followed the appearance of each Nabokov novel. Among the
more important critical monographs were Ellen Pifer's advocacy of the
Nabokov the humanist; Boyd's exploration of Ada and the key theme of
consciousness; and Pekka Tammi's dense but brilliant study of
Nabokov's narrative strategies--a book filled with keen insights
interspersed among its more technical investigations. Other general
books include those by Toker and Johnson, while Barabtarlo and Meyer
produced detailed studies of Pnin and Pale Fire. Dissertations con-
tinued to flourish. 71 of them--about half of which took VN as their
principal subject. One noticable trend was the increase in disserta-
tions grouping Nabokov with one or more other writers or using one or
more VN works as exemplars of some general thesis, e.g.,
autobiography & reality, exile, postmodernism, etc. Pale Fire often
figures these studies. I note that the incidence of VN dissertations
becoming books drops off radically. Whether this is a question of eco-
nomics or market saturation, I do not know. Probably both, although
there was and is no dimunition of new Nabokov books every year.
The eighties also saw the launching of complete collected works of
Nabokov in Germany and France. It is, alas, not part of the American
publishing tradition to produce "collected works." The German and
French sets being put out are both heavily annotated editions which
should be consulted by all English- and Russian- language Nabokovians.
They contain a wealth of information. The Rowohlt edition of The Gift,
for example, contains 160 pages of notes. The French Pleiade edition
of Ada will carry Brian Boyd's very extensive notes which are now
running serially in The Nabokovian. Any Nabokovian who fails to con-
sult these sets is doing her- or him- self a serious disservice.
Now we come to the nineties and the current scene. Through 1993,
about 17 books have appeared and more are on the way. Dissertations
seem to number about 20 so far. Nabokov studies is obviously a growth Johnson --5
industry. The two most important works are Boyd's magnificent two
volume biography and Alexandrov's Nabokov's Otherworlds which articu-
lates the "metaphysical" (as opposed to the "metaliteral") view of
Nabokov. These two works have been enormously influential, especially
among the incoming generation of Nabokov scholars. Perhaps too much
so. Among the numerous article manuscripts that cross my desk, I
notice that many writers give the appearance of thinking that Nabokov
studies started in 1990. Alexandrov's book is most impressive and he
is certainly right in placing Nabokov's novels in his "otherworld"
context. On the other hand, contrary to his claims, Nabokov studies
has not been dominated by the "metaliterary" view of Nabokov for many
years. Some of the early Russian critics and even Field and Appel com-
mented, admittedly en passant, on Nabokov's otherworld. While
Alexandrov has certainly foregrounded the importance and pervasiveness
of the otherworld in Nabokov's ouevre, it is not "news." In a sense,
Alexandrov is preaching to the long converted, although this in no way
detracts from the merit of his readings of the novels.
Other important books of the nineties are Julian Connolly's
critique and categorization of Nabokov's early fiction in terms of a
shifting relationship between the self and the other. Although French
work has touched on this idea, Connolly's book brings something new to
the American critical scene, although reviewers have suggested that
Connolly's scheme is too neat to fit the multi-form reality. John Burt
Foster's Nabokov's Art of Memory and European Modernism looks at
Nabokov's relationship to Anglo-American and Continental Modernism and
asserts that Nabokov's alliance is clearly to the Proustian tradition.
He is certainly right, although critics have noted that his evidence
for linking various figures such as Nietzsche and Nabokov is at times
tenuous, leading to "over-interpretation." Next year will see the pub-
lication of the Garland Nabokov Handbook edited by Vladimir
Alexandrov. The Handbook, a reference work written by a consortium of
Nabokov specialists, will bring together an enormous amount of
information and serve as the starting point for research on almost Johnson --6
every aspect of Nabokov.
Another feature of Nabokov studies in the late eighties and early
nineties is its increasingly international scope. One can now read
Nabokov criticism in Korean, as well as Hindi and Persian. A biblio-
graphical search even turns up a Vietnamese study of Laughter in the
Dark, which seems to have been published in Los Angeles. Although
Nabokov's work has had an international audience since Lolita,
scholarship was long concentrated in the U.S. Statistically, this is
still the case, but much less so. As we have noted, almost all over-
seas Nabokov scholarship (excepting Russian) focusses on Nabokov the
American writer. Books on Nabokov have now appeared in Zagreb and War-
saw. A number of scholars in France now regularly work on Nabokov.
Maurice Couturier with his two Nabokov monographs is certainly the
best known, while Daniele Roth-Souton and Chris Raguet-Bouvart are
both quite active. Bouvart is now editing a special issue of the
journal Europe that, inter alia, will have articles examining Nabokov
and the OULIPO group and other French writing. A few Russian emigre
scholars such as Nora Buhks are also doing Nabokov work in France.
Nabokov studies seems to have attracted few German critics apart from
the splendid editiorial work of Dieter Zimmer (who has just published
a book on Nabokov's butterflies) and Herbert Grabes' monograph and
articles. Surprizingly little Nabokov work is done in England. Jane
Grayson is the only notable Nabokov specialist among British Slavists,
although Michael Wood has just published a new book. It has been sug-
gested that the status of Nabokov studies in England has been blighted
by the persistance of the Leavisite cult and its "grand tradition."
Almost all of Nabokov's fiction has now been published in Russia,
and plans are underway for a "complete works" under the supervision of
an international editorial board. Severe economic and other problems
confront this project, however. Along with the usual flurry of jour-
nalistic hooha (such as the reported excavation of parts of the
Nabokov's St. Petersburg house in search of Zemblan jewels), Nabokov
scholarship has attracted some able scholars, although many are hand- Johnson --7
icaped by the difficulty of access to Western scholarship. Among the
best of these are Alexander Dolinin (now at Wisconsin) and Roman
Timenchik. Other Nabokov activities include Nikolai Anastas'ev's book
1992 Fenomen Nabokova, a hodge-podge that almost defies description.
(I have tried in my review in the current issue of NABOKOV STUDIES.) A
Russian translation of Boyd's volumes is now in preparation. One of
the more curious items to find its way to print is A. Mulyarchik's 44
page essay in Voprosy literatury. Mulyarchik surveys the Nabokov
critical scene in the US. While indicting the "formalistic" American
Nabokov "mafia" (he does not use either term) which controls access
to the archives, he finds hope for a more humanistic view of Nabokov
in the work of Alexandrov, Connolly, and Boyd, although he finds
Boyd's lack of psycho- and socio-logical probing distressing, and all
are faulted for their lack of insight into Nabokov's Russian context.
Mulyarchik also finds merit in Anastas'ev's book, although he too
notes its scattered character. One of the more interesting develop-
ments in Russia is the formation of the Nabokov Foundation quartered
in the former Nabokov mansion in St. Petersburg. Headed by Vadim
Stark, the organization sponsors an annual conference on Nabokov's
birthday. The family country manor "Vyra" no longer exists, but Uncle
Ruka's "Rozhdestveno," where Volodya and Tamara sported on the porch,
houses a Nabokov family museum of sorts. The manor was in a con-
siderable state of decay when Galya and I saw it in 1990.
The nineties have also witnessed a series of international Nabokov
conferences: the memorable 1990 meeting in Moscow and St. Petersburg;
Maurice Couturier's 1992 conference in Nice; a second Nice conference
on Nabokov, Modernism, and Postmodernism" is scheduled for June of
1995. Here in the U.S., I would estimate that around 20 Nabokov
papers are presented annually at meetings on the national level.
Among the developments of the nineties is the launching of the
journal Nabokov Studies and its E-mail affiliate, NABOKV-L. NS is to
be an annual affair of circa 225 pages. [Show and pass around. Sub-
scription info. inside]. NABOKV-L, the electronic Nabokov discussion Johnson --8
forum, was conceived as an adjunct to the journal, but has taken on a
life of its own. It now has about 150 subscribers (it is free) scat-
tered over much of the world. Most of the major names in Nabokov
scholarship are included. Not only does it serve as an instant source
of expert opinion and information, but it provides current biblio-
graphy, conference news, Suellen Stringer-Hye's monthly survey of
things Nabokovian in the national press, and a weekly excerpt from a
critical study of VN's short stories by Roy Johnson. Other recent
items are an intensely personal account by Dieter Zimmer of the his-
tory of Nabokov studies in Germany, a copy of the passenger manifest
for the S.S. Champlain which brought the Nabokovs to the US in 1940,
and a translation of the bizarre translator's introduction to the Per-
sian edition of Invitation to a Beheading. One of the earlier
highlights was a four-way discussion of Mashenka conducted by Galya
Diment, John Burt Foster, Jeff Edmunds, and others. In spite of many
good contributions, altogether too much of the material is originated
by the editor and it is my hope that more people will begin to avail
themselves of NABOKV-L to disseminate information and exchange
opinions. Also as Nabokov Studies becomes more widely known, I hope to
see the NABOKV-L serve as an instant conduit between authors and
readers.
The forthcoming issue of NABOKOV STUDIES will contain a trio of
articles dealing with the chronology of Lolita. Sasha Dolinin examines
Nabokov's two kinds of time (which we might term "real" and "virtual")
in works ranging from The Gift to Lolita. In part, he argues that all
of the events in Lolita after September 22, that is, the trip to visit
the pregnant Lolita, the murder of Quilty, etc.) are all Humbert's
imaginings. Julian Connolly, operating on the same assumptions, goes
on to probe the moral and thematic implications of this interpreta-
tion. Brian Boyd offers counter evidence to the views of Dolinin and
Connolly. In another grouping, French literary theoretician Michel
Sirvent examines the work of prize-winning French writer Jean Lahougue
who engages in the "re-writing" of the works of other authors, espe- Johnson --9
cially writers of mysteries. LaHougue, who is deeply interested in
hypertext literary theory, has "re-written" two Nabokov works--
Sebastian Knight and Despair. Translator Jeff Edmunds presents
Lahougue's long story "La ressemblance" (based on Despair) in the
French writer's first appearance in English. I should also mention
that Brian Oles wil have a fine article in this new issue.
I would like to conclude my remarks with something of a personal
overview. As I have noted, Nabokov studies has had a number of over-
lapping stages: 1) uproar, 2) explication, and 3) metaphysics, or,
put somewhat differently: 1) the pornographer vs the artist, 2) the
amoral aesthete vs the humanist, and 3) the metaliterary vs the
metaphysical Nabokov. These frameworks seem to hold an irresistible
fascination for critics--most of whom (quite needlessly in my view)
want to save Nabokov from his enemies and even from himself. The
critics' initial task was to rescue Nabokov from the Lolita-engendered
charge of pornography by wrapping him in the banner of high art. A
second wave of critics discovered that Nabokov was not only not a
pornographer, but a traditional moralist. The new thinking is that
Nabokov's work attains lasting value because of its latent framework
of "otherworlds," i.e., the metaphysical view. The first two of these
critical views grow out of the happenstance that it was Lolita that
made Nabokov famous. Lolita, while a marvellous novel and one of
Nabokov's best, is only a small part of his ouevre. His works are, in
fact, quite diverse in their tonality. Style aside, it would hard to
attribute Pale Fire to the author of Glory, or Invitation o a Behead-
ing to the author of Ada . One can find plausible support for all of
the above labels at some point in Nabokov's work.
My personal take is something as follows. I am not so antediluvian
as to suggest that a value-free criticism can exist. On the other
hand, it seems to me that issues like pornography vs art, or humanist
vs virtuoso are of little relevance to Nabokov's merits as a writer. I
confess that I find myself more drawn to the metaliterary/metaphysical
framework. Much of my writing has been an attempt to show how
Johnson --10
Nabokov's brilliant metaliterary stylist devices serve the purpose of
hinting at the presence of the metaphysical--the other world. But note
that I said "drawn to," NOT "committed to". I do not think that
Nabokov's life-long preoccupation with Potustoronnost (otherworldness)
necessarily adds to his artistic stature. Nearly all Nabokov admirers
have felt called on to drag in morality and metaphysics to justify
their claim for Nabokov's greatness. My own position is simple:
Nabokov's writing is an endless delight. It needs no defense, nor,
for that matter, my commentary.
Thank you.
University of Washington. They are quite informal and lack documentation.
I offer them here with the thought that they may be of use to Nabokovian
neophytes--if such exist among the subscribers to NABOKV-L. If need be, I
can supply full citations.
D. Barton Johnson
Department of Germanic, Slavic and Semitic Studies
Phelps Hall
University of California at Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Phone and Fax: (805) 687-1825
Home Phone: (805) 682-4618
----------------------------------------
Johnson --1
THE STATE OF NABOKOV STUDIES
Nabokov studies began in 1916 when Nabokov's poem "Osen'"
was singled out for special notice in the Tenishev school magazine.
My remarks today, however, will start some 40 years later. With the
American appearance of Lolita in 1958, the critical floodgates opened
and the deluge has now continued for over thirty-five years. I would
like to start my remarks with a rough-hewn statistical survey. There
are at present around 115 volumes of VN criticism. Perhaps 60 are
monographs devoted entirely to VN; 20 are collections of articles by
various hands; 10 are on VN and other writers (Borges, Beckett, and
Barth lead the pack), and about a dozen are reference books. Dis-
sertations? Circa 150, of which 16 have become books. Nabokov is the
major topic of a hundred of these. Articles? The MLA CD-ROM, which
only goes back to 1980, contains about 700 entries. (For comparative
purposes, I might mention that Nabokov's coevals Faulkner, Hemingway,
and Fitzgerald rate about 1800, 1200, and 400 respectively.) For the
entire history of Nabokov studies, my estimate for worthwhile critical
items is not far from a 1000.
A rough check of the MLA data base (again post-1980 only) shows
the following distribution of critical focus: Lolita - 90+ items; PF -
75; Ada - 50; Pnin - 30; Bend Sinister, RLSKn, and Sp., M - about 25
each. For the Russian works: The Gift and Invitation to a Beheading
rate about 20 apiece; and Despair and Laughter in the Dark -- about
10. The figures for the Russian works are probably considerably
understated since many of them are also discussed in the course of
critical monographs as well as in articles. Add perhaps 15 for each
Russian title. Recent statistics collected by Gene Barabtarlo show
some shift of focus: over the five years 1987-1992, article studies of
Lolita and Ada have dropped by 40-odd percent, while those for Pale
Fire and The Gift have increased by 34% and 50% respectively.
I would now like to turn to a quick survey of Nabokov criticism by Johnson --2
decade. The fifties was of course dedicated to the Lolita scandal
which flared up again with Kubrick's 1962 film. The sixties was, in a
sense, the Nabokov decade. It was ushered in by Lolita; Pale Fire pro-
vided one of its most critically admired novels; and the 1969 Ada
brought it to a rollicking close. Bracketed by these new works, a
dozen translations of the Russian novels and English reprints kept
Nabokov's name in the public eye. How many authors get to publish the
formidable output of a lifetime in a single decade? All this against
the brilliant background of a mainstream represented by Updike, Bel-
low, and the early Roth; and then there were the "Beats," those
spiritual children of Henry Miller --Ginsberg, Kerouac, Kesey, and
Burroughs; and those we now call the postmodernists -- Barth, Coover
Hawkes, Pynchon, et al.
The sixties also marked the beginning of Nabokov scholarship.
Dieter Zimmer produced the first bibliography in 1963. Page Stegner's
1967 dissertation-book Escape into Aesthetics on the English novels,
and Andrew Field's more inclusive 1967 Nabokov : His Life in Art
defined the field in the terms announced by their titles. Alfred
Appel, who had been Stegner's mentor at Stanford, and Carl Proffer, a
young Slavist at IU, soon followed with volumes that were both essays
and extended annotations of Lolita. The first Nabokov dissertations
appeared in 1967. Nabokov dissertations of the 60s included those of
Stegner, Carol Williams, and Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Steve Parker,
who had been a student in Nabokov's classes at Cornell, was also among
the "first generation." It is an oddly significant fact that several
of Nabokov's first academic critics would become novelists on their
own. Stegner and Field both published rather Nabokovian novels, while
Susan Fromberg Schaeffer and Bobbie Ann Mason, who was soon to write a
dissertation on ADA, became prominent (and very UN-Nabokovian)
novelists. Living proof that Nabokov is a writers' writer.
The Seventies brought 20-odd monographs and collections. The Field
bibliography and Sam Schuman's critical bibliography supplied scholars
with much needed research tools. W. W. Rowe added to Carl Proffer's Johnson --3
study of Nabokov's style, while two European dissertation-books made
detailed (and still badly under appreciated) critiques of Nabokov's
language: Jessie Lokrantz' The Underside of the Weave (Uppsala, 1973)
and Jurgen Bodenstein's The Excitement of Verbal Adventure (Heidel-
berg, 1977). General surveys were offered by Julian Moynahan (one of
the first to advocate the uxorious Nabokov), Morton, Fowler, Lee;
Hyde in England, and Couturier and Zinaida Shakhovskaya in France.
Another landmark in Nabokov studies came in 1978 when Steve Parker
founded the Nabokov Society and launched the twice-yearly Nabokovian.
The society, through its newletter and through panels that it arranged
at MLA and AATSEEL meetings did much to create a community of Nabokov
scholars that brought together specialists in Russian and English lit-
erature.
The Seventies also saw some 47 dissertations of which at least 37
were half or more devoted to VN. Twelve of these became books. Apart
from those already mentioned, dissertations by Julia Bader, Bobbie Ann
Mason, Lucy Maddox, Brian Boyd, Annapaola Cancogni, and Ellen Pifer
became books. I would also mention another dissertation that wasn't
published, but should have been: Jonathan Sisson's on "Cosmic Syn-
chronization and Other Worlds in the Works of VN" which was belatedly
discovered by Vladimir Alexandrov. (A portion of it appears in the
current NABOKOV STUDIES.) The seventies also marks the start of the
shift from the critical paradigm of Nabokov the stylist to Nabokov the
humanist. Moynahan's booklet, essays by Martin Green, and Ellen
Pifer's book all took this last approach. Nabokov was also coming
under the scrutiny of a series of influential critics who saw him as a
cardinal figure on the American and international literary scene.
George Steiner, Tony Tanner, Robert Alter, and Robert Adams all pub-
lished books taking Nabokov as a paradigmatic figure--the last of the
great modernists, or as godfather to the new post-modernist gener-
ation: Barth, Coover, Hawkes, Pynchon. International points of
reference were Beckett, Borges, Kafka, etc.
The Eighties produced 35 VN books. The most important new research Johnson --4
tool was Michael Juliar's Bibliography, while Norman Page's Nabokov:
The Critical Heritage provided a handy survey of journalistic review-
articles that followed the appearance of each Nabokov novel. Among the
more important critical monographs were Ellen Pifer's advocacy of the
Nabokov the humanist; Boyd's exploration of Ada and the key theme of
consciousness; and Pekka Tammi's dense but brilliant study of
Nabokov's narrative strategies--a book filled with keen insights
interspersed among its more technical investigations. Other general
books include those by Toker and Johnson, while Barabtarlo and Meyer
produced detailed studies of Pnin and Pale Fire. Dissertations con-
tinued to flourish. 71 of them--about half of which took VN as their
principal subject. One noticable trend was the increase in disserta-
tions grouping Nabokov with one or more other writers or using one or
more VN works as exemplars of some general thesis, e.g.,
autobiography & reality, exile, postmodernism, etc. Pale Fire often
figures these studies. I note that the incidence of VN dissertations
becoming books drops off radically. Whether this is a question of eco-
nomics or market saturation, I do not know. Probably both, although
there was and is no dimunition of new Nabokov books every year.
The eighties also saw the launching of complete collected works of
Nabokov in Germany and France. It is, alas, not part of the American
publishing tradition to produce "collected works." The German and
French sets being put out are both heavily annotated editions which
should be consulted by all English- and Russian- language Nabokovians.
They contain a wealth of information. The Rowohlt edition of The Gift,
for example, contains 160 pages of notes. The French Pleiade edition
of Ada will carry Brian Boyd's very extensive notes which are now
running serially in The Nabokovian. Any Nabokovian who fails to con-
sult these sets is doing her- or him- self a serious disservice.
Now we come to the nineties and the current scene. Through 1993,
about 17 books have appeared and more are on the way. Dissertations
seem to number about 20 so far. Nabokov studies is obviously a growth Johnson --5
industry. The two most important works are Boyd's magnificent two
volume biography and Alexandrov's Nabokov's Otherworlds which articu-
lates the "metaphysical" (as opposed to the "metaliteral") view of
Nabokov. These two works have been enormously influential, especially
among the incoming generation of Nabokov scholars. Perhaps too much
so. Among the numerous article manuscripts that cross my desk, I
notice that many writers give the appearance of thinking that Nabokov
studies started in 1990. Alexandrov's book is most impressive and he
is certainly right in placing Nabokov's novels in his "otherworld"
context. On the other hand, contrary to his claims, Nabokov studies
has not been dominated by the "metaliterary" view of Nabokov for many
years. Some of the early Russian critics and even Field and Appel com-
mented, admittedly en passant, on Nabokov's otherworld. While
Alexandrov has certainly foregrounded the importance and pervasiveness
of the otherworld in Nabokov's ouevre, it is not "news." In a sense,
Alexandrov is preaching to the long converted, although this in no way
detracts from the merit of his readings of the novels.
Other important books of the nineties are Julian Connolly's
critique and categorization of Nabokov's early fiction in terms of a
shifting relationship between the self and the other. Although French
work has touched on this idea, Connolly's book brings something new to
the American critical scene, although reviewers have suggested that
Connolly's scheme is too neat to fit the multi-form reality. John Burt
Foster's Nabokov's Art of Memory and European Modernism looks at
Nabokov's relationship to Anglo-American and Continental Modernism and
asserts that Nabokov's alliance is clearly to the Proustian tradition.
He is certainly right, although critics have noted that his evidence
for linking various figures such as Nietzsche and Nabokov is at times
tenuous, leading to "over-interpretation." Next year will see the pub-
lication of the Garland Nabokov Handbook edited by Vladimir
Alexandrov. The Handbook, a reference work written by a consortium of
Nabokov specialists, will bring together an enormous amount of
information and serve as the starting point for research on almost Johnson --6
every aspect of Nabokov.
Another feature of Nabokov studies in the late eighties and early
nineties is its increasingly international scope. One can now read
Nabokov criticism in Korean, as well as Hindi and Persian. A biblio-
graphical search even turns up a Vietnamese study of Laughter in the
Dark, which seems to have been published in Los Angeles. Although
Nabokov's work has had an international audience since Lolita,
scholarship was long concentrated in the U.S. Statistically, this is
still the case, but much less so. As we have noted, almost all over-
seas Nabokov scholarship (excepting Russian) focusses on Nabokov the
American writer. Books on Nabokov have now appeared in Zagreb and War-
saw. A number of scholars in France now regularly work on Nabokov.
Maurice Couturier with his two Nabokov monographs is certainly the
best known, while Daniele Roth-Souton and Chris Raguet-Bouvart are
both quite active. Bouvart is now editing a special issue of the
journal Europe that, inter alia, will have articles examining Nabokov
and the OULIPO group and other French writing. A few Russian emigre
scholars such as Nora Buhks are also doing Nabokov work in France.
Nabokov studies seems to have attracted few German critics apart from
the splendid editiorial work of Dieter Zimmer (who has just published
a book on Nabokov's butterflies) and Herbert Grabes' monograph and
articles. Surprizingly little Nabokov work is done in England. Jane
Grayson is the only notable Nabokov specialist among British Slavists,
although Michael Wood has just published a new book. It has been sug-
gested that the status of Nabokov studies in England has been blighted
by the persistance of the Leavisite cult and its "grand tradition."
Almost all of Nabokov's fiction has now been published in Russia,
and plans are underway for a "complete works" under the supervision of
an international editorial board. Severe economic and other problems
confront this project, however. Along with the usual flurry of jour-
nalistic hooha (such as the reported excavation of parts of the
Nabokov's St. Petersburg house in search of Zemblan jewels), Nabokov
scholarship has attracted some able scholars, although many are hand- Johnson --7
icaped by the difficulty of access to Western scholarship. Among the
best of these are Alexander Dolinin (now at Wisconsin) and Roman
Timenchik. Other Nabokov activities include Nikolai Anastas'ev's book
1992 Fenomen Nabokova, a hodge-podge that almost defies description.
(I have tried in my review in the current issue of NABOKOV STUDIES.) A
Russian translation of Boyd's volumes is now in preparation. One of
the more curious items to find its way to print is A. Mulyarchik's 44
page essay in Voprosy literatury. Mulyarchik surveys the Nabokov
critical scene in the US. While indicting the "formalistic" American
Nabokov "mafia" (he does not use either term) which controls access
to the archives, he finds hope for a more humanistic view of Nabokov
in the work of Alexandrov, Connolly, and Boyd, although he finds
Boyd's lack of psycho- and socio-logical probing distressing, and all
are faulted for their lack of insight into Nabokov's Russian context.
Mulyarchik also finds merit in Anastas'ev's book, although he too
notes its scattered character. One of the more interesting develop-
ments in Russia is the formation of the Nabokov Foundation quartered
in the former Nabokov mansion in St. Petersburg. Headed by Vadim
Stark, the organization sponsors an annual conference on Nabokov's
birthday. The family country manor "Vyra" no longer exists, but Uncle
Ruka's "Rozhdestveno," where Volodya and Tamara sported on the porch,
houses a Nabokov family museum of sorts. The manor was in a con-
siderable state of decay when Galya and I saw it in 1990.
The nineties have also witnessed a series of international Nabokov
conferences: the memorable 1990 meeting in Moscow and St. Petersburg;
Maurice Couturier's 1992 conference in Nice; a second Nice conference
on Nabokov, Modernism, and Postmodernism" is scheduled for June of
1995. Here in the U.S., I would estimate that around 20 Nabokov
papers are presented annually at meetings on the national level.
Among the developments of the nineties is the launching of the
journal Nabokov Studies and its E-mail affiliate, NABOKV-L. NS is to
be an annual affair of circa 225 pages. [Show and pass around. Sub-
scription info. inside]. NABOKV-L, the electronic Nabokov discussion Johnson --8
forum, was conceived as an adjunct to the journal, but has taken on a
life of its own. It now has about 150 subscribers (it is free) scat-
tered over much of the world. Most of the major names in Nabokov
scholarship are included. Not only does it serve as an instant source
of expert opinion and information, but it provides current biblio-
graphy, conference news, Suellen Stringer-Hye's monthly survey of
things Nabokovian in the national press, and a weekly excerpt from a
critical study of VN's short stories by Roy Johnson. Other recent
items are an intensely personal account by Dieter Zimmer of the his-
tory of Nabokov studies in Germany, a copy of the passenger manifest
for the S.S. Champlain which brought the Nabokovs to the US in 1940,
and a translation of the bizarre translator's introduction to the Per-
sian edition of Invitation to a Beheading. One of the earlier
highlights was a four-way discussion of Mashenka conducted by Galya
Diment, John Burt Foster, Jeff Edmunds, and others. In spite of many
good contributions, altogether too much of the material is originated
by the editor and it is my hope that more people will begin to avail
themselves of NABOKV-L to disseminate information and exchange
opinions. Also as Nabokov Studies becomes more widely known, I hope to
see the NABOKV-L serve as an instant conduit between authors and
readers.
The forthcoming issue of NABOKOV STUDIES will contain a trio of
articles dealing with the chronology of Lolita. Sasha Dolinin examines
Nabokov's two kinds of time (which we might term "real" and "virtual")
in works ranging from The Gift to Lolita. In part, he argues that all
of the events in Lolita after September 22, that is, the trip to visit
the pregnant Lolita, the murder of Quilty, etc.) are all Humbert's
imaginings. Julian Connolly, operating on the same assumptions, goes
on to probe the moral and thematic implications of this interpreta-
tion. Brian Boyd offers counter evidence to the views of Dolinin and
Connolly. In another grouping, French literary theoretician Michel
Sirvent examines the work of prize-winning French writer Jean Lahougue
who engages in the "re-writing" of the works of other authors, espe- Johnson --9
cially writers of mysteries. LaHougue, who is deeply interested in
hypertext literary theory, has "re-written" two Nabokov works--
Sebastian Knight and Despair. Translator Jeff Edmunds presents
Lahougue's long story "La ressemblance" (based on Despair) in the
French writer's first appearance in English. I should also mention
that Brian Oles wil have a fine article in this new issue.
I would like to conclude my remarks with something of a personal
overview. As I have noted, Nabokov studies has had a number of over-
lapping stages: 1) uproar, 2) explication, and 3) metaphysics, or,
put somewhat differently: 1) the pornographer vs the artist, 2) the
amoral aesthete vs the humanist, and 3) the metaliterary vs the
metaphysical Nabokov. These frameworks seem to hold an irresistible
fascination for critics--most of whom (quite needlessly in my view)
want to save Nabokov from his enemies and even from himself. The
critics' initial task was to rescue Nabokov from the Lolita-engendered
charge of pornography by wrapping him in the banner of high art. A
second wave of critics discovered that Nabokov was not only not a
pornographer, but a traditional moralist. The new thinking is that
Nabokov's work attains lasting value because of its latent framework
of "otherworlds," i.e., the metaphysical view. The first two of these
critical views grow out of the happenstance that it was Lolita that
made Nabokov famous. Lolita, while a marvellous novel and one of
Nabokov's best, is only a small part of his ouevre. His works are, in
fact, quite diverse in their tonality. Style aside, it would hard to
attribute Pale Fire to the author of Glory, or Invitation o a Behead-
ing to the author of Ada . One can find plausible support for all of
the above labels at some point in Nabokov's work.
My personal take is something as follows. I am not so antediluvian
as to suggest that a value-free criticism can exist. On the other
hand, it seems to me that issues like pornography vs art, or humanist
vs virtuoso are of little relevance to Nabokov's merits as a writer. I
confess that I find myself more drawn to the metaliterary/metaphysical
framework. Much of my writing has been an attempt to show how
Johnson --10
Nabokov's brilliant metaliterary stylist devices serve the purpose of
hinting at the presence of the metaphysical--the other world. But note
that I said "drawn to," NOT "committed to". I do not think that
Nabokov's life-long preoccupation with Potustoronnost (otherworldness)
necessarily adds to his artistic stature. Nearly all Nabokov admirers
have felt called on to drag in morality and metaphysics to justify
their claim for Nabokov's greatness. My own position is simple:
Nabokov's writing is an endless delight. It needs no defense, nor,
for that matter, my commentary.
Thank you.