It is common knowledge that Nabokov took more than 10 years to come to terms with Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969). From 1957 to 1968, he researched the nature of time from a scientific and philosophic point of view, which culminated in the book’s fourth part, Texture of Time. In 1959, he sketched some notes to Letters from Terra, which would have influenced the first and second part of Ada (Boyd, B. Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. Princeton UP, NJ: Princeton, 1991, 502). It was, however, only in February 1966 that both projects collapsed into one when Nabokov imagined the scene of the telephone call in the penultimate part of the novel (Nabokov, V. Strong Opinions. Vintage International, NY: New York, 1989, 122).
Nabokov’s long research on time survived as a manuscript, at the Berg Collection, in the New York Public Library, called: Notes for Texture of Time (1957-68). It is composed of 137 index cards that Nabokov divided into 11 subcategories. He titled each section on the upper part of each card. These subtopics are: space, measurements/clocks, past, time, present, relativity, simultaneous events, spirals, future, Gerald James Whitrow, and Saint Augustine. There are also a couple of loose cards, which are not placed in any of the above categories. In the manuscript, he names the authors, pages, and editions consulted. Nabokov also marks his reactions to the authors: “nonsense,” “absurd,” “false,” “good work,” “ponder this,” “find another comparison,” etc. Eventually, he crosses out excerpts with a red pencil and notes them “used” or “partly used.” I compiled a list of more than 50 theorists, mentioned either on the cards or inChapter Four of Ada (see section II). Some are Nabokov’s primary sources, while others seem to be mentioned second-hand, such as Hermann Minkowski, whose theories Nabokov seems to have encountered through Whitrow.
Most of the authors listed in Notes for Texture of Time were British mathematicians, astrophysicists, or philosophers of science (e.g., Whitrow, Alfred North Whitehead, Arthur Stanley Eddington, Samuel Alexander, John McTaggart, and John Alexander Gunn). Many of were affiliated with Oxford or Trinity College, Cambridge, either as students or professors. Nabokov also included French psychologists or philosophers (Henri Bergson, Paul Fraisse, Henri Piéron, Pierre Janet, Jean-Marie Guyau and Eugène Minkowski) in conjunction with important German physicists (Albert Einstein and Hermann Minkowski). Sometimes, Nabokov only mentions the name of the author, without providing the bibliographical reference (year, edition, translator). These, I assume, are his secondary sources (e.g., Einstein and Minkowski are mentioned in Whitrow).
II Sources in Notes for Texture of Time
The editions and translations are provided as given by Nabokov in the manuscript. When he fails to mention the edition, year or translation, I have provided the reference as given by Whitrow’s The Philosophy of Time (1963), or the first edition of the volume cited.
Alexander, Samuel. Space, Time and Deity: The Gifford Lectures at Glasgow 1916 – 1918. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920.
Aristotle. “Physica.” The Work of Aristotle, edited by W. D. Ross, vol. II. Oxford: Oxford, 1930.
Augustine, Saint. Confessions, Book XI, translated by E. B. Pusey. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1948.
Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, translated by F.L. Pogson, M.A. London: George Allen and Unwin, [1889]1910.
---. Matter and Memory. New York: Macmillan Company, 1911.
Berkeley, George. The First Dialogue Between Hylas and Philonous. London: Everyman Edition, 1953.
Blum, Harold Francis. Time’s Arrow and Evolution. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1951.
Čapek, Milič. “Time in Relativity Theory: Arguments for a philosophy of Becoming.” The Voices of Time, edited by J. T. Fraser. New York: George Brazilier, 1966, pp. 434-454.
Clay, E.R. (E. Robert Kelley). The Alternative: A study in Psychology. London: Macmillan and Co., 1882.
Cleugh, Mary Frances. Time and its Importance in Modern Thought. London: Methuen and Co., 1937.
Cohen, John. “Subjective Time.” The Voices of Time, edited by J. T. Fraser. New York: George Brazilier, 1966, pp. 257-278.
Cornelius, A. Benjamin. “The ideas of Time in the History of Philosophy.” The Voices of Time, edited by J. T. Fraser. New York: George Brazilier, 1966, pp. 3-30.
Dunne, John William. An Experiment with Time. London: Farber and Farber, 1964.
---. The Serial Universe. London: Farber and Farber, 1945.
Eddington, Arthur Stanley. Space, Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1921.
Edgell, Beatrice. Theories of Memory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.
Einstein, Albert. Relativity:The Special and the General Theory. London: Routledge, 1954.
Eliade, Mircea. The Myth of the Eternal Return. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1955.
Fraser, Julius Thomas. The Voices of Time: A Cooperative Survey of Man's Views of Time as Expressed by the Sciences and by the Humanities. New York: George Brazilier, 1966.
Fraisse, Paul. The Psychology of Time. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.
Freud, Sigmund. Psychopathology of Everyday Life, translated by A.A. Bill, London, 1914.
Gardner, Martin. The Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings. New York: Penguin Books, 1964.
Gunn, John Alexander. The Problem of Time. London: G. Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1929.
Guyau, Jean-Marie. La Genèse de l'Idée de Temps. Paris : F. Alcan, 1890.
Haldane, J. B. S. “Suggestions as to Quantitative Measurement of Rates of Evolution.” Evolution, vol.3, 1949, pp. 51-56.
Hamilton, W.R. Roy. Irish Academy., 1833-5.
Hamner, Karl C. “Experimental Evidence for the Biological Clock.” The Voices of Time, edited by J. T. Fraser. New York: George Brazilier, 1966, pp. 281-295.
Hebb, Donald Olding. A Textbook of Psychology. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1958.
Hering, Ewald. “On Memory as a Universal Function of Organized Matter: A Lecture Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna [1870].” Unconscious Memory, translated by Butler S. London: David Bogue, 1880 pp. 97-133.
Hume. A Treatise on Human Nature, Book I, Part III, Section V. London, 1738.
Hutten, E. H. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 6, 1955.
Janet, Pierre. L’Évolution de la Mémoire & de la Notion du Temps. Paris: A Chahine, 1928.
Johnson, Martin Christopher. Time, Knowledge and the Nebulae. London: Farber and Farber, 1945.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by N. Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan, 1934.
Kümmel, Friedrich. “Time as Succession and the Problem of Duration.” The Voices of Time, edited by J. T. Fraser. New York: George Brazilier, 1966, pp. 31-55.
Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Writings. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1934.
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford: A. S. Pringle-Pattison, 1934.
Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon. Versuch einer Theorie der elektrischen und optischen Erscheinungen in bewegten Körpern[Attempt of a Theory of Electrical and Optical Phenomena in Moving Bodies]. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1895.
McTaggart, John. The Nature of Existence. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1921.
Meerloo, Joost A. M. “Time Sense in Psychiatry.” The Voices of Time, edited by J. T. Fraser. New York: George Brazilier, 1966, pp. 235-253.
“Memory.”Encyclopedia Britannica. 14thedition. 1934, pp. 138-140. Print.
Milne. E.A. Kinematic Relativity. Oxford, 1948.
Minkowski, Hermann. Raum und Zeit. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1909.
Newton, Issac. Mathematical Principles. Berkeley: UCLA Press, 1934.
Pear, Tom Hatherley. Remembering and Forgetting. London: Methuen & Company LTD, 1922.
Piéron, Henri. The sensations: Their Function, Processes and Mechanisms. London: Frederick Mueller, 1952.
“Relativity.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 14th edition. 1934, pp. 95-99. Print.
Robb, Alfred A. The Absolute Relations of Time and Space. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, 1921.
Schlegel, Richard. “Time and Thermodynamics.” The Voices of Time, edited by J. T. Fraser. New York: George Brazilier, 1966, pp. 500-523.
Smart, J.J.C. The Temporal Asymmetry of the World. Analysis vol. 14 no. 4 (Mar. 1954), pp. 79-83.
“Space-time.”Encyclopaedia Britannica. 14thedition. 1934, pp. 105-108. Print.
Sturt, Mary. The Psychology of Time. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1925.
“Time Measurement.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 14thedition. 1934, pp. 224-229. Print.
Weyl, Hermann. Space-Time-Matter. London: Methuen &Company, 1922.
Whitehead, Alfred North. The Concept of Nature. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1920.
Whitrow, Gerald James. The Philosophy of Time. New York: Harper, 1963.
William, James. Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1890.
III Comments
One can draw several conclusions from the manuscript. The first is that Nabokov’s research was vast, diverse, and crossing several fields. The majority of the references listed above (more than 80% of the books consulted) were published between 1890 and 1960, which means that Nabokov is clearly responding to the scientific debate about the nature of time that took place in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1922 (the same year that Van Veen was drafting Texture of Time), Bergson and Einstein met at the Société Française de Philosophie in Paris (Mullarkey, J. and K. A. Pearson, editors. Henri Bergson: Key Writings. New York: Continuum, 2002, 26). It was the first time the two Nobel laureates had appeared together in public, and their encounter was the impetus for numerous reflections by the scientific community on the “problem of time and space.” This discussion revolved, primarily, but not exclusively, around Einstein and Bergson. It was concerned with whether time was a perceptual or a physical phenomenon, and whether space was indeed related to time as Einstein famously claimed. According to the sources annotated, one can also conclude that Nabokov was clearly interested in other aspects of the discussion: the parallels between time and motion; the historical definitions of time; the possibility of time reversal; scales of time; the concept of Mental Present; the sensorial experiences of time, and also in time as a biological phenomenon.
This debate between Bergson and Einstein occurred in a critical moment for the epistemological rift between the humanities and hard science. It is generally believed that the philosopher “lost” to the physicist that day since Bergson failed to comprehend fundamental aspects of Einstein’s theory, especially the concept of simultaneity and the twin paradox thought experience (Canales, J. The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate that Changed our Understanding of Time. Princeton UP, NJ: Princeton, 2015, 23). Already an old man, Bergson seemed to represent the impossibility of philosophy keeping up with new technological and scientific discoveries.
Texture of Time is deeply rooted at this moment and it could be considered a defence of Bergson in opposition to Einstein. Bergson’s name is mentioned five times in the novel and Van Veen builds his career, in part, as a disciple of Bergson, openly mentioning Bergson’s famous separation between time and space from the opening pages of Time and Free Will (1889). In Chapter Five, though, the heroine asserts that Van’s concept derives specifically from Bergson and Whitehead, in conjunction: “‘Veen’s Time’ (as the concept was now termed in one breath, one breeze, with ‘Bergson’s Duration’ or Whitehead’s ‘Bright Fringe’)” (V. Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. Vintage International, NY: New York, 1998, 248). Van aligns himself with the philosophical school that defended time as “lived experience” instead of a physical and mathematical entity, explaining his opposition to Einstein and other physicists, like Minkowski and Paul Langevin. Van openly expresses his disagreement with new physics, saying “[a]t this point, I suspect, I should say something about my attitude to ‘Relativity.’ It is not sympathetic. What many cosmogonists tend to accept as an objective truth is really the flaw inherent in mathematics which parades as truth” (Ada, 234).
Whereas Texture of Time questions physics and Einstein’s theory, this does not mean that time, in Ada, should be understood as memory, consciousness or transcendence, as other scholars have argued before (Henry-Thommes, C. Recollection, Memory, and Imagination: Selected Autobiographical Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Universitätverlag Winter Heidelberg. Heidelberg, 2006, 31). I believe that the reason for the approximation between Ada, Bergson, and Whitehead is in how these philosophers focus on the body, and not in the concept of time as an abstract phenomenon of the mind. Several sources in the manuscript make clear the necessity of reinserting the discussion of the body and sensations in Nabokov’s concept of time: Bergson, Capek, Clay, Cohen, Cornelius, Edgell, Fraise, Hammer, Hebb, Hering, Janet, Kummel, Meerloo, Pear, Piéron, Sturt, James, and Whitehead are all thinkers that have problematized such corporeal aspects, linking human biology and time’s experience.
The manuscript points to this manifest necessity to expand the discussion of time in Nabokov’s works, raising questions like: How are these scientific sources embedded in Ada? Why did Nabokov decide to abandon his philosophical research in the name of a fictional parody? What is the real nature of Texture of Time: is it a play? a literary device? Or a serious, but dry treatise? Isn’t Van stressing the rift between science and philosophy through the defence of Bergson over Einstein? Finally, how has Nabokov incorporated the discussion of the body and physiological experiences of time in Ada, or Ardor?
Some of these problems have been already scrutinized in Nabokovian scholarship, especially the contestation of Einstein’s Relativity in Ada, or Ardor. Stephen Blackwell claims that Nabokov would have decided to give relativity a critical review from a fictional point of view, although he had “struggled with these relativistic effects” (The Quill and the Scalpel: Nabokov’s Art and the Worlds of Science. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2009, 162). Likewise, N. Katherine Hayles claims that Nabokov introduces his own idiosyncratic variations on the new physics while noticing that he “seems quite self-conscious to have set himself the task of coming to terms with the new physics” (The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1984. 127). Rachel Trousdale, in a different epistemological turn, claims that Nabokov rewrites relativity as a metaphor for artistic creation and transnational literature. For Trousdale, Nabokov, just like the physicist’s formula, collapses time and space, culture and language, to provide “an unifying frame of reference outside both the novel and real world of common experience” (Nabokov, Rushdie, and the Transnational Imagination: Novels of Exile and Alternate Worlds.Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2010, 71).
Despite Nabokov’s serious research, science in Texture of Time should not be taken too seriously. Nabokov collects various arguments about time’s existence in physics, literature, psychology and biology, combining these ideas in rather unresolved ways. This means that Nabokov has not accepted one single line of thought or philosophical school. He, for example, questions Einstein at the same time as he takes his new ideas as productive lines of thought. Texture of Time, therefore, looks like a scientific treatise, as much as it derives from science, but it cannot be interpreted as science because it is not a cogent scientific-philosophical theory. In other words, Nabokov plays with science and the wholeness of intellectual thought, however,undercutting a scientific understanding of the essay. Texture of Time is not science so much as it is a parody of science, that panders to the fetish for intellectual investigations, which can never be satisfied by such a contradictory and incomplete text. Texture of Time is not even Van’s final word on the matter: Part Four is only a first draft, sketched while Van is traveling through the Alps (Ada 442). Nabokov misleads the reader into imagining that s/he could actually analyze the propositions of the novel, and the given theories, as a serious scientific text. Ultimately, Nabokov frustrates any attempt to find a “solution” to the problem of time, presenting a Frankenstein monster of a theory that looks like a philosophical treatise but is not.
It is no wonder that this chapter has been a challenge to many specialists. Texture of Time seems to be another of Nabokov’s conundrums formed by tidbits of texts and arguments, being, ultimately, a puzzle with non-matching pieces. Accepting, therefore, the variety and inconclusiveness of this chapter is a condition sine qua non for its assessment.
—Nathalia Saliba Dias, Berlin