Just a side note to the discussion of Nabokov's attitudes towards
relativity (and quantum theory, and subatomic theory): These topics
were subject of wide and passionate international discussion throughout
the '20s and '30s (as were Darwinism and Freudianism), and Nabokov's
fairly extensive fictional engagement with them demonstrates their
importance to him as emerging, even revolutionary ideas in the history
of science. This engagement may begin as early as Mary, which
begins in the darkness of a disabled elevator (elevators were key
examples from Einstein's popular exposition of his General Relativity,
as Marina Grishakova notes in her book). While working on Ada,
Nabokov read many treatments of relativity, and judging from his
note-card responses, he was philosophically disturbed by the idea of a
four-dimensional space-time continuum, believing that time had distinct
ontological status. Already in "Ultima Thule" (1939) and in lectures
on theater shortly after, he had begun to explore the idea that the
mathematics of relativity might be more self-referential than
descriptive of reality. In this surmise, he was echoing, perhaps by
chance, the thoughts of the astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington, who
helped confirm Einstein's theory (by photographing the effect of the
sun's gravity on light) and who wrote several books of popular physics
and philosophy in the '20s and '30s (and whose posthumous, theoretical
magnum opus Fundamental Theory made it onto Nabokov's reading
list in the 1960s). The key, as I see it, is that Nabokov felt that
all great theories are destined to be supplanted by greater ones (see
"Ultima Thule"*), and I think he was bending his mind toward imagining
where, and how, the next revolutions in science might occur.
I have a chapter on this topic in my book project on Nabokov's
scientific interests, which I hope will be published within the next
year.
Stephen Blackwell
* “ ‘ When a hypothesis enters a scientist’s mind, he checks it by
calculation and experiment, that is, by the mimicry and the pantomime
of truth. Its plausibility infects others, and the hypothesis is
accepted as the true explanation for the given phenomenon, until
someone finds its faults. I believe the whole of science consists of
such exiled or retired ideas: and yet at one time each of them boasted
high rank; now only a name or a pension is left.’” (Collected Stories,
514)