In "The Circle" Nabokov details some of his ideas about
historical time, memory, repetition - forming a
tail which will re-introduce into the mouth of his
subsequent novels, and begin another cycle. However,
in "Speak,Memory", we
learn that, for him, the "spiral is a spiritualized
circle."
Certainly, for those
who are moving along the spiral's evolutions, there is
no point outside them that'll indicate their whereabouts in time and
space, but repeated patterns may be discerned*... Nabokov (and
Shade, too, in PF), writes in SM about importance he gives to
identifying recurring themes and designs when writing an autobiography. Cf
Ch.1, pg.27,SM: "I tried to run over the frozen puddles in
the grounds of the Hotel Oranien. The following of such thematic designs through
one's life should be, I think, the true purpose of autobiography."
We may imagine,
also in S,M (ch.3) part of a pattern, in his recollections
of Uncle Ruka:
"In my own case, when I come over Sophie's troubles again ...I not
only go through the same agony and delight that my uncle did, but have to cope
with an additional burden - the recollection I have of him, reliving his
childhood with the help of those very books.I see again my schoolroom in
Vyra...Its reflection fills the oval mirror above the leathern couch where my
uncle sits, gloating over a tattered book. A sense of security. of well-being,
of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the
present. The mirror brims with brightness: a bumblebee has entered the room and
bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever
change, nobody will ever die." when we compare the iteration of
"nothing,"here, and in the closing lines of BS ( where a puddle is a recurring
theme and Krug's loving heart), with their metallic twang and "mothing,"
after "Krug, in a sudden moonburst of madness, understands
that ...nothing on earth really matters, there is nothing to fear, and death is
but a question of style..."
And, again the
contrasting, but equally flashing vision, described in "The Circle": "Suddenly Innokentiy grasped a wonderful fact: nothing is lost,
nothing whatever; memory accumulates treasures, stored-up secrets grow in
darkness and dust..." **
..........................................................
* additional
related quotes, returning to Nina
Kressova's selection from BS, help us to understand, through Nabokov's
characters, how "various frames of reference pulsate with FitzGerald
contractions...How many of us have begun building anew — or thought they were
building anew! Then they surveyed their construction. And lo: Heraclitus the
Weeping Willow was shimmering by the door and Parmenides the Smoke was coming
out of the chimney and Pythagoras (already inside) was drawing the shadows of
the window frames on the bright polished floor..." Everything is
perpetual motion? Perpetual stillness? A succession of
identifiable patterns?
** -
From another
perspective, the Historian
in BS states: "with so many phenomena of time, recurrent combinations are
perceptible as such only when they cannot affect us any more — when they are
imprisoned so to speak in the past, which is the past just because it is
disinfected. To try to map our tomorrows with the help of data supplied by our
yesterdays means ignoring the basic element of the future which is its complete
nonexistence. The giddy rush of the present into this vacuum is mistaken by us
for a rational movement.' ( 'Pure Krugism')."