An unusual book review
How Are Things Going in Empire N?
This review is created as a kind of travelogue. Its destination, however, is neither the Greece of Pausanias nor the Asia of Marco Polo, but rather the publication of A. Pekurovskaya’s (hereinafter A.P.) book on Nabokov titled How Are Things Going in Empire N? The English translation of the book awaits a publisher. The reviewer is Viktor Mazin—a psychoanalyst and interpreter of Jacques Lacan—who is convinced that no one is better equipped than Lacan to explain the reasons behind Nabokov’s attacks on the “Viennese charlatan.” By giving the floor to Lacan, Viktor Mazin assumes the role of an interpreter, drawing upon the texts of A.P. for illustration.
Such a transference model had a historical precedent. As he was delivering a lecture titled “Some Reflections on the Ego” (1951) before the London Psychoanalytical Society, Lacan announced his desire to return to Freud, dedicating a seminar to Freud’s essay on negation. According to Lacan’s design, Freud was to answer Lacan’s questions, while Jean Hyppolite—invited to the seminar—was to act as the philosophical interpreter.
Jacques Lacan: Nabokov strikes me as a man of unshakable convictions—a proponent of Ego Psychology. It is no coincidence that his collected interviews were titled “Strong Opinions”; nor is it surprising that Sigmund Freud—that eternal adversary of unshakable convictions—inevitably found himself among those authors whom Nabokov deemed strictly off-limits. My own teacher, Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934), introduced the concept of “mental automatism”—a concept which, in my view, applies directly to Nabokov’s psychological profile.
Victor Mazin: The subject of Nabokov’s “psychic automatism” is touched upon in A.P.’s book solely within the context of Nabokov the publicist. I offer two examples: 1. “In September 1965, Nabokov’s interviewer—Robert Hughes, a professor at the University of California— trespassed a territory Nabokov likely considered untouchable. Or rather, although Hughes carefully phrased his question — “Because of your mastery of our language, you are frequently compared with Joseph Conrad” [Nabokov, 1973, p. 56] — the wording may well have triggered unpleasant associations for Nabokov. In March 1963, the interviewer Alvin Toffler had first broached Conrad’s name: ‘Is it true that you referred to Hemingway and Conrad as “writers for children”?’ he asked. Even then, Nabokov’s confident reply bordered on impermissible audacity: ‘I cannot stand Conrad’s style, which reminds me of a souvenir shop filled with ships in bottles, shell necklaces, and all sorts of romantic paraphernalia. In neither of these two writers can I find anything that I myself would wish to have written.’” [Nabokov, 1973, 42] Quoted from A.P. Chapter 8, p.323.
- “Following the publication of Lolita, Nabokov […] limited the influence of any other authors upon him. The sole exception was Pierre Delalande (1768–1849)—a name that, until now, could be found in neither reference works nor encyclopedias. Consequently, the name was deemed fictitious and came to be associated with Nabokov himself as an eponym.” However, drawing upon the life dates of Pierre Delalande (1768–1849), A.P. undertook an investigation that ultimately led to the discovery of the name of this unrecognized authority on Nabokov. In the course of this research, James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake surfaced—a work with which Nabokov had denied any familiarity in his interview with Alfred Appel. “The word ‘wake,’ which Joyce placed in his title, acquires an expanded meaning within the novel—one that is absent from traditional dictionaries,” writes A.P., continuing: “A scholar—to whom this fact likely became apparent—succeeded in tracking down the source: a novel by the renowned Irish writer Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849). Her Castle Rackrent (1800) features a glossary in which the term ‘wake’ is defined using language particularly pertinent to Joyce’s novel: ‘Joyce was interested in how Irish writers conveyed their material to the English-speaking world, and he may well have been pleased to discover that one of the most distinguished Irish writers of the late eighteenth century—Maria Edgeworth—had included a glossary of Irish terms and customs in her novel Castle Rackrent.’ One such term was the word ‘Wake,’ which clearly resonates with Finnegans Wake.” Wakes were (were they not?) not only shillelaghs and whiskey, but also ceremonial sexual orgies and playful erotic games.” [Seidel, 1997, pp. 183–185; Glasheen, 1977, 94]
Obviously the birth date of Pierre Delalande (1768–1849) mirrors—or, at the very least, does not rule out a coincidence with—the “birth date” of Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849), who, through her glossaries, forged a link between Nabokov and Joyce. And had he not recognized this connection, Nabokov would scarcely have dared to say in his interview with Robert Hughes what he actually did dare to say: “Ever since such frightening mediocrities as Galsworthy, Dreiser, a man called Tagore, another called Maxim Gorky, and a third called Romain Rolland were acclaimed as geniuses, I have been perplexed and amused by the fabricated notions of so-called ‘great books.’ That, for instance, Mann’s senseless Death in Venice, Faulkner’s corn-fed chronicles, or Pasternak’s melodramatic and vilely written Zhivago can be considered ‘masterpieces’—or at least what journalists call ‘great books’—strikes me as an absurd delusion” [Nabokov, 1973, p. 57].
By the same logic, to other authors, Nabokov’s “great books” might have appeared to be an “absurd delusion.” The journalist Julian Moynahan managed to express this idea more elegantly than Nabokov himself: “Vladimir Nabokov created a cesspool for literary reputations, into which he dumped the prominent authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, along with their celebrated works.” Nabokov himself, however—while laying the blame for these “aberrations” squarely on journalists—readily forgave them their “delusions” whenever they mistook his *own* writings for masterpieces [Moynahan, 1995, p. 433] [In: А.П., 2026, 330–331].
Jacques Lacan: I associate psychic automatism with unconscious aggressive drives. This insight came to me on June 18, 1931. At the time, I was working at Sainte-Anne Hospital under the psychiatrist Clérambault, to whose care Marguerite Pantaine-Anzieu had been entrusted after attempting to take the life of her idol—the famous Parisian actress Huguette Duflos. The investigation into her motives was assigned to me; yet, it was not Clérambault who helped me make sense of the case, but rather the psychoanalyst Freud. I had read his paper “On Certain Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality,” which was slated for publication in the French Bulletin of Psychoanalysis in 1932. In it, Freud wrote of the transformation of aggression into love, and of love into aggression. And the paradox of the situation, as I came to understand it, lay not in the mere fact of aggression transforming into love, but in the realization that the feelings the “I” experiences toward another are, in reality, feelings directed toward itself—toward its own image.
Victor Mazin: Тhe theme of the transformation of love into aggression—and vice verca —is introduced in the A.P.’s book in chapter VI, The Genealogy of Lolita. Her interpretation is constructed, much like Lacan’s, upon the knowledge of a more fundamental discovery that leads into the subject of the Self and the Other. A.P. guides the reader toward this theme less abruptly than Lacan does: “The transformations of the past roles ascribed to Lolita in the imagination of Pierre-G. were accompanied by the memory of the deaths of three women: the mother of H.-G., whom he lost at the age of three; Annabel Lee—virtually a phantom, whom the corporeal Lolita came to inhabit; and Lolita’s mother, H.-G.’s actual fiancée, Charlotte Haze. Additionally, H.-G.’s diary makes mention of the literary figures of the deceased beloveds of Dante, Petrarch, and Edgar Allan Poe” [Bronfen, 1992, 374].
The transformation of the body into a sign carries with it an additional function. A real experience—the passion felt for a beautiful yet deceased bride—is supplanted by a new experience: the passion for “my Lolita.” Consequently, what is effaced here is not merely the historical event and the wound inflicted upon his narcissism—for everything is transmuted into an immortal narrative—but also… Let us turn to Elisabeth Bronfen: “By privileging the dead Muse as his eternal beloved, H.H.’s narrative allows the woman to become a symbol of the poet’s creative power, to serve as a trope for his capacity to possess intangible female beauty, and to ‘match, once and for all, the dangerous magic of nymphets.’ The narrative is designed to safeguard ‘the eternal Lolita’ against her physical absence and subsequent demise. For H.H. explains that, although he has fallen ‘in love with Lolita forever,’ he knows that Dolores ‘will not be the eternal Lolita,’ remaining a nymphet for only two years.” [Bronfen, 1992, p. 375]
However, there is an additional nuance here, linked to Lolita’s flight to another man. No sooner does H.H. realize that the model he initially chose—the innocent Annabel Lee, or her double, Virginia Clemm (Poe’s fourteen-year-old beloved)—is no longer applicable, than his literary focus shifts. The text then enacts the model of Mérimée’s Carmen—”the unfaithful woman who must be imprisoned or killed. Simultaneously, he appropriates the role of the victim of female demonic lust, the jealous lover of a deceitful and duplicitous girl, and her monstrous rapist and murderer. Far from merely using Dolores’s body to fulfill the desires that haunt him—and to give expression to the ambivalence of meaning these desires evoke—he transforms her into the figure of elusive femininity *par excellence* <…> in which her lover can place his trust only after her death” [Bronfen, 1992, 377].
Lolita’s transformation into Carmen signals her actual escape, and—in semiotic terms—she is no longer the signifier of “his love.” This means that H.H. loses control not only over her body but also over the text he is creating. The history of *Lolita*’s creation is not a straight line, but a spiral: a Möbius strip of myth, mimicry, memory, and metamorphosis. In this work, I have attempted to trace the fold—not to expose a secret, but to trace how Nabokov staged its concealment.
Jacques Lacan: My fascination with psychoanalysis began with reflections on the “Self/Other” paradox. Yet, it was not without its coincidences. On that day—November 4, 1926—when I presented my first clinical case to the Neurological Society, “in another district of Paris, the Psychoanalytic Society was being inaugurated—a society I joined immediately, though I did not remain a member for long.” In August 1936, my presentation was interrupted. The chairman, Ernest Jones—along with the majority of the other participants—was far more preoccupied with the conflict between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. Anna Freud considered herself the creator of Ego psychology, perhaps believing she was defending her father’s position. I, however, sided with Melanie Klein, drawing upon Freud’s work *The Ego and the Id* (1923), which negates the unity of the “I”; for a child’s capacity to distinguish between self and other does not, in itself, attest to the child’s internal coherence. After all, the child derives the image of the self from the outside—by gazing at his own reflection in a mirror between the ages of six and eighteen months—that is to say, during the “mirror stage.” Prior to the mirror stage, he experiences his body not as a unified whole, but rather as an autonomy of disparate bodily parts. The encounter with this specular double facilitates the creation of a narcissistic image that synthesizes the unity of the body. This image, arriving from the outside, constitutes the child’s first step toward recognizing himself—his own *moi*—an ego that will bear the imprint of an imaginary, illusory unity throughout his entire life. By recognizing himself in others, the individual becomes radically alienated from himself within this process of “objectifying identification.” He is thereby compelled to enter into rivalry with his own image.
Victor Mazin. A.P. dedicates a chapter titled “From the Bowl of Sweet Waters” to the rivalry of the “self” with itself. She writes: “Amidst the minor discoveries that served to refine Field’s vision of his titular subject, an epiphany occurred—one deserving of a separate account <…>. The conversation turned to the children of the Nabokov family, from whom their parents had maintained a certain distance. From his brother Sergei (1900–1945), the discussion shifted to his sister Olga (1903–1978). ‘Nabokov dreaded the prospect of his biographer meeting this sister. “You will never meet my sister Olga as long as I am alive. No, my dear fellow. On this point, I put my foot down. No, my dear fellow. As I have already said, you will never meet her, because she is not the sort of person with whom… Because it would be a waste. It would be a terrible waste of time. She is a very strange woman. In many respects, she is quite infantile. She is absolutely self-absorbed—and not merely self-absorbed, but absorbed in the present moment. She was a very beautiful young woman, extraordinarily gifted in music. She possessed a beautiful voice. Her love for music redeems many of her other qualities”‘ [Field, 1986, 27].
The pathos of Nabokov’s protest may well have reminded Field of a motif identified by Lacan as the object petit a… ‘Nabokov searches the mirror-like pool’ for his sister, yet finds only himself. ‘Nabokov is a Narcissus!'” And the development of this motif occupied more than four pages in Field’s work. Yet I, too—as I read Field—was struck by a recollection of a painting by the artist Roy Carswell. In it, the narrator V, perceives Sebastian Knight as Narcissus: gazing at his own reflection in a stream, yet simultaneously being observed by some Other. From Sologub’s translation of Oscar Wilde’s opus, we know that Wilde considered this Other to be the stream. But what (or who) constituted this Other in Nabokov’s world? “One of the ways Nabokov protects himself—and I mean this literally: protects himself as a fully self-sufficient and autonomous entity—is through the artful selection of pools designed to yield false reflections. Nabokov’s art abounds with mirrors, reflecting windows and characters who choose erroneous doubles, read false meanings into texts, declare the impossibility of ever seeing anyone—even themselves—in their entirety, and refuse to acknowledge the true reflection when it presents itself to them. This is the persona of Narcissus—who, far from always or immediately tumbling into the pool—also serves as a character within Nabokovian art. Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection in the exquisite pool of Thespiae—a pool so pristine that not even a single leaf has ever fallen into it—yet he realizes that he has fallen in love with his reflection just in time to savor the exquisite torment of his unrequited love; a love that can never be consummated, for he is Narcissus, and thus compelled to admire himself in any and every situation. The most faithful of his many spurned admirers—Echo—mourns him from afar.” [Field, 1986, p. 28; cited in A.P., 2026, p. 407].
If we translate this observation into Lacanian terms, the argument would likely be that from the moment the subject’s “ego” is established, this ego begins to acquire its functions based on the “register of the Imaginary.” And the primary investment in the course of the ego’s reconstruction of the world is the word—which becomes the true center and core of creation: “His Majesty the Baby,” just as we once imagined ourselves to be. The child is destined to fulfill those dreams of the parents that they themselves never realized—”the boy shall become a great man and a hero in his father’s stead” [Freud, 1971, 90–91]. The ego’s rivalry with its own image—without which Nabokov’s creative work cannot be fully grasped—is reflected even in those of his novels where one would least expect to find it. A.P. identifies this rivalry in *The Defense*, viewing as symptomatic the interplay of absent names, the doubling of names, and the intrusion of the names of the Other. I quote from the text:
“Name and Anonymity. Luzhin’s name becomes known to the reader only posthumously. This narrative decision effectively negates the maxim of Nabokov’s beloved Flaubert, who once asserted: “Where there is no name, there is no novel.” Yet Nabokov is prepared to view the absence of a name as a distinct narrative resource—specifically, as the fundamental mystery of the character’s inner life, his very enigma. However, this enigma does not conform to the traditional conventions of posing and solving riddles. For the riddle here lies in the name of the titular character—a name he himself is afraid to utter. Why?
The novel opens with Luzhin’s father’s failed attempt to prepare his son for the start of his first school year. All the father manages to do is impress upon his son that, from this moment on, he will no longer be addressed solely by his given name—implying that the familiar name by which he answers within the family circle will be supplanted by a new, formal designation (comprising both a given name and a patronymic). Yet the fear of change triggered by this admonition manifests, for the boy, as a strict taboo against ever articulating his own name: “I beg your pardon—your given name and patronymic?” inquires the father of Luzhin’s fiancée, pressing for an answer. “Zhadub,” Luzhin replies good-naturedly [Nabokov, 1999, p. 376]. “Tell me, Luzhin—your given name and patronymic… Ah, I believe I recall now: Anton… Anton… What comes next?” asks a former classmate of Luzhin’s at a charity ball in Berlin [Nabokov, 1999, p. 427], dredging a spurious name—Anton—from the depths of his memory.
But what could have prompted Nabokov to withhold Luzhin’s name? Could it be that the name was already “taken”—appropriated by another Luzhin, Alexei Lvovich? Yet this play on names extended not only to the protagonist of The Defense but also to the narrator of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight—a narrator whose name, beyond the initial letter “V,” the reader never actually learns. Reading The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Michael Wood offers several conjectures: “The narrator retains only his initial, as if he inhabited one of those cautious nineteenth-century novels where the names of persons and places, and the final digits of dates, vanish into dashes and hints.” A new conjecture follows: The truncated name of the narrator, “V,” confirms his fervent desire to remain invisible—a desire explicitly stated within the novel itself (“As the reader may have noticed, I have tried to put as little of myself into this book as possible”). However, having discarded both of these initial hypotheses, Wood proposes a brilliant alternative: By truncating the narrator’s name, the author initiates a game [emphasis mine—A.P.]—the significance of which lies in the narrator’s desire to withdraw himself from the narrative. Without negating the act of storytelling itself, he effectively dons a “cap of invisibility”: “The play with the name suggests not that the name matters (or does not matter), but that invisibility matters—that V is intensely eager to feel that he stands outside Sebastian’s story. He observes it without being a part of it. By the end of the story, his invisibility is revoked, though his name continues to elude us” [Wood, 1998, pp. 34–35].
Jacques Lacan: On July 17, 1949, I delivered an address at the 16th Congress in Zurich, presenting a new version of the “Mirror Stage.” Drawing upon earlier observations regarding duality—specifically, that Narcissus fell in love with his own image, mistaking himself for an Other who simultaneously attracts and repels him—I arrived at the conclusion that aggressiveness is inherent not only in hatred but also in love. But how does this alter our understanding of the Mirror Stage in its visual aspect? The image that Narcissus beholds is his ideal ego—a term I proposed to emphasize that this image possesses precisely what I myself lack. My ideal lies outside of me. It gazes back at me and perceives my acute psychological insufficiency. Such is yet another consequence of the Mirror Stage: the phenomenon of the gaze of the Other—a gaze that surveils me, an all-seeing eye. My ego is put on display, held under constant surveillance. It is my own gaze situated outside of me, invisibly watching from without.
Viktor Mazin: In A.P.’s book, this theme receives extensive treatment, beginning with the metamorphoses of sight and blindness observed by Freud and situated within the context of a game of chess in The Defense. The perspective shifts during the discussion of mirror reflections in the novel Invitation to a Beheading and undergoes a complete transformation in the course of the discussion regarding the blind spot in Lacan’s Seminar XI. Let me remind you that Luzhin’s discovery of the world of chess coincides with the Easter holidays—and, consequently, with the principal church festival. Yet it is precisely this day that is marked by two unexpected occurrences: the onset of darkness and the appearance of a “brightly illuminated patch.” Luzhin’s dual vision perceives both the darkness and the light. Тhe key to deciphering this effect for the reader might lie in the cinematic effects employed by von Sternberg—a director known for the way light took center stage in his films, effectively becoming a character in its own right. “For light to fulfill its function, it must be intercepted. It cannot exist within darkness. Light may fall directly, penetrate, or return; it may be reflected or refracted, gathered or dispersed; it may curve—as it does within a soap bubble—or sparkle, or come up against a dead end. Where it is lost, there is blackness; where it begins, there lies the very core of light. The trajectory of a ray—from this source of light to the outpost of blackness—is precisely where the conflict and drama of light reside.” [Lotman, Tsivyan, 1994, p. 181. Cit. from A.P. 2026, p. ]. Yet Nabokov resolves this “conflict and drama of light and darkness” in the spirit of Freud: these islands of light appear to have been drawn, as it were, from the subconscious. Stylistically, this is expressed via an oxymoron: “It was not until April—during the Easter holidays—that the inevitable day dawned for Luzhin: a day when the entire world suddenly went dark, as if a switch had been flipped, and only one thing, amidst the gloom, remained brightly illuminated—a newborn miracle, a gleaming islet upon which his entire life was destined to converge. The happiness he had clung to came to a halt; that April day froze forever, while somewhere, in another plane, the movement of days continued—the city spring, the country summer.” [Nabokov, 1999, 324. Cited in A.P., 2026, p. 31].
At this juncture of the narrative, several vectors converge. Nabokov designated April 23rd as his birthday, and April also marks the inception of his memoiristic endeavor—an undertaking that mirrors the dynamics of light and darkness: a brightly illuminated patch intrudes upon the gloom. Moreover, the capacity to perceive this illuminated island is attributed not to the subconscious, but to “common sense.” “The cradle rocks above an abyss. Sifting through the murmurs of inspired superstitions, common sense tells us that our life is but a crack of light between two perfectly black eternities” [Nabokov, 2000b, p. 145]. As we can see, birth and death are entities of darkness, and darkness is impenetrable to the eye. It constitutes a threat emanating from somewhere external; yet, simultaneously, it is the source of a terror against which there is no internal defense. For defense, as Freud pointed out, is possible only against external influences, whereas against internal influences—that is, against sensations of pleasure or unpleasure—no defense is possible [Freud, 1955, p. 19]. And Nabokov continues: “There is no difference whatsoever in their blackness; yet we are inclined to gaze into the pre-natal abyss with less trepidation than into the one toward which we are hurtling at a speed of four thousand five hundred heartbeats per hour. I did, however, know a sensitive young man who suffered from chronophobia even with regard to the boundless past <…>. While watching a home movie filmed a month before his birth, he <…> realized that he himself did not exist in this world at all—that no one noticed his absence or grieved for him. Particularly haunting and terrifying was the sight of a newly purchased baby carriage standing on the porch with the self-satisfied inertness of a coffin.” [Nabokov, 2000b, p. 145. A.P., p. 31–32].
Victor Mazin: The account given by Cécile C. in *Invitation to a Beheading* harks back—in a new guise—to the “mirror stage”: “I remember this: when I was a child, there was a fad for… well, for these things called ‘nots’—and they came with, you see, a special mirror; not merely warped, mind you, but absolutely distorted—you couldn’t make heads or tails of it; there were gaps, confusion, everything seemed to slide before your eyes—yet its curvature was not arbitrary, but rather precisely calibrated… Or, rather, the images were precisely selected to fit its curvature… No, wait, I’m explaining it poorly. In short, you had this wild sort of mirror… which absolutely distorted ordinary objects. …a ‘no’ would cancel out a ‘no’ to yield a ‘yes’; everything would fall into place, everything would be right—and thus, out of a formless jumble of patterns, a wondrous, harmonious image would emerge in the mirror: flowers, a ship, a figure, some sort of landscape” [Nabokov, 2009a, pp. 128–129]. As a synonym for “mirror,” “netki” retains the mirror-like quality of reversibility that Nabokov carried over into other novels. Specifically, in “The Gift,” the executioner and the spilman who plays the role of the executioner are given the quality of reversibility: “for the executioner, everything is done in reverse: the collar is put on upside down when they take Razin to execution, the katu wine is poured not from the hand, but over the hand; and if, according to the Swabian code, if someone insulted the spilman, the latter was allowed to strike the offender’s shadow as satisfaction, then in China, it was the actor, the shadow, who performed the executioner’s duties, that is, it was as if responsibility was relieved from the person, and everything was transferred to the reverse, mirror world” [Nabokov 2009 b, p. 383. Cit from A.P., 2026, p. 182].
However, the mirror-like quality of “netki” only partially reflects the meaning of “netki.” Nabokov’s understanding of “netok” rather falls under the concept of “anamorphosis,” since it indicates deformations. For example, Rastrelli’s sculpture of a head (mask) is executed not so much as a “representation of the monster’s head,” but rather as its reflection in water. The mask, thus, paradoxically appears as a cast of the reflection, not the original. Rastrelli’s mascarons are placed above a water surface, sometimes foaming from the stream pouring down upon it (and then there is nothing in it visible), it appears either as a smooth mirror-like surface or as one rippling gently. It is precisely in the latter instance that the reflection of the mascaron emerges upon the water’s surface” [Yampolsky, 1994]. The seventh section of Lacan’s seminal eleventh seminar (February 26, 1964) is dedicated to anamorphosis. At the center of the discussion is Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors (1533), which appeared on the cover of the printed edition of the seminar in 1973. “The enigmatic, blurred blot in this painting […] constitutes the most renowned instance of anamorphosis”—an instance whose interpretation is impossible without an understanding of the subject matter addressed in the second part of Lacan’s seminar, titled On the Gaze as Object a.” “The presence of an object lies in its accessibility to the gaze; the object is that which offers itself to the gaze, and thus the gaze becomes the embodiment of the subjective position—the subject’s point of view upon the external world in its entirety. Even if the physical gaze is metaphorized or animated, the same structure persists—or is perhaps held even more tenaciously in its pure form” [Dolar, 1915]. Proceeding from the philosophical premise that truth resides not in the visible but in the hidden essence, Dolar explains—citing Hegel—that the essence of truth is the veil itself; behind it, “there is nothing, yet there exists a structural necessity that compels the subject to step behind the veil of the visible in order to uncover the void” [Dolar, 2015]. It is precisely this void that constitutes the subjectivity of the gaze. Within the context of the Hegelian veil, Dolar reads the parable of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, while simultaneously interpreting Holbein’s painting as an anamorphosis that conceals—beneath the guise of a bone—a skull serving as a memento mori. The implicit message is: “seek the higher, hidden meaning within the obvious significance” [Nabokov, 2026, pp. 125–127]. The blurred blot hovering in the foreground of the painting—before which Holbein’s ambassadors stand—embodies the gaze that seeks to penetrate beyond the veil.” [Cit. from A.P., 2026, p. 183].
Jacques Lacan: While leafing through a book of Nabokov’s interviews, Strong Opinions,—on a shelf at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore—I was reminded of the conflict between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. In defense of “unshakeable judgments,” Anna Freud proposed a provocative substitute: *ego-sovereign*. And had I been asked at that moment what relevance this substitution bore to the writer Nabokov, I would have framed my response by taking as my starting point the central theme of Ego psychology—namely, the Ego’s capacity for adaptation.
Victor Mazin: Lacan saw the major defect of Ego psychology in the adaptive function of the subject—a function that fails to account for the alienation of the emerging “I” during the mirror stage. For Lacan, the issue lay not so much in the “I” adapting to reality as in the very act of making sense of reality—a process through which the illusory nature of adapting to it might be revealed. What is illusory, above all, is the word “adaptation” itself. This term’s introduction into psychoanalysis attests to the power wielded by the analyst over the less “adapted” analysand, thereby transforming Ego psychology into an instrument of control. In A.P.’s book, this theme is explored from a dual perspective. Nabokov stands in opposition to Lacan in his nterviews and autobiographical narratives, asserting the sovereignty of the individual just where Lacan argues for its impossibility. Yet Nabokov’s fictional experiments are in complete harmony with Lacanian theory: his protagonist is language which lacks cohesion and is fragmented. Let me offer the following example. No sooner had Nabokov read Wilson’s review of his translation of Eugene Onegin than he “immediately sent a telegram to Barbara Epstein, an editor at the New York Review of Books: “Please save space in the next issue for my thunder.” Citing this episode, Brian Boyd comments on it in a vein he had already established in the chapters dedicated to Field: “Nabokov expected nothing special from Wilson’s review; however, the fact that a ‘dear friend’ would turn into an ‘envious ass’ came as a complete surprise to him.” I surmise that this invective became known to Field only after the “thunder”—to which Nabokov had alluded in the telegram sent to Barbara Epstein—was made public, having been rejected twice by the New York Review of Books before finally being published (on the second attempt) in Encounter.
Wilson’s doubts regarding Nabokov’s competence—specifically his assertion that Pushkin did not possess a command of the English language—were bound to provoke an explosive reaction from Nabokov. Let me recall the vessel that came to rest in a dark corner of Epimetheus’s home following the arrival of Pandora. It was then that a single thoughtless gesture—an attempt to peer into the vessel through a narrow crack—led to the instantaneous unleashing of every human vice. In our case, however, the issue at hand concerns not the vices of humanity, but rather the competence of one individual to pass judgment on the competence of another. In his review of Nabokov’s translation of Eugene Onegin, Wilson noted that Nabokov underestimated Pushkin’s command of English and disregarded the testimony of critics such as Henri Troyat (1911–2007) and Svyatopolk-Mirsky (1890–1939), as well as the poetry of Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Barry Cornwall—works that Pushkin had read with close attention. Nabokov, however, insisted that Pushkin committed “grotesque English misspellings,” even in the name “Childe Harold.” Yet, had he been less confident in his own expertise, he might have discovered that in the time of Byron (and Pushkin), the word “child” possessed an alternative spelling—”childe”—as evidenced by Byron’s poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–1818). Moreover, in poetic usage, the spelling “childe” was actually preferred, as demonstrated by Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came (1852).
It is also worth noting that, in the heat of his attacks on Wilson, Nabokov dragged Auden’s name into the fray, accusing him of ignorance of the French language. And since, in matters of evidence, style is the ultimate arbiter, the upper hand in this dispute ultimately fell to Wilson, who characterized Nabokov’s challenge as using a cannon to shoot at sparrows: “If Pushkin knew English as well as Auden knows French, he would have had nothing to lament; for although Auden did not know that the correct phrasing is ‘Le monde est ronde’ [rather than ‘Le monde est rond’ — A.P.], I am well aware that he read extensively in French. And should anyone wish to refute you using the very methods you employ to discredit Auden <…>, they could do so with ease—by pointing out certain blunders of yours in English, as well as your notorious ignorance regarding the meaning of fastidieux—thereby suggesting that you know neither English nor French, and perhaps do not even possess a firm command of Russian, given that I recall your once telling me that samodur has nothing whatsoever to do with durak.” [Nabokov, 1984, p. 352]
Victor Mazin: I cannot resist offering a second example. “Thanks to the efforts of A. Babikov, an anonymous review of Conclusive Evidence was discovered in the archives of the U.S. Library of Congress. The review’s author turned out to be… Nabokov himself! Although he planned to include it in Chapter 16 of his memoir, Nabokov ultimately refrained from doing so, instead advising his publisher to use the review for promotional purposes—which is precisely what was done. This text is well worth reproducing, at least in part:
“A rare marvel among autobiographies, Mr. Nabokov’s book is more easily described in terms of what it is not. For instance, it is not one of those verbose, formless, and disjointed opuses—leaning heavily on diary entries—that experts in other arts or shapers of our public life are wont to foist upon readers (‘Late Wednesday evening, around 11:40, General N. telephoned. I said to him…’). Nor is it the concoction of a professional reader… <…> And certainly, what lies before me is not a specimen of that slick, marketable genre of memoirs in which the author—having ascended to the heights of third-rate fiction—pours out upon the reader, with insinuating shamelessness… <…> In our critical view, the enduring significance of Conclusive Evidence lies in the fact that, through the dispassionate means of art, it recounts a most unusual life story. Nabokov’s method consists of exploring the remotest regions of his own past—in search of what might be termed thematic trails or channels. <…> The rhombic pattern of art and the sinews of a whimsically structured memory combine in a single, powerful, and supple movement, giving rise to a style that seems to glide through grass and flowers toward the warm surface of a stone, where it luxuriously coils itself into a ring.” [Anonymous review, authored by Nabokov.] [Babikov, 1918, p. 33. Cit. from A.P., 2006, p. 393].
One can only regret that this review was not included within the pages of the memoir itself. Had it been, it might have been subjected to a second round of critique—this time by ironic Englishmen—and, who knows, perhaps even added to the observations of Philippe Lejeune, the French historian and literary theorist renowned for his studies of memoirs. Until then, his experience had been limited to reading the memoirs of his “paternal great-grandfather, Xavier Édouard Lejeune,” who lived in the nineteenth century, worked as a salesman in one of Paris’s new department stores, and wrote solely for his desk drawer in his spare time. Here are his impressions: “At first, I approached the text with a certain condescension, finding it touching yet formulaic and lacking in distinctiveness—until I discovered that my ancestor was lying. Moreover, these were lies concerning the most significant—and, ironically, the most easily verifiable—biographical facts: his birth and his marriage. In reality, his life was rife with tragic events and secrets—narratives of which he would sometimes project onto minor characters—and it was these very secrets that ultimately compelled him to halt his writing halfway through. And so, together with my father—that is, his grandson—I found myself transformed into a detective, sifting through archives, questioning relatives, and attempting to decipher a text that, in my own naivety, I had once deemed naive.” [Lejeune, 2012. Cit.from A.P., 2026, p. 395].
Having conducted extensive research into reconstructing the life of Xavier Édouard Lejeune, Philippe Lejeune was able to grasp the unique nature of autobiography as a text possessing, in equal measure, the characteristics of both literary fiction (narrative form) and documentary record (biographical content). “Autobiography is not a text in which someone speaks the truth about themselves, but rather a text in which a real person asserts that they are telling that truth—about themselves. And this assertion has a truly distinct effect on perception. An autobiographical text and a work of fiction will be read in entirely different ways.” This distinction was further underscored by Lejeune through the concept of the “autobiographical pact” [Ibid.].
Andrew Field—who, perhaps, had not read Philippe Lejeune—nevertheless managed to find the keys to Nabokov’s memoir text by applying a method akin to Lejeune’s; that is, by withholding his trust from Nabokov’s “facts”—all the more so given that the very notion of a “fact” was never clearly defined within the Nabokov family:
— “Oh, we weren’t engaged for very long. Perhaps a year.”
— “Two years.” Or:
— “I don’t think my mother knew anything about our wedding.”
— “She did.”
— “Not at all.” [Field, 1977, p. 110]
Lacan is credited with the observation that the Real (to which autobiography lays claim) borders upon the Imaginary. Here, it is crucial to acknowledge the existence of this boundary—a boundary that must be understood semantically. In autobiography, the Real is presented as mysterious, while the Imaginary appears as the unimaginable. This semantic boundary is established through the intrusion into the narrative “I” of that unspoken (and inexpressible) desire which possesses the magical property of transforming the object of enunciation into the object of desire. Is this not precisely why, when reading a text—and particularly an autobiographical one—one ought to focus on seeking out the causes of desire (that is to say, the authorial intentions which, in fact, constitute the very source of the inexpressible)?
Victor Mazin continues: “However, when it comes to interpreting Nabokov’s novels, A.P. reads them as if Nabokov himself had attended a series of Lacanian seminars, having become convinced that his novels could not possibly have been written without an intimate familiarity with Freud. For the sake of symmetry, I shall offer two additional examples.
- Returning to my hasty conclusion—that Nabokov might have been tempted to quote Gogol directly after reading Remizov—I propose we fast-forward to the time of the publication of the book *Nikolai Gogol*, wherein Nabokov employs the term “animation trick,” having selected from Gogol the very same passage that Remizov had cited earlier.
At one moment it seemed to him that he was already married <…>; in his room, instead of a solitary bed, there stood a double one; a wife sat on a chair. It felt strange to him. He did not know how to approach her or what to say to her, and he noticed that she had a goose-like face. Inadvertently, he turned to one side and saw another wife, also with a goose-like face. He turned to the other side—and there stood a third wife <…>. At this point, a sense of anguish seized him <…>; he took off his hat and saw: a wife was sitting inside the hat, too (the animator’s trick of a dream-conjurer). He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief—and there was a wife in his pocket; he pulled the cotton wool out of his ear—and a wife was sitting there as well” [Nabokov, 1944].
“Then suddenly he would hop on one leg, and his aunt, watching him, would say with a solemn air: ‘Yes, you must hop, for you are a married man now.’ He would turn toward her—but the aunt was no longer an aunt, but a bell tower. (At this point, Freudians would prick up their ears.) ‘Who is dragging me?’ ‘It is I—your wife—dragging you, because you are a bell!’ ‘No, I am not a bell; I am Ivan Fyodorovich!’ he would shout. ‘Yes, you are a bell,’ the colonel of the 2nd Infantry Regiment would say as he passed by. Then, just as suddenly, he would dream that his wife was not a human being at all, but some sort of woolen fabric.” [Remizov, 1954, pp. 74–75. Cit. from A.P., 20026, p. 131].
What, exactly, constitutes the animation—or, to use Nabokov’s term, the “cartoonist’s trick”—at work here? In Gogol’s world, everything is in motion, losing and regaining its corporeal form; at the slightest provocation, a body finds itself in a place where it does not belong. Meanwhile, the observer keeps running past—running so fast he can barely feel his own legs. Running past whom? Why, past his wife—who, ostensibly, is not running at all, yet somehow manages to deftly grab him by the ear with her long fingers. Finally, he arrives. Who arrives? Why, the one who has just woken up and sees his wife—whose wife? The one sitting there wearing a hat. At that very moment, someone thrusts a finger right into his face: “You are a bell!” Who is doing the thrusting? The Colonel. He decides to walk right past. And what of the wife? Oh, she is nothing more than “woolen fabric.” However, Remizov reproduces Gogol’s text, heightening its comic effect while making no secret to the reader of the original author; Nabokov, conversely, employs Gogolian stylistics in a veiled manner—perhaps hoping the reader will perceive them as quintessentially Nabokovian—which is, in fact, precisely what happens: “I closed my eyes, lay on my side, and tried to fall asleep, but could not. Out of the darkness, advancing toward me—jaw jutting out, eyes staring straight into mine—came Felix. Upon reaching me, he would dissolve, and before me lay a long, empty road: a figure would appear in the distance—a man walking, tapping his cane against the trunks of the roadside trees—drawing ever closer; I would peer intently, and—jaw jutting out, eyes staring straight into mine—he would dissolve once more upon reaching me, or rather, upon entering me, passing right through me as if through a shadow; and again the road would stretch out expectantly, and a figure would appear in the distance—and again, it was he. I would turn onto my other side; for a time, all was dark and still—a uniform blackness—but gradually a road would begin to take shape—leading in the opposite direction—and suddenly, right before my very face—as if having emerged from within me—there would appear the back of a man’s head, a pear-shaped sack slung across his shoulders; he would slowly diminish in size, receding, drifting away—about to vanish completely—when suddenly, turning around, he would halt and return; his face would grow ever clearer, until it was my own face.” [Nabokov, 2000a, pp. 426–427. Cit. from A.P., 2026, p. 132].
- Acting on behalf of a publishing house editor, Hugh Person “took a list of discussion points from his briefcase. The two main ones boiled down to how to disguise several all-too-recognizable figures in the manuscript of *Figurations* and what to do about that commercially unviable title” [Nabokov, 1972, p. 69]. Regarding the title, the writer R puts forward the following theory: “Readers have no idea that there are two types of titles. The first is a title chosen by a fool—or a clever publisher—only after the book has been written. It is nothing more than a label stuck on with spit and pressed down with a fist. Most of our worst bestsellers boast titles of this kind. But there is also a second type: a title that shines through the book like a watermark, born together with the book; the author has grown so accustomed to it as the written pages accumulated that it stands for every single one of them. No, Mr. ‘R’ cannot part with Figurations” [Nabokov, 1972, p. 70. Cit. from A.P. 2006, p. 302].
At the very moment Andrew Field was rereading the novel Transparent Things while preparing the second volume of his Nabokov biography, Nabokov himself was already laying the groundwork for a lawsuit against his biographer. Had Field known this, he might well have recognized himself in an anonymous character within the novel—in which case, a new chapter in Nabokov studies would have opened up. A.P. now fills this gap. “On September 22, 1946, Nabokov dispatched a ‘memoir’ titled Solus Rex and subsequently changed the title. What transpired? Well, Solus Rex was never completed. So, the new title turned out to have been… affixed—using a method the author, R, had kept in reserve for… well, you know what for. And so, the unfinished memoir was renamed—drumroll, please!—Transparent Things, and the anonymous character finally acquired a name: Andrew Field.
The second item included by the publisher in the “list of questions for discussion” with the author R was the question: “How to disguise several all-too-recognizable figures in the manuscript of Figurations?” This question could not fail to trouble Nabokov, who was composing his novel simultaneously with preparing a lawsuit against Field. As before, Nabokov entrusted the voicing of his thoughts to the character R—a.k.a., the author. The conversation between Hugh Person and R takes place at R’s country home in Versex. “I can only repeat,” he [the author R] said, settling into the armchair vacated for him by Person and gesturing toward an identical one opposite him, “what I have said not merely once, but many times over: one may swap one cat for another, but one cannot swap my characters. <…> You see, that little note you wrote me rather piqued my interest. I am forbidden to touch minors, yet my minor characters are truly untouchable—if you will permit me a play on words.” He explained that when a true artist creates a character based on a living person, any rewriting aimed at disguising that character would be tantamount to destroying the living prototype—as if, you know, you were to stick a pin into a little clay doll, and the neighbor’s little girl were to drop dead. If the composition was artistic—if it contained not only water but also wine—then it was invulnerable in one sense, yet terribly fragile in another. Fragile, because the writer—by yielding to a meek editor and swapping a slender figure for a stout one, or a brunette for a blonde—distorts both the physical appearance and the niche that gives it voice, and the entire chapel along with it; “and invulnerable because, however radically you alter the image, its prototype will still be recognizable by the outline of the gap it has left in the narrative fabric” [Nabokov, 1972, pp. 69–70. Cit. from A.P., 2006, p. 304–305].
Such was Author R’s response to Hugh Person’s suggestion that the manuscript be purged of “libel” against recognizable figures. But which recognizable figures are in question? “In *Transparent Things*, there is no specific indication of a character subjected to libel—though the ‘gaps left by the author in the narrative fabric’ (to borrow Nabokov’s phrasing) invite one to suspect Andrew Field as the candidate. Or, rather, put it this way: the character is assigned a fictional name, for which a series of nicknames has been devised. That name is Tamworth. Before returning to a discussion of this name, let me note a significant detail. The editor’s letter ‘piqued’ Author R, provoking him to issue the following rejoinder: ‘I am forbidden to touch upon second-rate types, yet my secondary characters are truly untouchable—if you will permit me a play on words.’” But what, exactly, might this “play on words” have entailed? <…> As for the new novel by R himself, it bears the title Tralatitions. <…> What, then, could Nabokov have had in mind with this particular title? I submit that the first two syllables—”Trala”—allude to the characters Tweedledum and Tweedledee from Lewis Carroll’s *Through the Looking-Glass*, or, more precisely, to John Byrom’s epigram regarding the composers Handel and Bononcini. Underlying this allusion may have been Nabokov’s private notion regarding the identity of the editor, Hugh Person, and the biographer, Andrew Field. I quote the text of the epigram below:
Some say, compar’d to Bononcini
That Mynheer Handel’s but a Ninny;
Others aver, that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a Candle.
Strange all this Difference should be
’Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee!
The third syllable of the title—”ticia” or “ticion”—may have been borrowed by Nabokov from Chudinov’s dictionary (1910), perhaps taken from the shelf of his family library. According to Roman tradition, Ticia was the name of the second of the three tribes (the Ramnes, Ticies, and Luceres) into which the ancient population of Rome was divided. But how, one might ask, could the Ticia tribe possibly fit into the context of a Lewis Carroll fairy tale?” [Cit. from A.P., 2006, p. 305, 307–308].
Let me remind you that the exotic title of the novel by the author “R” was proposed in response to the question: “How does one mask several all-too-recognizable figures within a manuscript?” And what, precisely, does it mean to mask a recognizable figure? What must be done to ensure that a recognizable figure ceases to be recognizable? The surest method would be to push that recognizable figure to a threshold beyond which life—as they know it—no longer exists. Such was the threshold to which Nabokov drove Andrew Field—a man who renounced his career and was, very shortly thereafter, forgotten by the literary community.
Jacques Lacan: I owe to the structural anthropologist Lévi-Strauss—who first captivated me with his theory of incest—my friendship with Roman Jakobson, who had recently arrived in Paris. At the time of my acquaintance with Jakobson, we were both preoccupied with a question previously raised by Freud in his book On Aphasia (1891). By then, Jakobson had published Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances (1954). Proceeding from the premise that in language, the individual performs two operations—selection and combination—Jakobson equated the operation of combination (or, in Freudian terms, condensation) with metaphor, and selection—or, following Freud, displacement—with metonymy. Thus, the understanding of language as a rebus was reduced to the manipulation of these two linguistic mechanisms. With Jakobson’s insight in mind, I recalled an observation of my own: dreams are not limited to the gratification of an egoistic desire, for they are sometimes directed toward the dialectic of the Other’s desire. In dreams, hidden images occasionally emerge that bear witness to the gaze of the Other upon the dreamer. And I explained this concealment by associating the gaze with the Real—that which defies interpretation.
Victor Mazin: A.P. does not view aphasia as a lesion of the cerebral cortex’s speech centers, but rather reduces it to a disturbance in the tempo-rhythmic component of speech—one that triggers spasms in the muscles of the speech apparatus. In her case, this liberty is permissible, as the subject at hand is a literary device that simulates this impairment: a kind of “stuttering” which, of course, is not true aphasia. Rather, it is a form of agrammatism—a stylistic trait observed in the work of Gertrude Stein [1874–1946], a key popularizer of the Modernist style. Nabokov—whose older brother was a frequent visitor to Stein’s salon—may well have retained the memory of this “stuttering,” subsequently embedding it in Cincinnatus’s diary entry: “and yet I am—comparatively. For I foresaw this ending—this very ending” [Nabokov, 1999a, p. 48]. Stein’s style is also parodied by the artist Roy Carswell, whose “brush” is engaged in painting Sebastian Knight. It moves as if afflicted by the “agrammatism”: from cheek to forehead, then to the hair, before returning to the eyebrows and forehead—all the while deliberately avoiding the eyes.
“These eyes and the face itself are painted in such a manner as to convey the impression that they are mirrored Narcissus-like in clear water — with a very slight ripple on the hollow cheek, owing to the presence of a water spider which has just stopped and floating backwards. A withered leaf has settled on the reflected brow which is creased as that of a man peering intently. The crumpled dark air over it is partly suffused by another ripple, but one strand on the temple has caught a glint of humid sunshine. There is a deep furrow between the straight eyebrows, and another down from the nose to the tightly shut dusky lips. There is nothing much more than this head. A dark opalescent shade clouds the neck, as if the upper art of the boy were receding. <…> Thus Sebastian peers into a pool at himself” [Nabokov, 1941, p. 117. Cit. from A.P., 2026, p. 220–221].
The enigma of this portrait lies in the fact that the artist depicts Sebastian as becoming conscious of himself through the peculiar structure of his eyes—eyes that are simultaneously seeing and seen. The eye, as it were, sees itself through the very things in which it finds itself immersed. Consequently, it perceives the reverse side of its own capacity to see. This phenomenon of perception was described by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), who summarized the theoretical inquiries of Helmuth Plessner as follows: “This self-consciousness—achieved through blending, mutual transformation, and narcissism—is an integral part of the seer within what he sees, of the toucher within what he touches, of the feeler within what he feels; a self-consciousness that thereby immerses itself in things possessed of a front and a back, a past and a future.” [Merleau-Ponty, 1992, p. 14. Cit. from A.P., 2026, p.221]. As we can see, Nabokov focuses on a “pictorial” mode—one capable of apprehending the external shell of things while simultaneously being secretly apprehended by them. But why does Roy Carswell, the creator of Sevastyan’s portrait, depict the head separately from the body? Does this not harbor a hidden attempt to defer—to push into the future—the news of the tragic death of his brother, Sergei? Once again, Sevastyan is conceived as a living memory of Sergei. While preparing his lectures on Proust, Nabokov observes that both the narrator and Swann “perceive the physical appearance of various characters through the works of the Old Masters—often those of the Florentine School.” And he offers a conjecture: “For Proust, art was the primary reality of life.” Is this not why, “when describing young men, he concealed his heightened sensitivity to male beauty behind the mask of fitting paintings; whereas, when describing young women—behind that very same mask—he hid his indifference toward women and his inability to portray their charms”? [Nabokov, 1980, p. 228. Cit. from A.P. 2026, p. 221–222].
Jacques Lacan: For Freud, the first dream to yield to decipherment was the dream of the injection given to Irma. Freud not only analyzes it with exhaustive thoroughness but, even within *The Interpretation of Dreams* itself, returns to it repeatedly. Why does Freud attach such special significance to this particular dream? Linked to the analysis of this dream is a fundamental discovery—an insight the experience of which entailed for Freud a painful re-evaluation of the very foundations of psychoanalysis: the dream is a fulfillment of a wish. Freud writes about this to Fliess—writing in hints rather than openly. Yet, from this letter, it is already evident that Freud is living in a stifling atmosphere. In the first phase of the dream, Freud reproaches Irma for her inattention to what he wishes to tell her. And what he attempts to impress upon her—with the intensity of passionate investigative zeal—is that the syringe was dirty. But then the dream reaches its climax, and the dynamic shifts. Freud is no longer present—gone is the one capable of uttering the “I.” This is the very moment I have termed the “entrance of the jester,” for the subjects to whom Freud appeals play a distinctly comic role. Freud appeals to the consensus of his peers—his senior colleagues. And this constitutes the decisive moment. Here, a spectral decomposition of the function of the “I” takes place; before the very eyes of these “I”s, a multitude emerges.
All of this, in essence, looks like sheer nonsense. Or rather, it *would* be nonsense if a subject named Freud—alone, entirely on his own, while analyzing his own dream—were to attempt, much like a master of the occult sciences, to discover within it secret clues pointing to the solution of the riddle of the subject and of the world at large. Yet he is by no means alone. In imparting to us the solution to this Luciferian mystery, Freud is not communing solely with his own dream. And just as a dream recounted during the course of an analysis is addressed to the analyst, so too, in this particular dream, does Freud address himself to all of us. In the course of this speech directed toward us, Freud conveys something that is simultaneously himself and no longer himself: “I am merely a representative of that vast, indeterminate movement known as the search for truth—a movement in which I vanish without a trace. Now I am nothing. My ambitions were greater than I.” And in this admission by Freud, Lacan no longer perceives any comic aspect: at the very moment when the cacophony of voices from numerous egos reaches its zenith, the specific object that interests Freud amidst these squabbles is his own guilt—in this instance, his guilt toward Irma. Yet when the object (the ego) is, so to speak, shattered, that guilt is abolished alongside the destruction of the ego. The syringe was, of course, dirty. But precisely because I desired this outcome too intensely—because I was personally involved in the affair, because I sought to cast myself in the role of creator and architect—it is precisely for that reason that I am not the creator.
In his reading of the oneiric scenes in Nabokov’s novels, A.P. follows neither Freud’s interpretation of the dream about Irma nor Lacan’s reinterpretation of that same dream. This is understandable enough; after all, the dreams in question are those crafted by Nabokov’s pen. However, when addressing moments involving the spectral decomposition of the “self,” A.P.—following Lacan—identifies three distinct functional aspects: 1. the buffoon-like role of the subjects to whom Freud appeals, subjects who have lost their own sense of “self”; 2. the subject’s nullification of the sense of guilt that typically accompanies the splitting of the “self”; and 3. the fundamental psychoanalytic concept of transference—a concept central to the act of reading—which, according to Freud, entails the displacement of unconscious representations from one object onto another, as well as their transposition from the distant past into the present. The first passage I have selected illustrates all three of these functional aspects. It concerns a dream experienced by Hugh Person—the man who strangled his wife. I quote A.P.: “Person dreams of a fire from which he rescues a ‘chance dream-companion’—his former mistress, Julia (or, in Person’s case, merely a chance mistress). In this act of rescue, he perceives himself symbolically as Shakespeare’s Romeo. However, this oneiric pattern is complicated by the fact that the rescue of this ‘chance companion’ within the dream is, in reality, nothing other than the compulsive repetition of a fire motif—a motif originally glimpsed by Armanda on a television screen and subsequently transposed by her into a narrative script featuring a ‘real-life’ plot.”
The first passage I have selected illustrates all three of these roles. It concerns a dream experienced by Hugh Person—the man who strangled his wife. I quote A.P.: “Person dreams of a fire from which he rescues a ‘chance dream-companion’—his former mistress, Julia (or, in Person’s case, a *chance* mistress). In this act of rescue, he perceives himself symbolically as Shakespeare’s Romeo. However, this oneiric pattern is complicated by the fact that the rescue of this ‘chance companion’ within the dream is, in reality, nothing other than the compulsive repetition of the ‘fire’ motif—a motif glimpsed by Armanda on a television screen and subsequently transposed by her into a script featuring a real-life plot.”
What follows is a “buffoonish” narrative describing Armanda’s adventures: “This fantasy, initiated by Armanda, involves her nimble escape from danger: she descends the facades of hotels, leaps across cornices, and eventually lands safely, wrapped in a stranger’s blanket. Her feat reveals her acrobatic prowess as a ‘bipedal athlete.’ Hugh, on the other hand, reenacts her scenario in a dream, playing the role of the rescuer—yet with characteristic clumsiness, projecting his own athletic ineptitude onto Julia: ‘…he managed to clutch Julia and would have saved her from certain death, had she not—in her suicidal urge to flee the fire—slipped from the cornice, dragging him down into the abyss with her. What a fall! <…> How fortunate that Mr. Romeo is still holding, twisting, and tearing those cartilages and ligaments, X-rayed under the gaze of firemen and mountain guides. What a flight! Superman bears a young soul in his arms. The impact with the ground was far less shattering than he had expected. It is a kind of unbridled apotheosis. <…> For a moment, he could not fathom what his wife was doing down here, lying prone beside him, her hair disheveled as if after a flight. Then he stared at his broken fingernails.The impact with the ground was far less shattering than he had expected. It was a kind of unbridled apotheosis. <…> For a moment, he could not fathom what his wife—lying prone beside him, her hair disheveled as if after a flight—was doing down here. Then he stared at his broken fingernails” [Nabokov, 1972, p. 81. Cit. from A.P., 2026. p.299–230].
As we can see, Transparent Things constructs a complex oneirotype, involving an intertwining of sleep and wakefulness. As his biographer attests, P.D. Ouspensky envisioned something similar: “He began studying dreams, recording them upon waking. Yet this method proved insufficient. Dreams shifted in the very process of being recorded, compelling Ouspensky to devise a new method: he cultivated the ability to retain consciousness while falling asleep. Initially, he practiced this at night, but he soon discovered—unsurprisingly—that his state of semi-sleep interfered with his actual slumber. <…> In this state of semi-sleep, Ouspensky ‘slept and did not sleep at one and the same time,’ and his initial impression of this hypnagogic state was one of wonder and joy. However, this sensation soon gave way to a strange sense of fear and an anxiety that he might lose himself within it. At once alluring and unnerving, this state of semi-sleep offered him both immense possibilities and immense peril” [Rakhman, 2011, p. 31. Cit. from A.P., 2026, p. 300].
But wherein, exactly, lay the danger? Of course, had Nabokov read about Uspensky’s dream experiment, he might have brought to bear upon it his own experience—an experience that encompassed two things: tennis expertise (Nabokov taught tennis in Berlin) and a struggle with insomnia: “The method he discovered consisted of the imaginary repetition—with metronomic precision—of the consecutive bodily movements of a sporting game. The only game he had mastered in childhood, and had not forgotten at forty, was tennis. Not only did he play tolerably well, with a certain easy stylishness <…> but he had invented a shot whose <…> chief use had been as a method of putting himself to sleep. As soon as he found the right place for his cheek on the cool pillow, the familiar thrill would begin to pulse down his arm, and he’d begin slamming his way through one game after another. There were additional trimmings: sleepy interviews with reporters (‘Cut it hard and yet keep it intact’) or lifting the Davis Cup, brimming with poppy nectar, in a haze of triumph”[Nabokov, 1972, pp. 56–57. ].
How, then, is the plot resolution of *Transparent Things*—dictated by the oneiroscope—derived? Salvation in a dream is the equivalent of murder in the realm of reality. And at the intersection of dream and reality, Hugh Person’s role as both murderer and pseudo-murderer takes shape. The semantic bifurcation of a single event—traced in both dream and waking life—stands in contrast to Tolstoy’s solution. Tolstoy’s “oneirotype” serves as the final touch for understanding the psychology of the murderer in the real world. Person’s dream constitutes the concluding stroke of the plot. [Pekurovskaya 2026, pp. 299–301].
The second episode—concerning Luzhin’s dream prior to his chess match against his opponent, Turati—draws upon a discovery made by Freud, which Lacan elaborates upon in an address delivered at the Congress of Romance-Language Psychoanalysts in 1951. He observes that transference, while serving as a powerful analytical tool, can nonetheless trigger resistance in the client and end in fiasco—a reality Freud himself encountered firsthand in the “Case of Dora.” In response to this inherent risk, Lacan proposed a revised conception of transference during his seminars of 1960–61. Under this model, transference is to be regulated not by the analysand, but by the analyst, who occupies the vacant position of the Desire of the Other. The analyst assumes a pivotal role in provoking symbolic transference, inasmuch as he embodies the function of the one who knows. It is most likely here that Lacan’s celebrated formula—”Transference is time”—was born; specifically, *logical* time. This concept pertains, among other things, to the precise moment at which a session is brought to a close—a conclusion that often comes as a surprise to the patient. At this juncture—which serves to interrupt the flow of transference—the subject is prompted to re-evaluate what has been spoken, while the psychoanalyst effectively “passes judgment” upon the unconscious.
I cite a relevant passage from A.P.’s book: “Freud’s notion regarding the censorship of unpleasant life events during dreams seems not to have even touched Nabokov, who regarded dreams as ‘mental torment—nullifying (killing) cerebral activity, and nullifying sounds and colors; that is, everything that life itself embodied.’ In dreams—writing of his own dreams—beloved but deceased individuals ‘always appear silent, troubled, strangely subdued, and utterly unlike themselves.’ And if anything does indeed nullify death, it is the waking mind: ‘Certainly not then—not in a dream—but in waking life, in moments of intense joy and achievement, upon the highest terrace of consciousness, does mortality find the opportunity to peer beyond its own confines—from the masthead, from the past, and from the castle tower. And although nothing distinct is visible through the mist, there remains a certain blissful sensation that one is gazing in the right direction’” [Wood, 1994, p. 87. Cit. from A.P., p. 42–43].
Citing this passage, Wood observes: “Nabokov’s writings offer the opposite of what his bold assertion claims. The ‘one’ who remains awake in his work seems quite detached from the experience he [this ‘one’—A.P.] evokes—in fact, far more detached than the ‘I’ who beheld the silent and restless dead man in his dreams.” Wood quotes further: “I recognize them without the slightest surprise in a setting they never visited during their earthly existence—in the home of some friend of mine whom they never knew. They sit apart, scowling at the floor, as if death were a dark stain, a shameful family secret” [Wood, 1994, p. 87. Cit. from A.P., 2026, 43]. Wood’s skepticism regarding Nabokov’s “assertions” may be explained by the latter’s overt disdain for Freudian theory. Wood likely could not believe that one could dismiss Freud based on mere scraps of his thought gleaned from popular sources. Yet, even while spurning Freud, Nabokov nonetheless keeps his finger on the pulse of the narrative, structuring Luzhin’s dreams on the model of a “dream within a dream”—much as Gogol or, say, Dostoevsky did—thereby equating the dream state with a “higher terrace of consciousness.”
Let us return to Nabokov’s text. The wife enters, holding a box of chocolates, as he dozes over his dinner. A conversation ensues between them—one that is interrupted by a hallucination of Luzhin. But where does this conversation take place: in waking reality or in a dream? “She held out the box of chocolates to him, and suddenly… ‘Luzhin,’ she cried out, ‘Luzhin, wake up! What is the matter with you? … What kind of habit is this—putting a chair in the middle of the room and sitting down? If you don’t pull yourself together right this instant, I’m leaving.’ Luzhin obediently pulled himself together, shaking his head and shoulders; then he moved over to the couch, and a happiness—still not quite settled, not quite certain—began to glimmer in his eyes. … ‘I read in the paper today that you are expected to win the tournament—that you are playing quite exceptionally this time.’ ‘But there is Turati,’ said Luzhin, raising a finger. ‘I feel nauseous,’ he added sadly. ‘Then no chocolates,’ she said quickly, tucking the square box back under her arm. ‘Luzhin, I’m going to call a doctor for you. You’ll simply die if this goes on.’ ‘No, no,’ he said drowsily. ‘It’s passed already. No need for a doctor.’ … ‘But why did you feel nauseous? Did you eat something bad?’ ‘It’s passed, completely,’ Luzhin drawled, resting his head against her shoulder. … And a minute later she noticed that he had fallen asleep… he was now half-reclining on the couch, hunched over uncomfortably, and his head, resting on the pillow, looked like wax. For a moment she was seized by terror—had he died suddenly?—and she even reached out to touch his hand, which was soft and warm.”[Nabokov, 1999, 383–384. Cit. from A.P., 2026, p. 43–44].
The narrative solution is such that, at a certain moment, Luzhin “realized that he had simply returned to a recent dream, where he sees precisely what had transpired just a minute earlier in waking reality: “What he saw in his dream was that he was sitting in a strange manner—right in the middle of the room—when suddenly, with that absurd and blissful abruptness peculiar to dreams, his fiancée entered, holding out a box tied with a red ribbon. <…> He wanted to embrace her, but suddenly he felt nauseous and dizzy; meanwhile, his fiancée was recounting how extraordinary the things being written about him in the newspapers were—yet how her mother still did not want them to get married. Presumably, there was much, much more to it, but his memory could not keep pace with the images as they drifted away. <…> After dinner, he had to sit down to play, and on that day, the world of chess imagery exerted a terrible power. He played without pause for four hours—and won.” [Nabokov, 1999, 384–385. Cit from A.P., 2026, p. 44]
Thus, events from his “true chess life” find their way into his dreams—dreams during which Luzhin acquires the ability to be “clearly awake.” “All the while, however—at times faintly, at others sharply—shadows of his true chess life kept surfacing within this dream; and finally, it burst forth, and now it was simply night in the hotel: chess thoughts, insomnia, and reflections on a sharp defense he had devised against Turati’s opening. He was clearly awake; his mind—purged of all extraneous clutter—was working with perfect clarity, having realized that everything but chess was merely an enchanting dream, wherein the image of a lovely, bright-eyed young lady with bare arms languished and dissolved like the golden smoke of the moon. The rays of his consciousness—which had once scattered as they groped their way through the not-quite-comprehensible world surrounding him, thereby losing half their strength—now grew firm and focused, as that world dissolved into a mirage, with no longer any need to concern himself with it.” [Nabokov, 1999, 385–386. Cit. from A.P., p. 45]. And during this state of wakefulness, the sensation of control—and, by extension, of power—that Luzhin had experienced in childhood is reawakened: “Symmetrical, distinct, and rich in adventure was this true life—this chess life; and with pride, Luzhin noted how effortlessly he held dominion over it, how everything within it obeyed his will and submitted meekly to his designs” [Nabokov, 1999, p. 386. Cit. from A.P., 2026, p. 45]. Such is the magnetism of the chessboard, which has by now become a topos—a stage upon which all of life’s problems are played out.
Conclusion: The forced transference announced in the title of this review confirms its dual function. On the one hand, this transference affects the very scene of reading: Lacan, Mazin, and A.P. find themselves engaged in the same dialogue, wherein the question of Nabokov can no longer be reduced to biography, poetics, or the history of ideas in isolation. On the other hand, the very object of analysis is itself subject to this transference: where Nabokov the polemicist insists upon the sovereignty of his “I,” Nabokov the artist repeatedly creates texts in which the subject bifurcates, shifts, reflects itself, eludes its own grasp, and falls under the gaze of the Other. In this sense, A.P.’s book demonstrates just how deeply Nabokov’s prose already thinks in forms that Lacanian psychoanalysis has succeeded in describing with philosophical precision.
About the Author
Asya Pekurovskaya graduated from Leningrad State University, completed her doctoral studies in literature at Stanford University (USA) and a postdoctoral program in philosophy at the University of Virginia (USA).
She says: I belong to a generation of writers who write ceaselessly. And this could be held against me. I could also be accused of not writing concisely. To this I could respond as follows: the craft of writing is a subtle matter. Thoughts seek to be recorded in various ways, and this can result in their ornamental quality. Yet this ornament serves—or ought to serve—not as mere decoration, but rather as a means of resisting its deceptive clarity. For a thought we take to be concise often conceals layers of hidden meaning; and the keener the reader’s mind, the more ready it is to resist the allure of the concise thought.
