"If We Put Our Heads between Our Legs": An Introduction to the Theme 'Vladimir Nabokov and Arthur Schopenhauer'. (original) (raw)

Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the most influential thinkers in Russian culture during the formative years of Nabokov's life. There is direct evidence that Nabokov read the German philosopher, and their juxtaposition allows us to reconstruct some of the systematic dimensions of Nabokov's conceptual world. Moreover, Schopenhauer provides the language of Nabokov's philosophical thinking. While a philosopher usually operates by the means of abstract notions, a novelist's artistic conceptions are expressed most adequately through constellations of motifs. Schopenhauer was a rare philosopher who developed his reasoning by playing out a range of pivotal motifs. By way of introduction to the theme, the article shows the reverberation of four motifs, the cornerstones of Schopenhauer's philosophy (oak, camera obscura, world as a puppet show, and one alive among puppets), in Nabokov's writings. Reading Nabokov and Schopenhauer vis-à-vis each other allows us to reveal the existential problems at the root of their thinking. Nabokov's thought which resembles, mutatis mutandis, that of more abstract philosophies. If the philosopher reasons by means of abstract notions, the novelist's artistic conceptions are expressed most adequately through constellations of motifs. Such is the premise of our approach, allowing us to speak of Nabokov's philosophy, facilitated by the fact that Schopenhauer's own thinking was often not far removed from the artistic. Our claim is not self-evident, for Nabokov made a number of disclaimers to keep this side of his writing cloaked. He stated: "I detest symbols and allegories (which is due partly to my old feud with Freudian voodooism and partly to my loathing of generalizations devised by literary mythists and sociologists" (Lolita 314). He brandished his disdain for "either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas," exemplified for him by Balzac, Gorky, Thomas Mann, Sartre (Lolita 315), and other celebrated names. Nabokov objected to using fiction as illustration or exposition of ready-made ideas. He was not, however, opposed to the philosophical thought that creates ideas. Nabokov's writing contains many mentions of philosophers and their ideas, and allusions to them are even more numerous. Even the thinker who replaced God with Reason, G.-W. Hegel, is referred to approvingly in The Gift. The names of philosophers from Thales to Sartre recur time and time again in Nabokov's writings. Philosophy-not as abstract scheme imposed on the world but rather as exposing, questioning, and interrogating the predicaments of human existence-is not alien to Nabokov. Let us also remember that Nabokov devoted two books to philosophers and their respective philosophies: the protagonist of The Gift, Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, composes a whimsical biography of the nineteenth-century Russian thinker N. G. Chernyshevsky and inserts it into his novel. The English novel Bend Sinister features the fictional existential philosopher Adam Krug. Nabokov debunks the former and empathizes with the latter. The means he uses are noteworthy: he analyzes his characters' philosophies and shows that their lives illustrate their thinking. This archetypal mode of philosophizing is, perhaps, the true model for a philosophical novel. In Invitation to a Beheading and The Gift lurk the shade of the fictional philosopher Delaland, and he is admiringly quoted.