Nabokov and Nietzsche: Problems and Perspectives by Michael Rodgers (review)

In his book on Nabokov and Nietzsche, Michael Rogers embarked on an ambitious and worthwhile project of mapping out what he calls "a broader relationship between Nietzsche and Nabokov."

In doing so, he went beyond the vexed question of possible influence and, in addition to critical analyses of specific references and allusions to Nietzsche and his ideas, focused on devising a broader interpretive paradigm for a more comprehensive and productive reading of Nabokov through a Nietzschean lens. The framework of Nietzsche's thought meant to provide a more balanced reading of Nabokov's oeuvre and held a promise of reconciling a number of conflicting trends and hermeneutic problems in Nabokov studies, such as morality v. amorality, the individual v. the social, otherworldly v. this-worldly, imagination v. reality, interpretive ambiguity v. definitive solutions to narrative puzzles. This author actively engaged with many Nabokovian scholars, thought through his overall argument, and soundly structured his project into six chapters and three parts (two chapters in each).

Part One explores Nabokov's direct involvement with Nietzsche's key philosophical notions–eternal recurrence in Pnin, Mary, and The Defense (Chapter 1) and the will to power in Recruiting and The Vane Sisters (Chapter 2). Part Two moves away from direct textual mentions and allusions and develops Nietzschean readings of Lolita (Chapters 4) and Pale Fire (Chapter 5). Part Three goes beyond Nietzsche, that is to say, it investigates Nabokov's deviations from Nietzsche's ideas and principles meaningful only if seen against the background of their implicit similarities. Rogers considers Nabokov's engagement with and refashioning of Nietzsche's conception of the Übermensch on the material of Despair and Ultima Thule (Chapter 5) and Nabokov's otherworld against Nietzsche's emphatic this-worldliness in The Gift. The Introduction aptly prepares the reader for what lies ahead, and the Conclusion revisits and sums up the main steps in the overall argument. The book is written with lucidity and conviction, and the reader never feels abandoned at any turn of its complex argument.

However, as an ambitious interdisciplinary project, Roger's book on Nabokov and Nietzsche suffers from an expected deficiency–an unequal level of expertise in philosophy and literary studies. The author's command of the philosophical material lags behind his facility with Nabokov's oeuvre and its scholarship, which throws the project out of balance with major and minor consequences. Overall, the book addresses the readers knowledgeable of and interested in Nabokov and treats Nietzsche's philosophical legacy with insufficient depth.

Nietzsche is a particularly difficult philosopher. His aphoristic and ostensibly haphazard style with paradoxical ebbs and flows of ideas prevents a casual reader from inferring a unified, solid–but multifaceted and usually multi-step–argument. Much like Nabokov, Nietzsche expects his readers to be lost in his labyrinthine thought before they reemerge by their own intellectual effort and will. Moreover, it is hardly possible to understand Nietzsche without Schopenhauer and give full credit to both without Kant, particularly his third Critique, Critique of Judgement. The lack of this philosophical background in Roger's book results in one egregious misunderstanding concerning Nietzsche's celebrated "thought of thoughts," as Heidegger dubbed it, the eternal recurrence of the same (Vol. II 70).¹

Notwithstanding the substantial scholarly literature on it, Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence has taken a life of its own over the past one hundred plus years and entered the arts and folklore as an independent phenomenon of culture comparable with Nabokov's Lolita. Both, of course, do little justice to their respective originals. It appears that Rogers mistook Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence of the same" for déjà vu phenomena, involuntary memory, or cyclical, circular, and spiral forms of time. This confusion largely invalidates the Nietzschean side of his argument in Chapter 1.

Nietzsche's apophatic manner of exposition encourages the confusion: instead of laying out his concept, he begins its discussion in Zarathustra with what it is not, that is, with Schopenhauer's version of eternal recurrence, "constant recurrence...