The Petersburg Tradition: Essays in Honor of Nina Perlina

Dostoevskian Problems in Nabokov's Poetics

John Bartle, Michael C. Finke, and Vadim Liapunov, eds. From Petersburg to Bloomington: Essays in Honor of Nina Perlina. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2012, 137–54. (Indiana Slavic Studies, 18.) Dostoevskian Problems in Nabokov’s Poetics*   Stephen H. Blackwell       Nabokov’s   dismissals   of   Dostoevsky   are   nearly   as   famous   as   his   denunciations   of   Freud.   Over   the   years,   critics   have   demonstrated   various  ways  that  Nabokov  engages,  challenges,  or  continues  certain   Dostoevskian  lines  of  thought  or  composition.1  Although  he  admitted   to  admiring  only  The  Double  and  one  moist,  round  detail  from  Brothers   Karamazov,  it  is  clear  that  he  found  a  great  deal  in  Dostoevsky’s  work   that  was  worthy  of  artistic  re-­‐‑creation.2  Freed  of  ideological  content  (as                                                                                                                   A   portion   of   this   article   appeared   in   slightly   different   form   in   Stephen   H.   Blackwell,   “Nabokov’s   (Dostoevskian?)   Loopholes,”   in   Revising   Nabokov   Revising:   The   Proceedings   of   the   International   Nabokov   Conference   in   Kyoto,   ed.   Mitsuyoshi  Numano  and  Tadashi  Wakashima  (Kyoto:  The  Nabokov  Society   of  Japan,  2010),  175–80.   1  Julian  W.  Connolly,  “Nabokov’s  (Re)Visions  of  Dostoevsky,”  in  Nabokov  and   His  Fiction:  New  Perspectives,  ed.  Connolly  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  University   Press,  1999),  141–57;  Katherine  Tiernan  O’Connor,  “Rereading  Lolita,  Recon-­‐‑ sidering  Nabokov’s  Relationship  with  Dostoevskij,”  Slavic  and  East  European   Journal  33:  1  (Spring  1989):  64–77;  Melvin  Seiden,  “Nabokov  and  Dostoevsky,”   Contemporary  Literature  13:  4  (Autumn  1972):  423–44;  L.  N.  Tselkova,  “Roman   Nabokova  ‘Lolita’  i  ‘ispoved’’  Stavrogina,”  Nabokovskii  vestnik  1  (1998):  125– 34;  Sergei  Davydov,  “Dostoevsky  and  Nabokov:  The  Morality  of  Structure  in   Crime  and  Punishment  and  Despair,”  Dostoevsky  Studies  3  (1982):  158–70;  Pekka   Tammi,  “Invitation  to  a  Decoding:  Dostoevskij  as  Subtext  in  Nabokov’s  Pri-­‐‑ glašenie   na   kazn’,”   Scando-­‐‑Slavica   32:   1   (1986):   51–72;   and   N.   A.   Fateeva,   in   “Dostoevskii  i  Nabokov:  O  dialogichnosti  i  intertekstual’nosti  ‘Otchaianiia’”   Russian  Literature  51  (2002):  31–48.  Fateeva  explores  the  “despair”  theme  and   related   linguistic   elements   as   a   component   of   heteroglossia   in   Nabokov’s   Despair.   2  For   a   playful   inversion   of   the   question   of   Dostoevsky’s   significance   for   Nabokov,   see   Eric   Naiman,   “What   If   Nabokov   Had   Written   ‘Dvoinik’?   Reading  Literature  Preposterously,”  The  Russian  Review  64:  4  (2005):  575–89.   Naiman   also   discusses   affinities   with   Bakhtin’s   readings   of   Dostoevsky’s   novella,  especially  in  Avtor  i  geroi  (587–89).   138 Stephen H. Blackwell The  Double  was  by  chronological  definition),  Dostoevsky’s  novels  and   stories  presented  an  extraordinary  first  step  in  the  examination  of  the   boundaries   and   frailties   of   human   mental   life—themes   frequently   at   the  center  of  Nabokov’s  artistic  interest.     It  is  not  really  necessary  to  claim  that  Nabokov’s  frequent  echoes  of   Dostoevsky—in   The   Eye,   Despair,   The   Gift,   The   Real   Life   of   Sebastian   Knight,  Lolita,  and  Pnin—somehow  undermine  his  negative  appraisals   of  Dostoevsky  the  artist;  at  the  same  time,  it  is  unwise  to  take  his  dis-­‐‑ missals   at   face   value.   Julian   Connolly   and   Alexander   Dolinin   have   each   explored   the   evolving   nature   of   Nabokov’s   attitude   toward   his   predecessor,   showing   how   the   earlier   Nabokov   was   more   likely   to   echo  some  aspects  of  Dostoevsky  affirmingly,  while  in  later  works  and   especially   in   interviews,   he   was   apt   to   disparage   the   author   whose   stature  in  the  West  resembled  hero  worship.3  In  this  essay,  I  would  like   to  examine  a  significant  pattern  of  features  in  Nabokov’s  Dostoevskian   moments—features  that  give  a  sense  of  what  was  important  for  him  in   the  earlier  writer’s  art,  a  common  thread  that  also  links  many  of  Na-­‐‑ bokov’s  own  works.     One  tool  I  will  use  to  tease  out  this  thread  will  be  Mikhail  Bakhtin’s   thought  on  Dostoevsky.  Whether  or  not  Nabokov  read  Problems  of  Dos-­‐‑ toevsky’s  Creative  Work,  which  appeared  in  1929  and  was  reviewed  by   one  of  Nabokov’s  early  admirers,  Pyotr  Bitsilli,4  Bakhtin’s  focal  points                                                                                                                   3  See  Connolly,  “Nabokov’s  (Re)Visions”;  and  Alexander  Dolinin,  “Caning  of   Modernist  Profaners:  Parody  in  Despair,”  Cycnos  12:  2  (1995):  43–54;  expanded   version   at   http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/doli1.htm.;   a   somewhat   different   version  in  Russian:  Aleksandr  A.  Dolinin,  “Nabokov,  Dostoevskii,  i  dostoev-­‐‑ shchina,”  in  Staroe  literaturnoe  obozrenie  1  (277)  (2001),  http://magazines.russ.ru/slo/ 2001/1/dol.html  (accessed  15  January  2009).  In  his  article  Dolinin  gives  a  concise   and  valuable  summary  of  the  intellectual  roots  of  Nabokov’s  very  public  de-­‐‑ nunciations  of  Dostoevsky,  which  he  lays  largely  at  the  feet  of  Existentialism’s   “canonization”  of  Dostoevsky  as  the  “prophet  of  our  fate”  and  the  consequent   identification  of  all  Russian  literature  with  Dostoevskian  art.  Dolinin  also...