tutorial, commentary, plot, and study resources

Despair was written in 1932 when Vladimir Nabokov was living in exile in Berlin and it was first serialized as Otchayanie in the émigré review Sovremennye Zapiski in Paris. It was then released in single volume book form by the publishing house Petropolis in Berlin in 1936. The following year Nabokov made a translation into English (his third language) which was then published by John Lane in London in 1937.

Nabokov re-translated the novel in 1965 as part of the post-Lolita refurbishment of his earlier works that had been written in Russian and were largely unknown to readers in the English-speaking world. In an author’s foreword he admits that “I have done more than revamp my thirty-year-old translation” – and it is certainly true that the current text bears a number of the hallmarks of Nabokov’s mannered later prose style.

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Despair – critical commentary

The unreliable narrator

This is one of Nabokov’s many fictions in which a first person narrator is seriously deranged or neurotic almost to the point of madness. An early example is the self-obsessed Smurov in The Eye (1930); the most famous is Humbert Humbert, the confessional paedophile narrator of Lolita (1955), and in 1962 Charles Kinbote the fictional editor of Pale Fire turns his madness into a work of literary interpretation. All of these characters, despite their self-regard and even their crimes, remain grotesquely fascinating because of the entertaining prose style Nabokov gives them by which to transmit their stories.

Hermann is unreliable in the sense that his narrative is a novel-length study in self-justification. He has nursed the illusion of having met his own double, has murdered him both to collect on the insurance and as he believes, a creative work of artistry – the perfect crime. Hermann is vain, boastful, and even admits to being a liar; he misinterprets events; he is blind to his wife’s adultery, and he thinks himself superior to everyone else in the novel.

Nabokov’s literary skill is in creating a first person narrator through whose eyes all available information is relayed to the reader – who is nevertheless able to discern the ‘truth’ lying behind the events and opinions in the narrator’s account. Nabokov offers a playful and complex game of literary hide-and-seek to the reader, planting clues in his text for the reader to enjoy and decipher.

He always plays fair by the rules of narrative logic and gives readers a chance to work out the subtlest of clues. For instance Hermann is caught out in his crime because he leaves Felix’s walking stick (which also bears his name) in the car he has abandoned in the countryside – but both the stick and its signature have been mentioned previously, planted deep within the narrative for the attentive (or eagle-eyed) reader to spot.

Narrative mode

Even though it is not easy to see how much the original Russian version was ‘improved’ during its later translation, the narrative is clearly very sophisticated. Technically, Herman is delivering the story after its events have concluded. He has read newspaper reports of his crime and decides to compose his own account of what happened.

But throughout the novel Nabokov very skilfully combines a timescale that includes the narrative present, with Hermann’s reflections on his own account of events, plus flashes forward in time. Yet in order to retain the reader’s interest, Nabokov must not give away too much of the story which is yet to come – so Hermann’s ‘premonitions’ are masked as psychological curios or mere eccentricities. But they are actual pointers to the fact that he knows what will happen because he is giving his account in retrospect.

For example, early in the novel, when Hermann visits the countryside allotment with Lydia and Ardalion (Chapter Two) he feels that the locale is ‘familiar’. It is familiar to him, because it is where he has just killed Felix before starting to write his narrative. .

Conversational style

Nabokov exploits the full range of possibilities offered by a first person narrative mode and the quasi-conversational manner that he made famous. As the narrator, Hermann addresses the reader, he thinks aloud, interrupts himself, ( ‘Well, as I was saying’) and comments on the process of composition, often trailing off onto irrelevant topics:

‘but I am digressing, digressing—maybe I want to digress … never mind, let us go on, where was I?’

Built in to the narrative is a meta-critique of fictional techniques and novel clichés – many of which are clearly self-referential:

‘How shall we begin this chapter? I offer several variations to choose from. Number one (readily adopted in novels where the narrative is conducted in the first person by the real or substitute author):

He also criticises alternative conventions of literary presentation – including the epistolary novel:

‘it would be possible now to adopt an epistolic form of narration. A time-honored form with great achievements in the past. From Ex to Why — “Dear Why” — and above you are sure to find the date … The reader soon ceases to pay any attention whatever to the dates’

With almost predictable irony, Hermann himself abandons his sequence of chapters, and adopts a popular literary mode — “Alas, my tale degenerates into a diary … the lowest form of literature” — complete with dated entries, the last of which is April 1st.

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Despair – study resources

Despair – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Despair – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Otchayanie – Russian original – Amazon UK

Otchayanie – Russian original – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov Amazon UK

Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years – Biography: Vol 1

Vladimir Nabokov: American Years – Biography: Vol 2

Zembla – the official Nabokov web site

The Paris Review – Interview with Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov’s first English editions – Bob Nelson’s collection

Vladimir Nabokov at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Vladimir Nabokov at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study materials

Despair was also made into a film in 1978 by the German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It features Dirk Bogard in his last starring role as Hermann, and has a screenplay written by Tom Stoppard.

Despair – film on DVD – Amazon UK

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Despair – principal characters

Hermann	a Russian of German descent living in Berlin (35)
Lydia	his scatterbrained wife (30)
Felix Wohlfahrt	a vagrant
Ardalion	Lydia’s cousin, a would-be painter
Orlovious	a bachelor friend of Hermann

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Despair – chapter summaries

Chapter One   Herman is in Prague on chocolate factory business. Strolling on a local hill, he comes across Felix the tramp. Hermann is convinced he is his double.

Chapter Two   Hermann is a communist sympathiser, whilst Lydia is not. He starts growing a beard and avoids mirrors. He gives a self-centred account of Lydia and her scatter-brained attitudes , and then describes his experience of physical disassociation. Herman and Lydia visit an allotment her cousin Ardalion has bought in the countryside.

Chapter Three   Herman reflects on his childhood passion for writing, which he thinks of as ‘lying’. He introduces the character Orlovius, and mentions problems in the chocolate business. Meanwhile, he makes further visits to Ardalion’s countryside retreat.

Chapter Four   Herman writes to Felix with an offer of work and arranges to meet him. Lydia spends a lot of time with her wastrel cousin Ardalion. Herman visits the town where he is to meet Felix. Elements of the town remind him of other places he has visited.

Chapter Five   Herman meets Felix and pretends to be a film actor, then spins him a yarn about wanting an understudy. Felix doesn’t believe him and refuses the offer. Herman takes him back to his hotel room for the night and explains the real plan. He wants him as a visual alibi whilst he does something illegal. In the early morning, Herman leaves Felix asleep and goes back home.

Chapter Six   It is clear to the reader (but not to Hermann) that Lydia is having an affair with her obnoxious cousin Ardalion. Someone calls at the house asking for Hermann, who has him sent away, thinking it is Felix. But it turns out to be a friend of Ardalion, and Hermann suddenly wonders if Felix will write to him.

Chapter Seven   Hermann goes to the post office and collects letters left poste restante from Felix. They complain then menace him with vague threats of blackmail. He writes to Felix with instructions then tries to bribe Ardalion to go to Italy.

Chapter Eight   Ardalion borrows money and is much delayed in his departure for Italy. Hermann invents a story of discovering a long-lost brother for Lydia. He has a scheme of planting his own identity on Felix, killing him, then collecting the insurance money. He rehearses Lydia’s part in the plot, even though she is very reluctant to participate.

Chapter Nine   Hermann reflects on his literary enterprise. He has plans to send his manuscript to a famous Russian émigré writer. He drives into the countryside, where he meets Felix. He shaves Felix, exchanges their clothes, and then shoots him. He then escapes by train.

Chapter Ten   Hermann supplies his narrative with an ending in which all his plans are successful – but then returns to the truth. He goes to a quiet French hotel near the Spanish border. When the murder is reported in newspapers he goes into complete denial and is angry that they make no mention of the similarity of victim and murderer. He decides to write his own version of events.

Chapter Eleven   Hermann buys another newspaper and reads that his car has been discovered. He re-reads his manuscript and realises that Felix’s walking stick (which bears his name) was in the car. He picks up a pre-arranged letter from Lydia, but it turns out to be an offensive rebuke from Ardalion. He moves to rooms in a little village, but is immediately recognised, detected, and his account ends whilst he is awaiting arrest.

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Vladimir Nabokov – web links

Vladimir Nabokov at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews, tutorials, study guides, videos, web links, and essays on the Complete Short Stories.

Vladimir Nabokov at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, list of major works, bibliography, and web links

Lolita USA
A ‘geographical scrutiny’ of Humbert and Lolita’s journey across America. Essay and photographic study by Dieter E. Zimmer.

Vladimir Nabokov Writings – First Appearance
An illustrated collection of first editions in English. Photographs with bibliographical notes compiled by Bob Nelson

Vladimir Nabokov at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plot, box office, trivia, continuity errors, and quiz.

Zembla
Biography, timeline, photographs, eTexts, sound clips, butterflies, literary criticism, online journal, scholarly essays, and an online annotated version of Ada – housed at Pennsylvania State University Library.

Nabokov Museum
A major collection housed in Nabokov’s old family home (now a museum) in St. Petersburg. – biography, photos, family home, videos in English and Russian.

© Roy Johnson 2016

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The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov held the unique distinction of being one of the most important writers of the twentieth century in two separate languages, Russian and English. This volume offers a concise and informative introduction into the author’s fascinating creative world. Specially commissioned essays by distinguished scholars illuminate numerous facets of the writer’s legacy, from his early contributions as a poet and short-story writer to his dazzling achievements as one of the most original novelists of the twentieth century. Topics receiving fresh coverage include Nabokov’s narrative strategies, the evolution of his world-view, and his relationship to the literary and cultural currents of his day. The volume also contains valuable supplementary material such as a chronology of the writer’s life and a guide to further critical reading.   Buy the book here

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More on Vladimir Nabokov
More on literary studies
Nabokov’s Complete Short Stories

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tutorial, study guide, commentary, web links

Laughter in the Dark (1933) is often regarded as one of the most cruel of Vladimir Nabokov’s novels. He is famous for dealing with challenging subjects and using black comedy in his work. This novel tells the story of a well-intentioned family man with a weakness for young girls who is drawn into a complex web of desire, deceit, and revenge which has disastrous consequences. It is also a story told with all Nabokov’s usual subtle twists and verbal panache. It has become much discussed in recent years because it clearly prefigures the more famous Lolita he wrote more than twenty years later.

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Laughter in the Dark – a note on the text

Laughter in the Dark (1933) is the sixth novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It was first serialised in the Russian language journal Sovremennye Zapiski (Contemporary Annals) in 1932. It was then published in Berlin the following year with the title Camera Obskura in the name of V. Sirin. Nabokov used this nom de plume in his early works to avoid confusion with his father, a writer and politician who was also called Vladimir Nabokov.

It was the first work by Nabokov to appear in English, published in London by John Long in a translation by Winifred Roy. Nabokov disliked this version so much that he made his own translation for its publication in America by Bobbs-Merrill in 1938.

In the Russian original, the protagonist Albert Albinus had the name Bruno Krechmar, and his rival Axel Rex was called Robert Gorn, whilst Margot was called Magda. Nabokov rarely missed an opportunity to ‘improve’ or update his texts.

Following Nabokov’s huge international success with Lolita in 1955, many of his earlier novels were re-translated and re-issued in English. It is possible that Laughter in the Dark was translated again in 1965, since in that year Nabokov renewed his copyright to the title.

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Laughter in the Dark – commentary

Narrative strategies

Nabokov is famous for the inventive and playful manner in which he delivers his stories. Sometimes he teases his readers by planting clues in a game of literary hide and seek, and at others he introduces unusual variations on the conventions of story-telling. Laughter in the Dark begins with two very good examples of this inventiveness.

The first instance is a particularly daring narrative venture: he reveals the plot of his novel in advance. The opening paragraph is presented in mock fairy tale mode:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

That is the plot of Laughter in the Dark summed up in two sentences. As readers we know what is going to happen. The more important issues are how it is going to happen, and how will the tale be told?

The second example of narrative inventiveness comes shortly afterwards, and in terms of story-telling strategy it is the exact opposite. He includes cleverly concealed details which do not become significant until much later in the novel. When Albinus enters the cinema where he meets Margot:

He had come in at the end of a film: a girl was receding among tumbled furniture before a masked man with a gun. There was no interest whatever in watching happenings which he could not understand since he had not yet seen their beginning.

Albinus might well have paid more attention to the film – because what he is witnessing (and what Nabokov is foretelling) is how the novel will end. This is a version of the final scene of the story when Albinus goes to shoot Margot. He is not ‘masked’ but blind – and it is she who ends by shooting him. [For those interested, the technical term for this literary device is ‘prolepsis’.]

In 1932 Nabokov was at an early stage of his development as a novelist and in particular his manipulation of narratives – though he had at that time produced the masterly novella The Eye (1930). This is a story in which a first person narrator both tells lies about himself and commits ‘suicide’ half way through the story he is relating.

Nabokov and paedophilia

Nabokov had been writing about older men yearning for and having sexual encounters with young girls ever since his earliest works. The English novelist Martin Amis (a great Nabokov enthusiast) calls this an ‘embarrassment’ in assessing Nabokov’s achievement as a writer.

In A Nursey Tale (1926) an elderly man strolls through the story with a girl whom the protagonist will choose as his erotic object. She is described as ‘a child [my emphasis] of fourteen or so in a low-cut party dress … mincing at the old poet’s side … her lips were touched up with rouge. She walked swinging her hips very, very slightly’.

In Laughter in the Dark Margot is slightly older, though it should be noted that although Albinus thinks she might be eighteen, her brother Otto confirms that she is in fact sixteen and has been virtually a prostitute up to the point when Albinus meets her.

Moreover, Nabokov later wrote a whole novella based on the same theme, The Enchanter (1939) then found fame with an entire novel devoted to the seduction, abduction, and abuse of an under-age girl in Lolita (1955). He was still including scenes of paedophilia in works as late as Ada or Ardor (1969), Transparent Things (1972), and Look at the Harlequins (1974).

In his posthumous and unfinished The Original of Laura (2009) the girl in question is twelve years old and is pursued lecherously by an ageing roué called (believe it or not) Hubert H. Hubert.

The purpose of pointing to the recurrence of this topic in his work is to emphasise that paedophilia is not an accidental subject in his novels, but a theme deeply rooted in his consciousness. Nabokov tried to sidestep any accusations of impropriety by re-naming his obsession as nympholepsy and frequently attributing its origin to the loss of an ideal love during childhood. His verbal flim-flam might have been an understandable form of self-defense in the middle of the twentieth century, but now in the twenty-first it can be seen for what it is – a loquacious and over-elaborated form of self-justification.

It is interesting that these narratives often end with the death of the paedophile. The unnamed protagonist of The Enchanter dies under the wheels of the passing truck after giving way to his impulse to molest the girl he has abducted. Humbert murders his rival and fellow paedophile Quilty, then dies in prison whilst awaiting trial. The blind Albinus sets out to shoot Margot because of her treacherous deception of him with Axel Rex, but is shot by her instead.

The relationships between Albinus, Margot, and Alex Rex are clearly a precursor to Humbert, Lolita, and Quilty in Lolita. One middle-aged man is obsessed with a young girl, but is being cruelly deceived by her engagement with a fellow paedophile.

In works such as Laughter in the Dark Nabokov was publishing under the moral constraints of the early twentieth century. Those who transgressed society’s norms must be punished. But following the turning point of Lolita, which appeared around the same time as the famous legal controversies surrounding The Naked Lunch (1959), Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1960), and Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964), Nabokov gradually lowered the age of his ‘nymphets’ in his later works until it stabilised around twelve.

This takes the question of aesthetic judgements into very murky waters. Most critics of Nabokov ignore this aspect of his work, concentrating instead on his verbal dexterity, his wit, and the gymnastic stunts he brings to the arrangement of his narratives. But the inescapable fact is that it is a subject he returned to again, again, and again.

The double

Axel Rex and Albert Albinus mirror or ‘double’ each other throughout the novel. Albinus is a wealthy art critic, and Rex is a cartoonist whom he first contacts with a view to their producing animations of classical paintings. Rex buys Margot from the procuress Frau Levandovsky and puts her into an apartment for his own use. When Rex disappears, Albinus does exactly the same thing: his first act is to install Margot in a flat as his sexual plaything.

When Alex reappears later in the story Albinus is quite friendly towards him. The two men socialise with each other, and whilst Margot is deceiving Albinus behind his back, they even go on holiday together. In the end, they are not only sharing Margot’s sexual favours but (thanks to Axel’s unscrupulous venality) Albinus’s money.

In their final scene together both men are in a state of undress. Axel is completely naked and Albinus is wearing a dressing gown. Axel caresses Albinus with a blade of grass he had just been sucking. It is also significant that whenever Albinus fears he is being deceived or when he actually discovers her betrayal, it is Margot who he seeks to kill, not his rival Axel Rex.

What does this tell us about the novel? It is often observed that when two men desire(or share) the same woman, this tells us more about their unconscious attraction to each other than to the woman herself. This might be regarded as accidental or a coincidence – except for the fact that exactly the same senario is acted out in Lolita, written almost a quarter of a century later.

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Laughter in the Dark – study resources

Laughter in the Dark – Penguin – Amazon UK

Laughter in the Dark – Penguin – Amazon US

Lolita – Penguin – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov – Amazon UK

Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years – Biography: Vol 1

Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years – Biography: Vol 2

Zembla – the official Nabokov web site

The Paris Review – Interview with Vladimir Nabokov

Martin Amis – The Problem with Nabokov

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Laughter in the Dark – plot summary

Albert Albinus is a wealthy art critic who has the idea of animating famous paintings, and he seeks someone who might help him technically. He is married to the placid Elizabeth, but has hankerings after young girls, including Margot Peters, an usherette whom he meets in a cinema. Margot dreams of being a film star, but she works as an artists’ model. She is procured by a man called Axel Miller who keeps her in a flat for a month then disappears. She subsequently resorts to prostitution then meets Albinus.

He rapidly becomes obsessed with her. She flirts and torments him, even provocatively visiting his house to check that he is wealthy. Albinus sets Margot up in a flat. When she writes to tell him the address, his wife Elizabeth intercepts the letter then leaves home with their daughter. Albinus moves in with Margot, who is menaced by her thuggish brother Otto with demands for money.

Albinus takes Margot to the Adriatric on holiday, but when they return to Berlin she objects to being hidden from public view. They move into his old apartment where he tries to disguise the fact that they are living together. He finds her a part in a low-budget film which he finances. To alleviate her boredom they throw a party – at which another guest is Axel Rex (previously Axel Miller). Margot regards him as her first true love – but she demands that Albinus seek a divorce.

The cruel and cynical Rex is down on his luck. He befriends Albinus as a ruse to regain Margot, who at first rejects Axel’s advances because he has no money. Albinus’s daughter contracts pneumonia and when she is dying Margot tries to prevent Albinus going to see her. Rex takes advantage of his absence to seduce Margot.

After a year Albinus resolves to return to his former life – but fails to do so. At a private showing of the film Margot is revealed as hopelessly incompetent. Albinus takes her on a motoring holiday as a compensation, together with Axel, who is pretending to be a homosexual. They drive to the south of France, where Margot continues to deceive Albinus with Rex.

Albinus meets an old friend Udo Conrad who naively reveals that he has overheard Axel and Margot discussing their love affair. Albinus confronts Margot with a gun, but she denies wrongdoing. They depart immediately, leaving Rex behind. Albinus crashes the car on a mountain road and recovers in hospital to discover that he has gone blind.

Rex writes to say that he is going back to New York, but in fact he takes over Albinus’s money and secretly moves with Margot and Albinus into a Swiss chalet. Rex and Margot torment the blind Albinus by flirting with each other in his presence. They plan to take over his property assets then leave him.

Elizabeth’s brother Paul is suspicious of the large cash withdrawals that Albinus appears to be making from his bank. He goes to Switzerland where he catches Rex and reveals the deception. Albinus wants to stay and kill Margot, but Paul takes him back to Elizabeth. A few days later, learning that Margot has returned to Berlin, Albinus takes a taxi to their old apartment where he tries to shoot her. But in the struggle it is she who shoots him dead.

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Laughter in the Dark – main characters

Albert Albinus	a wealthy German art critic
Elizabeth	his placid wife
Axel Rex	an unscupulous cartoonist and gambler
Margot Peters	a lower-class teenage waif
Otto Peters	her thuggish brother
Paul Hochenwart	Elizabeth’s loyal brother
Dorianna Karenina	a fashionable Berlin actress

© Roy Johnson 2018

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More on Vladimir Nabokov
More on literary studies
Nabokov’s Complete Short Stories

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot summary, links

Look at the Harlequins! was first published in the United States in 1974 by McGraw-Hill, then in the United Kingdom in 1975 by Wiedenfeld and Nicolson. It was the last of Nabokov’s novels to be published during his own lifetime, and was only superseded by his partial work-in-progress, The Original of Laura, which was published posthumously in 2009.

first American edition

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Look at the Harlequins! – critical commentary

This book was written in the final stages of Nabokov’s career as a novelist. He had taken his famously playful style to an almost ne plus ultra of literary self-indulgence in Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle in 1969, but Look at the Harlequins! wrings a final gasp of self-referentiality out of both his own life and his own books – both of which form the substance of this lightweight confection.

Vadim (the fictional character) has a life history that closely parallels that of Vladimir Nabokov. Vadim Vadimovich was born in Russia, displaced by the Bolshevik revolution, exiled in Paris and the south of France, and earned his living by writing novels and poetry, mixing amongst emigre literary circles, and later moving from France to a college professorship in America. The parallels between the fictional construction and Nabokov’s own life are quite obvious and do not need to be spelled out.

What is of interest is ‘what does he make of this fictionalisation of his own life?’ And the answer is – not very much. The work includes all sorts of biographical trivia: Nabokov’s interest in chess and its problems, his interest in butterflies (which he transfers onto another character), and his near obsession with rape and young girls.

Nabokov and paedophilia

When Nabokov wrote the afterward to Lolita he claimed that the idea for its principal subject had been inspired by a newspaper report of a sketch produced by an ape in the Jardin des Plantes showing the bars of its cage. This round-about appeal to our sympathy deflected attention from two uncomfortable facts.

The first uncomfortable fact is that the novel’s protagonist, Humbert Humbert, is not trapped or imprisoned by his obsession with under-age girls: he acts fully conscious of his desires with the free will of an adult. The second fact is that Nabokov had been writing about older men having sexual encounters with young girls ever since his earliest works – such as A Nursery Tale (1926) and <Laughter in the Dark (1932). Moreover, he wrote a whole novella based on that theme, The Enchanter (1939) and was still including mention of paedophilia in works as late as Ada or Ardor (1969) and Transparent Things (1972).

Readers taken in by his ‘explanation’ should heed the advice of D.H.Lawrence – to ‘Trust the tale, not the teller’. Nabokov was a master of manipulating his own public image – aided and abetted by both his wife and son. Look at the Harlequins! is almost defiantly, brazenly packed with episodes of an older man (Vadim, in this case) having sexual encounters with young girls – from the child Dolly Borg to his own daughter Isabella and her school friend at the end of the novel who – as he deliberately points out – is forty-five years younger than him.

Self-referentiality

The level of self-referentiality in this novel is Nabokov’s idea of an extended joke. He creates a fictional narrative which is closely modelled on elements of not only his own biography, but also the other works of fiction he has produced. Thus when Vadim refers to his first fictional work written in English, See Under Real (1939) the ‘knowing’ reader realises that Nabokov is alluding to The Real Life of Sebastian Knight which was indeed Nabokov’s first work written in English. Similarly, the work which makes Vadim rich is A Kingdom by the Sea (1962) the very title of which is taken from Lolita (1958) which catapulted Nabokov to fame when it was first published.

At one point Vadim gives an extended account of his novel The Dare which is a parody of Nabokov’s 1937 novel The Gift (Russian title, Dar~ – hence a multi-lingual pun). Vadim’s account of The Dare is as follows:

The novel begins with a nostalgic account of a Russian childhood (much happier, though not less opulent than mine). After that comes adolescence in England (not unlike my own Cambridge years); then life in émigré Paris, the writing of a first novel (Memoirs of a Parrot Fancier) and the tying of amusing knots in various literary intrigues. Inset in the middle part is a complete version of the book my Victor wrote ‘on a dare’ : this is a concise biography and critical appraisal of Fyodor Dostoyevski, whose politics my author finds hateful and whose novels he condemns as absurd …

Thus we have a real author (Vladimir Nabokov) withing a novel (Look at the Harlequins!) which is narrated by a fictional character (Vadim) who summarises one of his own novels (The Dare) which is written by a fictional character called Victor, based on the events of his fictional life – but which is actually a pastiche of Nabokov’s own 1936 novel The Gift which was based losely on the events of his own life. Nabokov even repeats this conceit later in Look at the Harlequins with a similar account of A Kingdon by the Sea which is a parody of Lolita. Self-referentiality does not come much thicker than this.

The problem with this technique is that rather like the obsessive puns and wordplay in Nabokov’s later works, the literary gesture loses its impact after a very few iterations, and rapidly becomes annoying. Moreover, it is an elitist device in that anyone who does not know Nabokov’s personal biography and his works of fiction is excluded from the supposedly amusing purpose of these references. Per contra, readers who know Nabokov’s work well have nothing new to learn from them.

The other problem connected with this auto and pseudo-biographical ‘playfulness’ is that it dilutes any possibility of the novel having a central theme or core subject. If there is any principal issue in Look at the Harlequins! it is ‘fake biography’ – which is neither amusing, interesting, nor important.

The unreliable narrator

Nabokov was very fond of using the device of an unreliable narrator – someone telling a story whose account is gradually revealed to be unsound, skewed, inaccurate, or even a pack of lies. His un-named narrator in The Eye (1930) manages to invent his own double, misjudge other characters, and fail to recognise that the other people in the story do not like him. Nabokov’s skill is in presenting the unreliable account of events in this novella in such a way that the reader is able to work out the truth of what is happening, behind the misleading surface account of events.

Later in his novel Pale Fire (1962) he has a narrator who edits, comments on, and interprets another man’s poem in such a way that the reader eventually realises that the interpretation is completely wrong and the editor is quite mad.

The Vadim Vadimovich of Look at the Harlequins! is closely related to such narrators. We only have his account of events, and he is obviously not reliable. His description of his spatial inabilities (which is very overdone) is a clear sign that he is neurotic, and he himself reveals that some of the scenes he describes are inventions.

He claims that he has a mental instability that he must confess to any women he is about to marry, but this is clearly an abberation invented by Nabokov which is never really convincing. Moreover, Vadim is not unreliable in any consistent manner. He refuses the opportunity to learn details of his first wife’s infidelity following her death, but in the very next chapter he acknowledges that the letter she showed him was from her lover.

Nabokov acknowledges within the text that there are rules in narratives: “The I of the book / Cannot die in the book”. In other words, if someone is presenting a narrative as a first person narrator, the story cannot include the death of the narrator. But similarly, if a narrator pretends to ignorance of some matter at one stage of the story, they cannot acknowledge the truth of it at a later stage – because first person narrators are in full possession of the facts at the outset, when they begin to compose a narrative. Other writers have fallen foul of this fictional trap when using first person narrators – most noticeably Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford.

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Look at the Harlequins! – study resources

Look at the Harlequins! – Penguin Classics- Amazon UK

Look at the Harlequins! – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Look at the Harlequins! – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Look at the Harlequins! – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Look at the Harlequins! – Library of America – Amazon UK

Look at the Harlequins! – Library of America – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov Amazon UK

Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years – Biography: Vol 1

Vladimir Nabokov: American Years – Biography: Vol 2

Zembla – the official Nabokov web site

The Paris Review – Interview with Vladimir Nabokov

First editions in English – Bob Nelson’s collection

Vladimir Nabokov at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Vladimir Nabokov at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study materials

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Look at the Harlequins! – plot summary

Part One

1   Vadim Vadimovich arrives at the Cote d’Azur villa of his old university colleague Ivor Black, an actor and director.

2   Vadim recalls his precocious erotic puberty, his aristocratic connections, and his escape from Russia following the Bolshevik revolution. In England he is taken up by an aristocratic sponsor, Count Starov.

3   At the villa, Vadim meets Black’s sister Iris, who acts out charades with Ivor, pretending to be a deaf mute

4   Vadim gives an account of an obsessive nocturnal fear from which he suffers. He consults a psychiatrist, who recommends a dentist – and then Vadim reveals that these scenes are not real but inventions.

5   Vadim discusses literature with Iris in the garden of the villa. His memoir reveals his ambition whilst at Cambridge University to return to a post-revolutionary Russia as a famous writer. He writes and translates poems for Iris.

6   Vadim observes ‘nymphets’ on the beach. Iris acts and talks in a provocative manner. He contemplates the uneven nature of his sun tan, then inspects his naked body in Iris’s bedroom mirror. He plans to propose to Iris the next day.

7   Vadim and Iris walk to the beach, meeting the pianist Kanner on the way, collecting butterflies. Vadim recalls two youthful occasions of cramp seizures whilst swimming.

8   As a prelude to marriage, Vadim tries to explain to Iris his ‘mental aberarration’ concerning spatial orientation, but Iris simply explains it away for him.

9   In the garden at sunset Ivor does a comic imitation of Vadim to amuse his guests. Next day, when Ivor goes off fishing, Vadim takes Iris to bed. He recalls a similar scene he witnessed voyeuristically as a young boy.

10   Vadim and Iris get married and are visited by his patron Count Starov who quizzes Vadim about his finances and his intentions.. Vadim and Iris move to Paris, where eventually Vadim suffers from jealousy. He quizzes Iris about her past and begins to suspect her of infidelity.

11   Iris cannot learn Russian and has no access to Vadim’s writing. She starts writing a detective novel. Vadim publishes his first novel and starts the second. Iris goes briefly for Russian lessons with Nadezhda Starov, who has a dashing husband.

12   Iris gives Vadim a badly written and badly translated letter written to her fictional heroine for his comment. Vadim believes it might be from a real admirer – but screws it up and throws it away.

13   Ivor returns from the USA and goes to dinner with Vadim and Iris, following which Nadezhda’s husband turns up in the street, kills Iris, then shoots himself. When Nadezhda turns up for her husband’s funeral she offers to tell Vadim ‘everything’ – but he prefers not to know about what is obviously his wife’s infidelity.

Part Two

1   Following his wife’s death Vadim goes to stay with his friend Stephan Stephanov and mixes with other Russian emigres. He also has a very dubious relationship with a very young girl called Dolly Borg.

2   After describing his composition techniques, he hires a typist Lyuba Savich, who turns out to be an avid fan of his works. However, even though she is very attractive, he gets rid of her.

3   He continues to complain about his spatial ‘madness’, continues writing, gives lectures, and starts to look for a replacement typist.

4   He visits Oksman, manager of a Russian emigre bookshop in Paris, and former revolutionary. Oksman compliments Vadim on his novels, but gets their titles wrong.

5   Vadim’s second typist is Annette Blagovo, who makes lots of mistakes and criticises his work. She does not understand his writing at all.

6   Vadim describes a dream of his younger self and Annette in two beds in the same room. When he gets into Annette’s bed, an attractive maid enters the room, laughing.

7   Vadim writes Annette an absurdly detailed letter describing his difficulty recreating topographical space in his memory, which he regards as ‘madness’. He feels obliged to warn her about this , before making a proposal of marriage. But she agrees to become engaged anyway.

8   He goes to meet her parents to announce his intentions. Then, despite her inexperience and prudishness, he makes a clumsy and unsuccessful attempt to seduce her.

9   Vadim refuses to get married in grand style. His literary success continues in the late 1930s, and his work begins to appear in English.

10   He complains about translations of his work appearing in the USA and England, and then in the late 1930s he begins writing in the English language. He recalls the language he learned in his childhood, discusses the perils of switching from one language to another, then he goes to America.

Part Three

1   In America Vadim obtains a fellowship in European literature at Quirn University, and his writing becomes more widely known.

2   He and Annette have a child (Isabella) but the marriage rapidly goes cold. On a trip to New York City he meets Dolly Borg whom he knew as a child in Paris. She visits his office at Quirn, and they begin a sexual relationship.

3   Dolly arranges a rendezvous in a friend’s apartment in New York. When they arrive the meeting becomes a nightmare fantasy of thwarted expectations and bad taste. Vadim seems to collapse and is taken to hospital.

4   His wife Annette finds out about his affair with Dolly and leaves him She writes a letter in pro-Soviet tones and demands support payments.

Part Four

1   Vadim takes a sabbatical year from Quirn, buys a car, and drives West. After a year’s wandering he returns to the University and to new quarters. He begins an affair with the wife of his Head of Department.

2   There is a local tornado, after which he prepares his house for the arrival of his daughter Bel. She turns out to be clever and sexually precocious.

3   They go touring in his car together. She writes poetry which he pretends to enjoy, and there is a lot of suggestive foreplay. He is addressing his narrative to one of her school friends, Louise.

4   People at Quirn begin to question the nature of his relationship with Bel. He is invited to a party where he makes a public announcement about his ‘disability’ – prior to proposing to Louise, who says she will marry him nevertheless.

5   Louise calls round next morning at breakfast and meets Bel – with whom there is something of a rivalry and standoff.

6   Louise introduces lots of vulgarity into his household, and the relationship with Bel gets even worse.

7   Bel is sent to a Swiss finishing school and Vadim claims to miss her, whilst working on the novel which is to bring him fame and fortune (A Kingdom by the Sea. His relationship with Louise gets worse, and she makes contact with a former lover.

Part Five

1   Bel marries a young American and elopes to Russia. Vadim’s novel is a big success. He receives word from an intermediary that Bel needs his help. He grows a beard and obtains a false passport.

2   He takes a flight to Moscow and a connection to St Petersburg, the city of his birth. He is followed by an agent of some sort. But when he meets his informant she is a partly deranged woman who tells him that Bel has been taken away by her husband.

3   He flies back to Paris en route to New ~York. At Orly airport he is intercepted by the agent, who turns out to be a Soviet writer and an apparatchik. He insults Vadim for ‘betraying’ Russia in his writings – and Vadim punches him on the nose.

Part Six

1   Vadim resigns from his post at Quirn, and whilst clearing out his belongings meets a classmate of his daughter, forty-five years younger than him.

2   They travel together to Europe. Vadim gives her the index cards on which he has written his latest novel Ardis. He then goes for a walk, reflecting on what a successful writer he is. But at the end of the walk he finds it impossible to turn back.

Part Seven

1   Vadim has some form of mental seizure which he records in fantasmagoric images

2   He is transported to a hospital, suffering from some sort of paralysis or dementia. He perceives life as a series of lurid images composed from elements of his former life.

3   When he partially recovers he cannot remember his family name.

4   He recuperates in another hospital, joined by his still un-named fourth wife-to-be. She has read his confessional fragments from Ardis, and explains that his mental dilemma is based on a false premise.

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Vladimir Nabokov

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Look at the Harlequins – principal characters

Vadim Vadimovich N.	the narrator and protagonist
Ivor Black	Vadim’s friend from Cambridge – an actor and director
Count Starov	Vadim’s rich Russian patron
Iris	Black’s sister, Vadim’s first wife
Kanner	a pianist who collects butterflies
Stephan Stephanov	Vadim’s friend in Paris
Lyuba Savich	Vadim’s first typist
Oksman	Russian bookshop owner in Paris
Annette Blogovo	Vadim’s second typist and second wife
Isabel (Bel)	Vadim and Annette’s daughter
Dolly Borg	grand-daughter of Vadim’s Paris friend
Louise	school friend of Bel, Vadim’s third wife
Waldemar Exkel	Vadim’s Baltic assistant at Quirm
Gerrard Adamson	Chair of English at Quirm
Louise Adamson	his wife, Vadim’s lover
—	a school friend of Bel, and Vadim’s fourth wife

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Other work by Vladimir Nabokov

Pale Fire is a very clever artistic joke. It’s a book in two parts – the first a long poem (quite readable) written by an American poet who we are encouraged to think of as someone like Robert Frost. The second half is a series of footnoted commentaries on the text written by his neighbour, friend, and editor. But as we read on the explanation begins to take over the poem itself, we begin to doubt the reliability – and ultimately the sanity – of the editor, and we end up suspended in a nether-world, half way between life and illusion. It’s a brilliantly funny parody of the scholarly ‘method’ – written around the same time that Nabokov was himself writing an extensive commentary to his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.
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Pnin is one of his most popular short novels. It deals with the culture clash and catalogue of misunderstandings which occur when a Russian professor of literature arrives on an American university campus. Like many of Nabokov’s novels, the subject matter mirrors his life – but without ever descending into cheap autobiography. This is a witty and tender account of one form of naivete trying to come to terms with another. This particular novel has always been very popular with the general reading public – probably because it does not contain any of the dark and often gruesome humour that pervades much of Nabokov’s other work.
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Collected Stories Nabokov is also a master of the short story form, and like many writers he tried some of his literary experiments there first, before giving them wider reign in his novels. This collection of sixty-five complete stories is drawn from his entire working life. They range from the early meditations on love, loss, and memory, through to the later technical experiments, with unreliable story-tellers and the games of literary hide-and-seek. All of them are characterised by a stunning command of language, rich imagery, and a powerful lyrical inventiveness.
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© Roy Johnson 2015

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More on Vladimir Nabokov
More on literary studies
Nabokov’s Complete Short Stories

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tutorial, study guide, commentary, and web links

Pale Fire (1962) is a bizarre and playful ‘novel’ from the master of literary inventiveness, Vladimir Nabokov. It was written at the same time that he was editing his scholarly translation of Pushkin’s novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. What Pale Fire offers is a comic parody of the same enterprise. It is a novel comprised of a spoof academic introduction written by the editor, a long poem written by his neighbour which gives the novel its title, and then the editor’s elaborate commentary which purports to explain hidden meanings in the text. All the notes are cross referenced with a scholarly apparatus. He then even adds an index.

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Pale Fire – critical commentary

Structure

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the novel is its successful parody of an academic study – complete with bibliographic introduction, cross references, a scholarly apparatus, critical commentary, and index. All of these are brought to bear on the central text – John Shade’s poem Pale Fire – which has absolutely nothing to do with the Boy’s Own adventure story into which it is embedded.

Moreover, as a self-proclaimed ‘editor’, Charles Kinbote is a comic failure in his enterprise. He not only completely fails to understand Shade’s poem; he gets lots of details wrong; he fails to spot things that are obvious; he can’t be bothered to follow up his own ‘researches’; and he sets up links in his commentaries which turn out to be non-sequiturs.

Nabokov also makes Kinbote quite laughable as a character. He misunderstands what is happening around him. He is insensitive to the reactions of the people he encounters. And he is given quasi-absurd opinions – such as his half-baked critique of Proust and A la recherche du temps perdues (which is incorrectly capitalised in the index).

The unreliable narrator

Nabokov was a master of fiction delivered by unreliable narrators. From his earliest works as a writer of short stories such as The Eye (1930) and Spring in Fialta (1936) he created narrators who recount events that the reader is invited to interpret otherwise. Some of these narrators tell lies or attempt to mislead the reader. They play a form of literary hide and seek in which they deliver information which does not seem quite consonant with the rest of the story – and we begin to doubt their judgement. It is a skilful manipulation of point of view on the author’s part, and an invitation to readers to ‘participate’ in creating the ‘true meaning’ of the story.

This literary device can sometimes be stretched over the length of a novel. Henry James used it in The Sacred Fount (1901). But it is usually confined to the short story or the novella – for good reasons. The most important reason is that once the reader has realised that information is coming from an unreliable source, dramatic tension in the tale is put at risk.

It should be immediately apparent to most intelligent readers of Pale Fire that the editor-narrator Kinbote is both unreliable and not who he claims to be. In the Foreward he relates that a certain ‘ferocious lady’ says to him ‘What’s more you are insane’. She is quite right, and most readers will have no trouble realising that his account of the King’s ‘escape’ from Zembla is his own (factitious) autobiography. Shortly afterwards, if not at the same time, they will realise that the whole story is the delusion of a madman.

The problem is that they will realise this quite quickly, when there is still considerable plot-commentary to be revealed – which dilutes the effectiveness of any dramatic tension that follows. To offset this weakness, Nabokov introduces a second plot element in the character of political gangster Jakob Gradus whose role is to pursue and assassinate King Charles.

This too turns out to be part of Kinbote’s delusion – for the man who shoots John Shade is not a foreign political assassin but an escapee from a lunatic asylum seeking to avenge himself on the man (Judge Goldsworth) who has sent him there.

Interpretation

It has to be said that the apparent levels of fictionality in the novel have thrown critics into all sorts of acrobatic interpretations. There are some who believe that the commentary to the poem was written by John Shade himself, and others who think the ghost of Hazel Shade is somehow involved.

Nabokov, as the author of all the mischievous hints and clues scattered throughout the book, muddies the water even further by introducing a character called Professor V. Botkin, whom he describes as ‘an American scholar of Russian descent’. This sends other commentators into analytic raptures, pointing to the fact that the name Botkin is merely Kinbote in reverse. Perhaps Kinbote is the alter-ego of Botkin – or the other way round?

But the multiple levels of fictionality are apparent rather than real. Kinbote is clearly a fictional character, created by the author Vladimir Nabokov. Kinbote is operating as a teacher in a fictional (but credible) American university called Wordsmith College in the Appalachians. Kinbote claims to be the exiled king of a not-so-credible country called Zembla – and his escape from it is related via cardboard and comic operetta sequence of events. He is clearly delusional and his tale is a fantasy-invention. Interpretation of the novel is much simpler than its complicated story.

We know that Nabokov ‘lost his kingdom’ and had to flee Russia following the revolution; we know that he eventually emigrated to America; we know that he taught at a provincial college (Wellesley College) and wrote about the experience in other fictional productions (such as Pnin). We know that Nabokov had been translating and editing a scholarly version of Eugene Onegin – which comprised an introduction, the text of Pushkin’s poem/novel, and two volumes of commentary plus an index.

Pale Fire is nothing more than a literary spoof which re-mixes these biographical elements to offer a playful charade, a jeu d’esprit that is laced with the sorts of in-house jokes, narrative tricks, and literary spasms (wordplay, neologisms, and obsessive alliteration) that mark his later works following the high point of Lolita in 1955.

Extras

It should be clear from a few pages into the novel and everything following that Kinbote is a homosexual. What is not clear is why Nabokov should add this characteristic to his protagonist. The repeated and coy references to young boys and ‘manly behaviour’ become quite irritating – mainly because they are not in any way connected to the rest of the narrative. They eventually assume a sort of schoolboy smuttiness and reinforce other silly elements of the plot.

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Pale Fire – study resources

Pale Fire – Penguin – Amazon UK

Pale Fire – Penguin – Amazon US

Pale Fire – Library of America – Amazon UK

Pale Fire – Library of America – Amazon US

Nabokov’s Pale Fire – Princeton – Amazon UK

Celestial Keys to Pale Fire – Sputnik – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Nabokov – Amazon UK

Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years – Biography: Vol 1

Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years – Biography: Vol 2

Zembla – the official Nabokov web site

The Paris Review – Interview with Vladimir Nabokov

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Pale Fire – plot summary

Foreward

The ‘editor’ Charles Kinbote presents a scholarly description giving the provenance of John Shade’s poem Pale Fire. He details the rivalries surrounding ownership and publication of the manuscript. He meets Shade and his wife Sybil when he becomes their next door neighbour whilst teaching at the same institution – Wordsmith College. Kinbote is a figure of fun at the college, and is clearly a homosexual.

Pale Fire

The poem in four cantos is an autobiographical meditation on Shade’s domestic life and his reflections on the borderlines between life and death. His parents die when he is young, and he is raised by his aunt Maude. He loses his religious belief, but searches for a meaning in life and wonders about the possibilities of life beyond the grave.

He meets his wife Sybil at high school, and still loves her forty years later. They have a daughter Hazel who is solitary, dyslexic and unattractive. She goes out with friends as a teenager and is shunned by the group. She pretends to go home, but drowns herself in an icy lake.

Shade meditates on life as a preparation for what will happen after death and the possibilities of reincarnation. He wonders who we might meet in the afterlife. Sybil thinks she receives signals from their dead daughter. After giving a lecture one evening Shade has a minor heart attack and a ‘vision’ of being briefly ‘dead’, when he sees the image of a white fountain. When he reads of a woman who has had the same experience he goes to interview her – but she thinks it is a social call. Nevertheless, he feels he has discovered some hidden pattern in life which gives it meaning.

He reflects on the difficulties of poetic composition and describes shaving whilst in the bath. He thinks about his wife, his dead daughter, and the books of poetry he has written. Finally he finds some comfort in his appreciation of the everyday life that surrounds him.

Commentary

Charles Kinbote examines the poem in close detail and explains meanings hidden in the text. He has forcibly befriended his neighbour the American poet John Shade and recounted to him the amazing story of King Charles II’s escape from a revolution in Zembla. Kinbote hopes that Shade will re-tell this story in a long poem on which he is currently working.

Kinbote’s story is that when a revolution occurs in Zembla, the king is imprisoned in his castle, from which he escapes via a secret passageway. He travels over mountains and eventually reaches the seashore. Zembla is divided politically into supporters of the king (Karlists) and their rival Extremists, including would-be regicides (the Shadows) who elect Jakob Gradus as their assassin.

The king is eventually parachuted into the USA where his friend Sylvia arranges for him to teach at Wordsmith College. He rents a house from Judge Goldsworth, next door to John Shade and his wife Sybil. Although he has only been there a short time, he claims to be close friends with Shade – though it is quite clear that these feelings are not reciprocated.

Kinbote spies on Shade day and night, whilst Sybil makes transparent excuses to protect her husband’s privacy by keeping Kinbote away from the house. Meanwhile the stupid and incompetent Gradus is making his way across northern Europe in search of King Charles. Gradus fails at every point, until he is eventually instructed to go to America.

Kinbote is saving a big surprise for John Shade when he completes his poem. It is quite clear that this is the revelation that he is King Charles. But on the very day the poem is finished and Kinbote has invited Shade for a celebratory drink, Gradus arrives and bungles the assassination, killing Shade in error.

Believing that Kinbote tried to protect Shade from the assassin, Sybil gives him the right to be the poem’s official editor. Gradus turns out to be an escaped lunatic who has gone to kill the person who sentenced him to an asylum – Judge Goldsworth, Kinbote’s landlord. Gradus subsequently commits suicide in jail.

Kinbote confiscates the manuscript of Pale Fire and at first is horrified to realise that it contains no mention of his escape from Zembla. Later he convinces himself that Shade has cleverly hidden the account in minor details of the poem – and so his commentary is designed to squeeze meaning out where none exists.

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Pale Fire – principal characters

Charles Kinbote	the deposed King Charles II of Zembla
John Shade	an American poet and college teacher
Sybil Shade	his protective wife
Hazel Shade	their teenage daughter who commits suicide
Jakob Gradus	aka Jack Grey a bungling criminal and lunatic
Judge Goldsworth	the absent owner of Kinbote’s rented house

© Roy Johnson 2018

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More on Vladimir Nabokov
More on literary studies
Nabokov’s Complete Short Stories

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