The Caning of Modernist Profaners: Parody in Despair
by Alexander Dolinin
page five of five

In this self-important and epigonic eclecticism or, as Hermann himself puts it, in the "twenty-five kinds of handwriting" he sports (90), Russian readers of the 1920's and 30's would easily recognize a generic parody of contemporary modernist literature, notorious for its omnivorousness. As Yuri Tynianov wrote in his essay "Literature Today," unscrupulous imitations of several models at once became quite symptomatic of contemporary fiction: "Boundary lines between writers have been erased; writers are becoming fluid. There are such mixtures in which Pil'niak's intonations would come together with Zamiatin's images, Vsevolod Ivanov's dialectalisms and even Andrei Bely's rhythms."47

The sharp edge of Nabokov's literary polemic points to this sin of indiscriminate parroting and slashes at those writers of the first Soviet decade--Pilniak, Lidin, Vsevolod Ivanov and others--whom Nabokov in a letter to Edmund Wilson would brand as "descendants of Savinkov and Andreyev" (Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 177). Side by side with the thematic and stylistic clichés borrowed from the first wave of "dostoevshchina," Hermann demonstrates a fair knowledge of modish devices widely used in the 1920's. When, for example, he shifts the narration from the past of the story to the immediate present of its writing, his technique and imagery smack of numerous quasi-confessional stories and novels by prominent Soviet authors modeled upon Notes from the Underground. Written in this manner, Hermann's proposed beginning of Chapter Three is a good generic parody in itself:

It is fine today, but cold, with the wind's violence unabated; under my window the evergreen foliage rocks and rolls, and the postman on the Pignan road walks backwards, clutching at his cap. My restlessness grows.... (43)

Lies and gossip. I am happy... It is the leisure time: I am at home, sitting under the most beautiful lamp. [...] Behind me a fireplace is burning. I don't give a damn about a wind that is shaking the iron shutters of the door.51

For the Soviet writers of the 1920's, a stormy wind is the fixed, almost obligatory symbol of revolution, Russian destiny, historical necessity (cf. such stock metaphors as the whirlwind of Revolution, the wind of history, and so on)--the superhuman, inexorable force to which man cannot but succumb and sacrifice his individual freedom. Nabokov adopts this symbol and restores its traditional, Biblical meaning: the winds as the pneuma, God's breath, "the instruments of God's power, bringing life, punishing and teaching."55 In the context of Despair though, God means the author of the text, the creator of Hermann's world and, as Sergej Davydov has shown in his excellent works on the novel, the rough, "blinding" breezes, winds and tempests that incessantly tease, frighten and torment the narrator are the pneuma of the textual deity for whose mighty breath the narrator is a mere feather.56 Yet the "murderous mounting draft" (182) that eventually blows out both Hermann and his pretensions represents not only Nabokov's authorial will and wrath--it is akin to the wind as Pushkin's symbol of the ultimate poetic freedom in "The Poet and the Rabble" and elsewhere; to the wind howling in "The Queen of Spades" when Pushkin's Hermann goes to visit the old Countess (grafinia); to the "Caspian wind" crushing the mind of Gogol's Poprishchin in "Memoirs of a Madman"; to the terrible wind tearing apart Goliadkin's self in Dostoevsky's Double. It is as if the whole of Russian classical literature is punishing the crazy impostor who has dared to abuse and desecrate its great heritage.

In his insightful exegesis of Despair, Julian W. Connolly has noted that "despite his pretensions [...] Hermann's recurring problems with control underscore the fact that his true affinities lie not with the great creators of the past, but with their literary creations--their fictional characters." It should be added that all the truly significant parallels elude the narrator, for they belong only to the authorial domain and lie beyond his cognitive horizon, while the prototypes Hermann claims for himself--Pushkin's Poet, Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray and even "a grotesque resemblance to Raskolnikov" ("karikaturnoe skhodstvo s Raskolnikovym" [R 449]) he discerns and rejects--prove to be false. What gives a final, indisputable definition to Hermann's essential nature is his real literary lineage, his close kinship with the family of the most famous madmen and lunatics in Russian literature--his namesake Hermann in Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades", Gogol's Poprishchin ("Memoirs of a Madman") and Chartkov ("The Portrait"), Dostoevsky's Goliadkin (The Double), Sologub's Peredonov (The Petty Demon), Bely's Dudkin (Petersburg), Andreev's Anton ("The Thought"). At the same time this fatal definition, by an ironic transference, is redirected to the bad, phony creators of the past and the present--to those Russian modernists whose "dark Dostoevskian stuff" bears a strong family resemblance to Hermann's aesthetic principles and stylish mannerisms.

It seems that Nabokov deliberately chose Ehrenburg's Summer of 1925 as an epitome of modernist fallacies in contemporary Russian prose. Professing the superiority of "human documents" over fiction, the glib, self-endeared narrator of the novel declares: "Maybe it is murderers who should write books rather than writers,"57 and Nabokov, as it were, takes him at his word, actualizing and ridiculing this program. The very title of Nabokov's novel coincides with the recurrent key word of The Summer of 1925, and Hermann's wordplay on otchaianie (the Russian for "despair") and the phonetically similar verb otchalit' (to cast off a boat, depart) in his juvenile poem (R 360) repeats the pun Ehrenburg makes in the finale of his book.58 The rambling plot of The Summer of 1925 involves a murder the narrator ultimately fails to commit, another murder committed by the narrator's demon--his "false brother" or double, the "real" Ehrenburg's metaphorical change of identities with a phantom of his imagination, long conversations in Dostoevskian "stage taverns," a trite love triangle, and an aborted attempt to escape into "a remote abode of delight." The very mode and tone of the coy quasi-confessional discourse used by Ehrenburg bear a close resemblance to Hermann's self-conscious memoir: both narrators interweave their stories with similar meta-literary digressions, auto-commentary, direct appeals to the readers, anticipation of their reactions, shifts from the narrated past to the present of writing, and other "defamiliarizing" devices.

The despair which Ehrenburg's protagonist feels is the result of his confrontation with the ugly realities of the corrupt Western world, and he finds a cure for his malaise in returning from voluntary exile to the paradise of socialism and writing a truthful, documentary account of his traumatic but instructive experience. In order to convince the reader that his despair is genuine and sincerely expressed, Ehrenburg blurs the borderline between art and life, invents his own false "double"--a "real Ehrenburg," a distressed and abused outcast, a victim of the hostile environment--and relegates the authorial powers to this "confessional" mask. From Nabokov's point of view, precisely this is the cardinal aesthetic sin; to quote his dictum, the object of authentic art "lies next to art's source (that is in lofty and desert places--not in the over-populated vale of soulful effusions)." Although "one understands," he adds, "that private despair cannot help seeking a public path for its easement, poetry has nothing to do with it: the bosom of the Church or that of the Seine is more competent in these matters" (Strong Opinions, 223-24). Nabokov's parodies in Despair realizing Ehrenburg's metaphors castigates the "soulful effusions" of The Summer of 1925 (and other examples of "dostoevshchina") for what they are: the murderous impostures, the insane, self-serving ravings of profani to whom the author, together with Pushkin in "The Poet and the Rabble," says: Procul este.

In the finale of Despair Hermann rereads his manuscript and discovers the fatal mistake he made that points to him as the murderer. He forgot about the stick bearing the initials of his victim and left it behind at the scene of the crime. As Sergej Davydov remarks, "the irony of the situation is that Hermann's tale, designed to prove his genius as a murderer, is instead proof of his failure. The mnemonic device, the "stick," serves not only as the symbol of Hermann's fall, but also as the instrument with which Nabokov chastises the hero for his crime."59 Punished by figurative caning, the protagonist of Despair could well have cried together with his true literary "double," Gogol's pathetic madman Poprishchin: "Chrezvychaino bol'no b'etsia prokliataia palka" ("That cursed stick really hurts when it hits you"). But by implication the authorial wrath also punishes Ehrenburg and Hermann's other modernist literary models. Through parodic associations with the mad narrator they all are found guilty of imitativeness and banality, of "dostoevshchina" and sensationalism, of aesthetic blindness and moral and political opportunism. Together with Hermann, they are denounced for defiling and desecrating the Russian classical tradition and sent to the caning chamber by the defender of this tradition, Vladimir Nabokov. The stick of his parody "b'et chrezvychaino bol'no"--it really hurts when it hits you.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

47. Iu. N. Tynianov. Poetika, istoriia literatury, kino. Moskva: Nauka, 1977, 294.

48. Cf.: "I am alone, I am sitting at the window. Gray clouds have shut off the mountains to their base: through the mist, the sun looks like a yellow blur. It is cold: the wind whistles and shakes the shutters ... How dull!" (Mikhail Lermontov. A Hero of Our Time. Translated from the Russian by Vladimir and Dmitri Nabokov. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, 145-46).

49. For an astute discussion of this ironic allusion, see: William C. Carroll, "The Cartesian Nightmare of Despair," 86-87.

50. It is interesting that Aleksandr Kuprin begins his scathing parody of Bunin's style with a soliloquy resembling Hermann’s: "I am sitting near the window, pensively chew my rag, and a beautiful melancholy shines in my noble eyes. It is night. [...] Why am I so bitter and sad and wet? The night wind has rushed into the room [...]" (Russkaia literatura XX veka v zerkale parodii. Moskva: Vysshaia shkola, 1993, 191).

51. Aleksei Tolstoy. Rukopis', naidennaia sredi musora pod krovat'iu. Berlin: Izd. I. T. Blagova, 1923, 7. The arrogant tone and metaliterary comments of Tolstoy's narrator-murderer, who, on the verge of committing suicide, is relating the story of his crime, sometimes resemble those of Hermann. Cf., for instance: "I am writing and having a great time. I take a cigarette, light up and recline in the arm-chair. I love the wind tearing into the shutters and charcoal bricks rattling in the fire-place. [...] Don't you think that I am going to repent! [...] Go to hell! I am smart, I am talented. [...] I have the ferocious right to live. [...] I'll have my laugh yet. [...] Oh, what a marvelous thing is literature! You feel the hellish brew boiling inside.... Just start writing: drink red wine, smoke and write." (8, 16, 69).

52. Nik. Nikitin. Polet. Berlin: Petropolis, 1924, 7.

53. Iu. N. Tynianov. Poetika, istoriia literatury, kino, 154.

54. Ilia Ehrenburg. Leto 1925 goda. Moskva: Artel' pisatelei "Krug," 1926, 7-8. Cf. also another shift into the immediate present: "The wind walking now is too long and too bare" (57).

55. Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant. The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. London-New York, 1996, 1112.

56. See his article on Despair in The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, 94-95.

57. Ilia Ehrenburg. Leto 1925 goda, 95.

58. Ibid., 204.

59. The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, 93. Hermann's punishment also echoes the ending of Pushkin's "Epigram" (1829): "Otiazhelev kak ot durmana, /Serdito Feb ego prerval / I totchas vzroslogo bolvana / Postavit' v palki prikazal" [Dazed (by someone's writings) as if by dope, Apollo angrily interrupted him and immediately ordered that the grown-up blockhead be given a fair share of the stick].