Poetry, Exile, and Prophetic Mystification in "Vasiliy Shishkov" (1939)
by Maxim D. Shrayer
page seven of nine

The Gift--focusing on the writer Godunov-Cherdyntsev and thereby granting Khodasevich's wish--began to appear serially in April 1937, some three months after the Khodasevich's essay. Godunov-Cherdyntsev's imagined conversations with his literary ally, the poet and critic Koncheyev (whose image is informed by Nabokov's vision of Khodasevich), bridge Nabokov's one-dimensional reception by most émigré critics and the critical responses to the "Vasiliy Shishkov" controversy. In the second conversation, which takes place in the Grünewald in Berlin, Koncheyev lists five shortcomings in Godunov-Cherdyntsev's writing. Here is Koncheyev's third comment: "...you sometimes bring up parody to such a degree of naturalness that it actually becomes a genuine serious thought, but on this level it suddenly falters, lapsing into a mannerism that is yours and not a parody of a mannerism, although it is precisely the kind of thing you are ridiculing--as if somebody parodying an actor's slovenly reading of Shakespeare had been carried away, had started to thunder in earnest, but had accidentally garbled a line" (Gift, 339). Nabokov used his skill in creating literary personae to demystify the authorship of "The Poets." After the story "Vasiliy Shishkov" had appeared in The Latest News, Adamovich had no choice but to respond publicly to Nabokov's short story. In a concluding section of his regular literary column, Adamovich discussed the chances that Vasiliy Shishkov was fictional:

I must confess that a suspicion had crossed my mind: could it be that Sirin made it all up, that he created both Vasiliy Shishkov and his verse? Sirin's own poetry is certainly of a much different sort. But if it is at all possible to compose something for another consciousness and to intuit the other's themes, such a possibility is twice as likely for Sirin with his talent and inventiveness. In parodies and pastiches inspiration sometimes loses restraint and even forgets about the acting like an actor who lives his part.50

Adamovich reiterated his reasons for having welcomed Shishkov with much enthusiasm. He insisted that the entire text of "The Poets" was written "on such a compositional level when ornamentation [ukrashenie] [was] not needed or [was] inseparable from the poem's whole."51 Adamovich was still unwilling to fall victim to Nabokov's mystification. He labeled "Vasiliy Shishkov" a "feuilleton," thereby downplaying the fictionality of Nabokov's short story.52 Adamovich also called Shishkov a "Russian Rimbaud," which not only testified to his continuing admiration for "The Poets" but also ipso facto identified the teleology of Shishkov's career with that of the mythologized French poet and adventurer.53 In the story, Shishkov relays to Nabokov that he considered going to "Africa, to the colonies" (Stories, 499) but then decided against it.54 Despite that, Adamovich assumed that Shishkov ended up "running away from literature to Africa,"55 again, betraying his tendency to treat the story as a piece of journalism or as a memoiristic account, and not as a work of fiction.

Adamovich plots his review of the story with great caution: he wants to consider every possibility and yet shield himself from a possible next round of Nabokov's mystification. Having insured himself against the "fictional" outcome of Nabokov's story, Adamovich goes on to suggest the Khodasevich hoax "The Life of Vasilii Travnikov" as a precedent for "Vasiliy Shishkov" in case Nabokov's indeed turned out to be a "quaint mystification." Adamovich seems torn at the end of his review. He is right in identifying the genesis of Nabokov's invented poet with Khodasevich's earlier mystification. He is, however, unwilling to be Nabokov's fool. Thence comes Adamovich's most important comment, which he utters as though unaware of the depth of its meaning: "It would be a great pity if Shishkov the fugitive turned out to be 'a metaphysical being' [sushchestvom metafizicheskim]: it would be a great joy to know his other works and to discover that his silence is not final."56 For Adamovich, the poet Shishkov's "metaphysical" nature (Adamovich uses "metaphysical" in the sense of "fictional") is a disappointment; among other things it would prove that Adamovich had no reason to deny Nabokov's poetry its due. But for Nabokov, the metaphysical disappearance of Shishkov is the story's ultimate triumph over time and the shrinking émigré cultural context! Incidentally, in a rather long preface to the English text of the story, printed in Tyrants Destroyed (1975) three years after Adamovich died, Nabokov elucidated several circumstances behind the Vasiliy Shishkov controversy. He quoted "The Poets" in full and also made this comment on Adamovich:

Adamovich refused at first to believe eager friends and foes who drew his attention to my having invented Shishkov; finally, he gave in and explained in his next essay that I 'was a sufficiently skillful parodist to mimic genius.' I fervently wish all critics to be as generous as he. I met him briefly, only twice; but many old literati have spoken a lot, on the occasion of his recent death, about his kindness and penetrativeness. He had really only two passions in life: Russian poetry and French sailors. (Stories, 657)

Chto voobshche znachili eti ego slova -- "ischeznut'", "rastvorit'sia"? Neuzheli zhe on v kakom-to nevynosimom dlia rassudka, diko bukval'nom smysle imel v vidu ischeznut's v svoëm tvorchestve, rastvorit'sia v svoikh stikakh, ostavit' ot svoei lichnosti tol'ko stikhi? Ne pere otsenil li on "prozrachnost' i prochnost takoi neobychnoi grobnitsy"? (VF, 213-4)

(And, generally speaking, what did he have in mind when he said he intended "to disappear, to dissolve"? Cannot it actually be that in a wildly literal sense, unacceptable to one's reason, he meant disappearing in his art, dissolving in his verse, thus leaving of himself, of his nebulous person, nothing but verse? One wonders if he did not overestimate

The transparence and soundness
Of such an unusual coffin; Stories, 499)

In the 1970s, Nabokov was compelled to provide an extensive background in the preface to the English version of the story--the most extensive preface in all of the short stories--and include the entire "The Poets" (Stories, 656-7). After the publication of the Russian version of the story in 1939, émigré readers did not need any such preface: the poems, as well as reviews in the émigré press, were easily accessible; those readers were steeped in the émigré context and partook of much the same information as Nabokov himself. He was rightly concerned that the context of the story be made available to the English-language reader in the 1970s. The preface to his Englished story provides the reader with the missing information about the author-text continuum. Nabokov's efforts were aimed at restoring the sparkle of his time-dimmed mirrors.

Finally, what is "Vasiliy Shishkov" about? Here the text tells about the author's intention to abandon his cultural milieu. Nabokov's biographers have demonstrated at length how by the end of the 1930s he was "searching for an exit" from the narrowing and thinning context of Russia Abroad.58 The late 1930s were a time when Nabokov searched for a new literary persona that would allow him to speak/write in a foreign language. He tried French--the short story "Mademoiselle O" (1936) was the fruit of this--but opted for English. For a short period in 1938-1939 he worked simultaneously in both English and Russian. Anticipating Nabokov's move from the Old World into a New World, "Vasiliy Shishkov" was his harmonious, perfect exit from the world of the Russian emigration. While Adamovich suspected that Shishkov had left for Africa, there are transparent hints in the story about Shishkov's possible move to America. There are German-Jewish refugees discussing visa intricacies on the fringes of the story. The gently comical portrayals of a group of refugees--both preceding Nabokov's conversations with Shishkov--contain remarkable parallels with the portrayal of German-Jewish refugees in the film Casablanca (directed by Michael Curtiz, 1943). In the film, much as in the story, the refugees practice conversing in a foreign language with no sense of proper usage.

50. Adamovich, "Literaturnye zametki," Poslednie novosti 6552 (September 22, 1939): 3.

51. Ibid.

52. "Vasiliy Shishkov" appeared on September 12, 1939 on page 3 of The Latest News where they usually placed literary columns (e.g. the regular column by Adamovich), short stories, and feuilletons.

53. For a recent discussion of the cultural mythology of Rimbaud's disappearance from the literary scene, see Chapter I in Svetlana Boym's Death in Quotation Marks (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

54. Nabokov himself had considered undertaking an expedition to the tropics, as reported by Nikolai Raevskii, "Vospominaniia o Vladimire Nabokove," Prostor 2 (1989): 115.

55. Adamovich, "Literaturnye zametki."

56. Ibid.

57. The two lines in The Gift are quoted in Linyov's review of Koncheyev's poetry collection; see SSoch, 3:152.

58. "Searching for an Exit: France, 1939-1940" is the title of Chapter 22 in Boyd, RY.