Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years

When am I not consulting the Boyds? For me, Nabokov is the most congenial of all 20th century literary artists. But even without that, I would admire him for the fact that he surmounted all wordly barriers to the expression of his gift, to the achievement of his oeuvre. He let nothing overcome him--not exile, not the switch to English in early middle age; as Updike has said, Nabokov bore "the secret of an ebullient creativity." A congenial artist, and a personal hero.

Auch wenn die Lektüre schon eine Volljährigkeit zurückliegt, erinnere ich mich noch sehr gut, wie beeindruckt ich von Brian Boyds Fleiß, Liebe und Verständnis war.
Wie schön, dass er einen Leser gefunden hat, der genauso entdeckungsfreudig wie er selbst ist, und der ihm in seinem Essay DIE SPÄHER ein wunderbares Lob zukommen läßt, in dem es u.a. heißt:

"Boyd ist ein Phänomen, schon was den Fleiß angeht. Als armer Student pflegte er tagsüber in der Bibliothek das Nabokov-Material herauszusuchen, das er nachts in einem Greyhoundbus bearbeitete, für den er eine Dauerkarte hatte und der ihm als fahrendes Motel dienen mußte. Später wurden die Reisen umständlicher; auf der Suche nach einer einzigen fehlenden Nummer einer russischen Zeitung durchstöberte er Archive in zehn Städten zwischen Helsinki und Palo Alto. Überflüssig zu sagen, daß mindestens ein kleines Schweizer Wäldchen nötig war für die Papiermenge, die seine Nachforschungen und Korrespondenzen mit Zeitzeugen verschlagen. Und doch ist das erstaunlichste an seiner Biographie nicht eiinmal die Akkuratesse, mit der er Nabokov in seine Zeit einbettet. Noch erstaunlicher ist, daß der Wühler auch noch lesen kann."

(Diese Greyhoundbus-Geschichte läßt mich an die Legende denken, dass Nabokov selbst einen seiner Romane auf einem Koffer geschrieben haben soll, den er in einem engen Hotelzimmer über das Bidet legte.)
Der, der Boyd so lobt, ist einer meiner Lieblingskritiker, Michael Maar, und den ganzen Artikel kann man nachlesen in Die Glühbirne der Etrusker: Essays und Marginalien.

This is the story of an artist in perpetual flight from one tragically disappearing world to another. A quintessentially 20th century author whose art has been reduced by some to mere pompous trickery though it in fact contains an immense appreciation for the beauty of nature and the creativity of the human spirit while addressing several core recurrent themes: space, time, the limits and limitlessness of human consciousness, memory, and loss.

Boyd has combined in this slim volume(!) an in-depth glimpse into the author's, at times, death defying trek through the travails of early 20th century Eurasia and a comprehensive course on each of the major works of Nabokov's Russian period. It's at once a stirring portrait of a man and of his art. Herein we encountered the author's childhood tutors, his various pupils, a string of lovers and adversaries, and are treated to as well to an exposition on the progression of his literary talents from his youthful verse to his mature prose, on his use of transition, color, nature, on his inversion of personal experience in his art, on his major career arcing themes, and on how in certain instances his life had no choice but to imitate his art.

In contrast to the fairly popular belief concerning Nabokov, this piece paints a striking portrait of an incredibly likable, thoughtful, loving, and fiercely individual man - you would want to be friends with this man. Nevertheless, Boyd remains objective in his appraisal of Nabokov's art, demonstrating an a number of occasions a willingness to deem certain of Nabokov's novels and stories flat out failures.

An incredibly essential piece for any enthusiast or scholar, perhaps not very useful for those just starting out on Nabokov's works (because of the depth to which Boyd analyzing each of the major works of VN's early period - verse, stories, novels, plays, etc. This is one of the highlights however for the enthusiast).

No author had more occasion to become "the voice of his era" than Nabokov, and one of his great achievements is resolutely avoiding that role and following undeterred his own muse. Born in 1899, he was truly a child of the twentieth century, and almost every major upheaval that affected Europe in the first half of that century as well affected him, until he quit the continent and fled France with Hitler's hounds hot on his heels and found relative security in America and the English language. Even then his life did not settle in any normal sense of the word, though relative stability, in great contrast to the poverty and transience of his early adult years in Berlin and Paris, did finally find himself and Véra and Dmitri in the new world (a world that also made possible his eventual return to Europe and a kind of reclamation of his pilfered past). His whole life was somehow uncannily preparing him for this exact move to America and transition to a career as an English prose writer. From St. Petersburg, where he was born into a fabulously wealthy Anglophile family (his father played an important role in Russian liberal politics from before the 1905 revolution and on into the Russian emigre community that was centered in Berlin in the 1920's- a life that warrants a biography of its own) and the luxury of an idyllic youth so lovingly explored in Speak,Memory- the arbors of Vyra, his first encounters with literature and lepidoptera, the influence especially his father was to have on his life and fate- to Crimea escaping the Bolshevik terror, and the family's final flight from Russia via the Yalta harbor under machine gun spray, and then throughout the almost two decades in Europe where the young poet became the rising star of emigre literature, the play of what seems to be the hand of fate touches Nabokov's life just when events seem to be sliding into utter collapse and ruin. During the revolutions, the wars, the exile, Nabokov focused his energies on developing his gift, remained obedient to his destiny and his muse, and each circumstance of history that seemed an apparent obstruction actually served to expand Nabokov's art, though, in many cases, severely limiting his physical means. I can think of perhaps no other author who adhered so closely to his own vision despite the turmoil history was attempting to hurl at him. No wonder then his novels of this time come to be kinds of "thought experiments" on these problems: the inaccessibility of the past and the caprice of memory; the role of fate in life; the intricacies of consciousness as it encounters reality; the glories of particularity, individuality, variety; the redemptive power of imagination in a hostile world.

Though it certainly cannot be said that the epoch did not find seams and fissures to seep through and invade his work, ultimately, the great creator of worlds outmaneuvered the great destroyers of worlds. His Berlin novels took as a point of departure the emigre experience but never relinquished the mantle of strangeness and the unique psychological labyrinths that elevate the works beyond simple descriptions of a social milieu into the realms of the metaphysical. His European stories, novels, and plays grew into a sort of testing of an individual character's consciousness against the limits or structures of a reality or a superimposed reality. Boyd's criticism of Nabokov's works is fabulous. Coming away from it, one begins to see Nabokov as the last Romantic, or some Romantic of space-time, whose works are idylls or inverse idylls or worlds within worlds that all adhere to a wonderfully textured realism draped over a complex superstructure. And though Nabokov's works are particular worlds unto themselves, everywhere within them are the refracted images of the people, places and successive stages of history on which his life played out, inverted or made grotesque, distorted in a mirror or converted into the afterlife of thought or art. As Europe was disintegrating about him, Nabokov's cities and structures were becoming ever stronger and more invigorated with life, culminating with the composition of The Gift, which, as Boyd so compellingly argues, was that era's masterpiece and gave birth to Nabokov's next thirty years of work.

There is also the story of his love for Véra, who was to become his closest ally in life and art, his typist and editor, the mother of his child, and lifelong companion in all of the varied settings they found themselves thrown. But the true subject and hero of Boyd's book is Nabokov's art, his devotion to exploring the richness of human imagination, and the creative impulse and what that urge implies about our existence. Boyd suggests that at the heart of Nabokov's work is the idea that our creative nature is something of an echo of a further volition working at things, unseen because of the limits inherent in human consciousness. Through art, through the flexing and stressing of a state of being, Nabokov is attempting to push through these invisible walls, to project humanity beyond the human, and to explore the immense variety and chance that go into composing even the most mundane human moment, and the perception of that moment- in short, "the marvel of consciousness- that sudden window swinging open on a sunlit landscape amidst the night of non-being."

On a personal note, the Boyd biography, combined with The Gift and a rereading of Lolita, have culminated into my favorite reading experiences of the year (and this was a year particularly shining with gems), so I hope to be excused if Nabokov dominates my "currently-reading" shelf for some time to come. I can think of no better way to enter 2010 than with a new literary obsession.

This biography and literary study is well-researched, but, in my opinion, Boyd makes several errors as a result of being too close to his subject. First, he entirely too forgiving, or willing to overlook, Nabokov's personal and political flaws. True, everyone is human, and there is always room for a little understanding sympathy. But traits such as Nabokov's paranoid homophobia, which makes his brother's death in a concentration camp all the more tragic, paint V. Nabokov in a very unsympathetic light. He was as prejudiced in this way as the Nazis and his brother's memory cannot have been well-served by Nabokov's stupid prejudice. Nabokov's fundamental misunderstanding of Marx, as well, is all too apparent, albeit more understandable because of his exposure to the Leninist version of Marx. Finally, Boyd makes what I take to be several fundamental misreadings of Nabokov's texts themselves. Some of his readings are, indeed, insightful. But to fail to see the similarities between Fyodor in _The Gift_, for example, and Humbert in _Lolita_ is to miss a very fine layer of complexity in Nabokov's body of work. Of course, I may be misreading Nabokov, and I certainly don't have access to the sources Boyd had; but if Boyd's reading of the texts is correct, than that just highlights the unsavory character the subject of this book was. Good fiction writer, but I wouldn't want him dating my daughter.

One of the best biographies I've read. Extremely well researched and written. You can tell how much love and attention to detail has gone into the book from the fact that the header has the year (LH header) and VN's age (RH header) on every page. I can't believe it is so hard to get a copy of this book in the UK. Hopefully I won't have to wait too long for Volume 2.

I have to say that reading 1400-1500 pages of both volumes of Boyd's biography takes stamina, especially if the subject is personally so repellant as Nabakov - a man with a class A narcissistically disordered personality. But having said that, Boyd's work is a masterpiece of literary biography. He couples both the biographical narrative with the best criticism and interpretation of Nabakov's books available. In fact, I'm wondering why he didn't select certain chapters and piece together another book entitled: Nabakov's Short Fiction and Novels. I would never have completed the two volumes had VN's fiction been any less interesting than it is or Boyd's criticism any less penetrating and intriguing.

As for Vn as a young man. I can only say that he must have been altogether insufferable - a pampered, coddled, cosseted and spoiled scion of the high aristocracy, who also inherited one of Imperial Russia's largest fortunes at the age of 17. Just imagine. But he lost everything except the hauteur, which he cultivated with a vengence until he drew his very last breath.

Pretty great. Fascinating pre-American life. You can visit his father’s beautiful mansion in St. Petersburg to get a sense of why the man always felt such self-confidence. Not sure why I haven’t read the second half of the biography yet. I guess I just can’t see it measuring up to his life in Russia, England, Germany, etc. Some themes: Growing up rich. Father’s prominence and assassination. Elite English education. Early novels. Russian diaspora. Czechoslovakian trips. Jewish wife. Butterfly obsession. Etc.