746 The American Century: Literature since 1945translations of his earlier Russian novels, lectures and correspondence, and a
monumental translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1964). All of the work reflects,
in some way, Nabokov’s aesthetic of subjective idealism. All of it plays variations on
an observation made by the academic commentator in Pale Fire: “ ‘reality’ is neither
the subject nor the object of true art,” that commentator observes, “which creates its
own special reality having nothing to do with the average ‘reality’ perceived by the
communal eye.”
Which suggests the fundamental difference between Nabokov and even a writer
like Singer, let alone Olsen or Ozick. “To be sure, there is an average reality, perceived
by all of us,” Nabokov admits in Strong Opinions (1973), a collection of his answers to
questions about himself, art, and public issues. “But that is not true reality: it is only
the reality of general ideas, conventional forms of humdrummery, current editorials.”
“Average reality,” Nabokov insists, “begins to rot and stink as soon as the act of
individual creation ceases to animate a subjectively perceived texture.” Any book he
makes, any art anyone makes that is worth reading is “a subjective and specific affair,”
Nabokov suggests. It is the creative act that effectively maintains reality just as – and
the analogy is his – electricity binds the earth together. As a writer, a creator, he has
“no purpose at all when composing the stuff except to compose it.” “I work long, on
a body of words,” as Nabokov puts it, “until it grants me complete possession and
pleasure.” According to this subjective idealist creed, there can be no totalizing,
totalitarian reading of experience, no monolithic entity entitled “life.” There is only
the “manifold shimmer” of separate, specific lives, my life, your life, his life, or her life.
As Nabokov has it, “life does not exist without a possessive epithet.” Nor is there some
kind of absolute truth or absolute morality attainable, a master narrative of history
or ethics that the artists must discover and disclose. “Reality is an infinite succession
of stops, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable,”
Nabokov argues. “You can never get near enough”; and so “whatever the mind grasps
it does so with the assistance of creative fancy, that drop of water on a glass slide
which gives distinction and relief to the observed organism.” There is no place here
for naturalism or didacticism. “I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction,”
Nabokov confesses. “Why do I write books, after all? For the sake of pleasure, for the
sake of the difficulty.” “Lolita has no moral in tow,” he adds. “For me a work of fiction
exists only insofar as it affords me what I bluntly call aesthetic bliss.” That bliss is the
triumph of art, for Nabokov. Its tragedy is suggested by an anecdote Nabokov tells
about the original inspiration for Lolita. Which is a story about an ape who, after
months of coaxing, produced the first ever drawing by an animal. “This sketch
showed the bars of the poor creature’s cage.”
Lolita is certainly Nabokov’s finest book. Before it was published, he wrote of it, to
Edmund Wilson, “ its art is pure and its fun riotous.” The purity of its art has several
dimensions. Structurally, Nabokov uses traditional romance patterns only to
deconstruct them. Humbert Humbert reveals how he desired Lolita, possessed her,
fled with her across America after the death of her mother, Charlotte Haze, lost her
to a man named Quilty, then killed her new lover. It is the elemental romance
structure used here to startling, inverted effect, with elements of quest, attainment,GGray_c05.indd 746ray_c 05 .indd 746 8 8/1/2011 7:31:43 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 43 PM