A Study Of Nabokov’s Fiction In The Perspective Of Space Narrative Theory

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899-1977) is one of the most importantAmerican writers in the20thcentury who has attained world-wide fame andpopularity. As a prolific writer, he has turned out18novels and about70short stories,aside from volumes of biographies, poems, plays, prose writings, translations andliterary criticisms. He is an unusually versatile man with novelist, lepidopterist,professor, poet, translator, playwright and literary critic all rolled into one. Hisproficiency at English, Russian and French enables him to engage in literary creationof three different languages with ineffable ease and elegance. And besides, he is alsoa professional chess player, painter and tennis player. Nabokov’s excellence in asdifferent fields as these make Gavriel Shapiro acclaim that he is “not only one of thegreatest writers of the twentieth century but perhaps the last Renaissance man parexcellence our civilization has ever known.” Among his many achievements, whatmakes him have a niche in the temple of fame is the great success he hasaccomplished in fiction. Today, Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, Pnin, and The Defense havebeen on the list of readings for literary courses in many American universities.Numerous modern and contemporary writers such as John Updike, Thomas Pynchon,John Barth, Edward Albee, Edmund White, Don DeLillo, Salman Rushide etc. haveclaimed their indebtedness to Nabokov.This dissertation presents a study of Nabokov’s fiction from the perspective ofspace narrative theory. In the latter half of the20thcentury, a conspicuous “spatialturn” quickly swept from cultural studies to literary criticism, which as a consequence soon gave rise to a new branch in narratology: space narrative theory. Areview of its development prompts the author to the following realizations. First, theso-called space is a turn of epistemological paradigm with its accent on the breakingoff from traditional temporal-spatial ideology and its teleological emphasis on thediscovery of a new representational mode in literature that works in tune with thesocial context of a spatial turn. Thus, space sprouts from time and has unalienableties with temporal dimensions. Second, what falls into the inquiry of space narrativetheory covers not only written-form texts but also inter-arts and inter-medianarratives such as painting, sculpture, architecture, moving/motion pictures, TVprograms etc. Third, spatial form in the sense of poetics can be approached fromstory space, linguistic form and the reader’s psychological reconstruction, withemphasis often on the last two elements.Nabokov’s fiction, if viewed from the aforementioned aspects, is highly chargedwith spatiality, as Joseph Frank, the trail-blazer of narrative space theory, has averred,“Nabokov thus sees the form of novels as primarily spatial or synchronic rather thandiachronic, and his belief that ‘aesthetic delight’ is communicated by ‘the innerweave of masterpieces’ expresses the same idea in a more figurative form.”Within the framework of this understanding, one can easily discern inNabokov’s fiction a strong sense of time and space. Nabokov is probably one of thecomparatively few writers who are constantly drawn to the concept of time and benton a systematic investigation of its multifaceted dimensions. His complicatedscrutiny of time stems from a firm conviction in the power of Bergsonianconsciousness. Time, which runs throughout his fiction and his musings about life, isovertly spatialized and image-charged, being artfully epitomized by the author interse phrases such as epiphanic images on the magic carpet of memory, a coloredspiral in a small ball of glass, and timelessness with its transcendentalotherworldliness. Chapter One thus aims at a systematic anatomy of the spatializedtime in Nabokov’s fiction and a minute sample study of this spatialized time schemein Ada, his longest novel and literary apogee.Chapter Two expounds ekphrasis of Nabokov’s fiction, or in general parlance, itsinterwovenness with the visual arts. Nabokov has claimed on many occasions that he is “a born landscape painter”. He is gifted with an unusual capability of coloredhearing, the discerning of its color at the sound of a letter. This unique gift, coupledwith his professional training as a painter, makes him an ardent lover of colors andhis fiction a world of varicolored sensual attraction. Nabokov, knowing at his fingertips European and American painters and paintings---ancient and contemporaneousunexceptionally included, self-consciously writes in an ut picture poesis painterlyway or paints with words in a writerly way, to whom Shapiro admiringly refers as“the most incomparable and brilliant verbal painter that belles lettres has everknown”. In addition to an addiction to colors and colorful paintings in the novels,Nabokov the fervent film fan also lavishly limns his fiction with cinematographiccharacters, themes, scenes, plots and techniques. That every work by Nabokov isloaded with cinematic elements has now been a fact acknowledged by many critics.Nabokov’s novels are specific specimens of Frank’s synthesis of the spatial form.Chapter Three studies this spatial form from three aspects: language, structure andreader’s reconstruction. The emphasis will be on wordplays in Nabokov’s spatialauthorial writing, his spatial pattern of an organic whole formed out of delicatedetails, and his ideal of a spatial reading. For textual analysis, the focus is on Lolita’sculmination in its language usage and Pale Fire in its spatial structure and spatialreading. In terms of language, Nabokov intentionally seeks in his novels arepresentation that eradicates linearity and causality and accentuates simultaneity andtextual inter-referrentiality. His writings are often exposure of the author’s writingprocess and the textuality of the text per se. As for structure, Nabokov is notoriouslynoted for his Nobokovian pattern and nuanced details, and the culmination of thispattern in the novels by “cosmic synchronization”, the combing and combining of thedetails into a complete whole. As for arrangement of parts and chapters, Nabokovoften attempts at a spatialized visuality that expunges temporality by using skillssuch as imbedded texts. Finally, Nabokov is that kind of author who astutely avowsthe spatiality of the reading process. For him, a good reader is always a re-reader andan ideal reading, quite like an ideal writing, is compared to a spatial painting. Aftermany re-readings, the reader would have in his/her mind a wholistic picture ofjuxtaposed images and fragmentary details that overcomes the impediments of time and left-to-right linearity. This works in much the same manner as the author’swriting: a good writer sees the whole picture before he puts his pen down on thepages, and he rips this picture into small pieces which are then permeatedeverywhere, waiting for the patient reader to pick them up piecemeal.Chapter Four is an elucidation of Nabokov’s spatial theme. Nabokov espousesmultiple spaces which Brian Boyd defines as “worlds within worlds within worlds.”Among the different layers of space, a focal concept is Nabokov’s pursuit of atranscendental otherworld, which has now become a predominant theme in Nabokovstudies. Much of Nabokov’s belief in an otherworld lies in his affinity to the mysticGnostic doctrines. This chapter therefore aims at a reexamination of Nabokov’smultiple worlds, and his pursuit of the otherworld and Gnosticism in his fiction. Adetailed case study in this chapter will be on Gnosticism in Invitation to a Beheading.Spatialized time, ekphrasis, spatial form and spatial theme---these four aspectscomprise the main contents of narrative spatiality in Nabokov’s fiction.The originality of the dissertation lies in its new perspective. Spatiality inNabokov’s fiction has been occasionally touched upon in various writings, but few ofthem have explicitly approached the topic from space narrative theory, and none hasattempted at a systematic one. Another innovation is its content and scope. Itanalyzes in detail Nabokov’s spatialized time, ekphrasis, epiphanic spatial imagesand Gnostic representations. Of the many works by Nabokov, this dissertation coversall his18novels, including The Original of Laura, the posthumously publishednovelistic fragments in late2009, and gives in-depth analyses of his mostrepresentative works: Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and Invitation to a Beheading. Themethods applied include close reading, which is undoubtedly the prerequisite for aninvolute and meticulous Nabokov who for Jane Grayson is “a problem solver’sdelight, an annotator’s dream, a writer’s writer, a novelist’s novelist”, and thecombination of a macrocosmic general research with a microcosmic case studywithin the theoretical boundaries of space narrative theory.