Assignment for 9/16 - Nabokov

Assignment for 9/16 - Nabokov

What is there to say about Nabokov that he hasn’t said about himself? I do not think this is quite fair. After all, it takes so much of the pressure off being a literary genius when you have already said that you are one. But he would be the first to agree that he was very good at styling sentences.

First-person narration is drawn to the running style, with its emphasis on the way people think as they are speaking out loud, or writing. The hypotaxis in Nabokov’s prose uncovers the minutely planned aspects of this piece without taking anything away from the narrator’s voice. A first-person narrator wants to get their story out just right, after all. Each piece of information follows on the one before, but without necessarily building on it. Even when it seems as though the narrator is trending periodic, he will suddenly rein in the intensity of the clauses, and sometimes change the subject entirely. The prose keeps the reader on edge, expecting a climax that never (ironically, given the narrator’s own frustrations) occurs.

"I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel in the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels, and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects--paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know these redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges."

The first sentence provides the biographical framework for the rest of the paragraph. A man was born in a specific year, in a specific place. But each of those is only apparently specific. We do not know the date, or where they were living. Already, we are drawn in to the first-person narrator, who has things he wants us to know, and things he does not.

“My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins.” The first part of this compound sentence, before the colon, has the father as its subject, with a few descriptive clauses. In the second part, there is a series of appositives following “a salad of racial genes.” This mixes patterns 3 and 10, in Sullivan’s vernacular.

The next sentence might have wandered in from another piece of fiction, given all the sense it makes.

“He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera.” This sentence seems like it is telling the reader something, but only raises more questions.

“His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively.” There is again description with attending obfuscation. (There should be a sentence pattern number for this.) It seems to mean that his father sold wine, and the two grandfathers sold jewels and silk. But which grandfather sold which combinations of items? Even though it clearly does not matter, it would be nice if the narrator were not handing out information like candy wrappers with nothing inside.

“At thirty,” (note pattern 14, as yet unseen, in the prepositional phrase before subject and verb) “he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjects--paleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. (Pattern 10a) There is a repetition of sorts in these last two sentences. In this sentence we also get two grandfathers, who are experts in two things “respectively,” and we do not learn which grandfather does which. And, since they are not named, it still does not matter. The narrator is talking about his great-grandfathers, after all. They cannot really have much bearing on his life, except to somehow anchor it.

The next sentence is an avalanche of clauses that definitely depend on one another for sense. (Most probably pattern 8) “My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning)” (pattern 7) “when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set:” before the narrator changes the game entirely, “surely, you all know these redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.”

There is a repetition of a keyword (Pattern 9) in the word “midges,” and the only alliteration in the selection, in “redolent remnants of day.” The turn the sentence takes at the colon is dizzying, and probably meant to distract from the mother’s death. The two parenthetical notes, “(picnic, lightning)” and “(I am writing under observation)” are very suggestive, as they indicate the narrator’s super-literary sensibility of himself as a writer who has not explained everything, and is not alone in the process.

There is another repetition in “a pocket of warmth” and “a furry warmth.” “Furry” is the only tactile sensation in the entire paragraph, and “warmth” is what is entirely lacking in it. He is discussing his closest relatives as if they are strangers to be catalogued. He does not speak with genuine authority until the next paragraph. In this one, it seems like he is only reciting. He cannot speak with authority about his mother’s death, and so has to gloss over it.