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Katherine Parrick
The Function of Puns in Nabokov’s Despair
Vladimir Nabokov infuses his novels with language at
its finest. Dense and intricate, rich with allusion, metaphor, and imagery, Nabokov manipulates language
carefully to produce his desired affect on his reader. One of the most fascinating aspects of Nabokov’s work is
his fondness of the pun. Employing a series of calembours in a variety of methods, his keen grasp of the device is
one that cannot be simply overlooked, or attributed to the author’s playfulness. Rather, one must consider what
these puns do to a text, how they operate within it, and if they alter the meaning of the text itself upon
recognition.
It has been widely documented that Nabokov was a
perfectionist when it came to his texts.1 Rewriting and editing a multitude
of times before the novels went to print; he even revisited some of his earlier works to translate them himself
after their foreign publications. Such is the case with Despair. Since he exerted so much control over the novel
and admittedly rewrote sections of it during translation some thirty years later, one can assume that every word
within the novel is deliberately placed, and, perhaps every word outside of the actual novel.
Despair begins with a foreword by the author, in which
he exacts the novel’s history for us. In doing so, he creates the first pun in the text. Referencing Sartre’s
poor review of Despair,2 in which Sartre likens Nabokov to the German
Expressionists (such as Kafka), Nabokov replies,
Immediately beginning with a pun in this manner, Nabokov slights the critic, reducing the two schools
(Impressionism in art, Expressionism in literature) to nothing more than one in the same, indicating that his novel
is unique and unclassifiable by particular terms. Furthering this slight, Nabokov replaces Sartre himself with
Hermann as the “father of existentialism,” accounting for his character’s absolute control and manipulation of his
own (and others) existence.
While accounting for its initial reception, publishing,
and translations, he quickly skews the boundaries between life and art: in one moment comparing his two fictional
creations—Hermann and Humbert—then ambiguously referencing Hermann as if he was a fixture of reality, “I do not
remember what happened to him eventually. After all, fifteen books and twice as many years have intervened. I
cannot recall if that film he proposed to direct was ever made by him.”4 Much
like him referring to Hermann as “the father of existentialism,” he imbues Hermann with his own creative force,
thereby subtracting himself, as author, from the text.
This is an interesting quality to note when examining
the puns employed in Despair. While Hermann is designated as the narrator and author of the text, Nabokov’s voice
is still strikingly present as the overshadowing author. With amazing dexterity, Nabokov created a novel in which
the novel itself appears to have been written by a less artistic and talented character. To maintain the validity
of the work, Nabokov must overwrite Hermann’s voice, engaging the reader with the game of the novel and often
doing so with puns.
One main way in which this is accomplished is through
the puns that Hermann does not acknowledge. Several times, as we shall note, he points out his puns, metaphors,
and general cleverness; the real genius of the work comes from what goes unnoticed by the ‘author.’ A grand
example of this is Lydia’s infidelity to Hermann. We are able to glimpse Nabokov as puppeteer through Hermann’s
utter obliviousness to his wife’s affair with her cousin. Before (and through) Hermann’s own eyes, the reader is
able to grasp the breadcrumbs left by Nabokov that lead us deeper into the novel than even Hermann, as ‘author,’ is
able to delve.
Many of these puns operate just like these
breadcrumbs—as clues, as trace elements of Nabokov’s hand—that open up the question of artistic creation onto a
whole new level. As Julia Bader eloquently surmised, “the banal clues are planted for the inimical reader,” and
the “delicate cryptograms are supplied for the careful reader.”5 Thus, as
careful readers, we will follow these breadcrumbs to discover the true art of literary creation.
Since puns are so numerous in Nabokov’s novels, it
helps to designate them to categories dependent on form and function. Working with A. M. Luxemburg’s article,6
which identifies sixteen types of pun-building techniques in Nabokov’s works, we can break the puns into several
significant categories and help identify their importance in the text. The original, paronomastic pun is one in
which similar sounding words are brought into close proximity of each other. While Nabokov does employ these
elementary puns, he hardly lets them remain at this remedial stage. For example, while Hermann is convincing
Ardalion to visit Italy he says, “An artist cannot live without mistresses and cypresses.”7
On the surface, it seems to be a simple pun, but when aligned with Hermann’s blindness to Ardalion’s affair
with his wife it becomes a truly comical and rather sinister wordplay.
Luxemburg writes of Nabokov’s mastery at twisting the
paronomastic pun to accommodate foreign accents, which often creates “diabolically ironic hidden meanings.”
Though he sites Pnin, one can also find examples of this in Despair, thanks to the character Orlovius. In a
conversation with Lydia and Hermann about impending war, he touts his “optimismus,” saying that he supposes “only
the best.” Due to his thick accent, Hermann writes that this comes out sounding like “pest.” Lydia continues,
saying that his positive outlook must be good for his business (insurance), to which he replies, “But it is
pessimismus that gives clients to us.”8 While optimismus is actually a word,
‘pessimismus’9 is not; therefore, using it in this manner emphasizes the
pestilence of war and insurance buyers (pessimists) as “pests,” and creates an adept wordplay structured from the
utterance of one man’s accent.
When Hermann brags of his creative and literary skills,
he produces the most obvious examples of puns within the text. In this manner; displayed, identified, and
boastfully contrived; they clash with the unobtrusiveness of Nabokov’s skillfully placed puns:
What is happening in these puns is what Luxemburg calls “decomposition and semantization.” A common Nabokovian
device, yet typically woven into the stream of the text and not flaunted ostentatiously as Herman does in the
example above. Furthermore, this passage serves to make Hermann seem self-conscious and foolish-—not his words.
The truly masterful writer need not boast of his talent: it is recognized and resides unquestioned, assure of its
legitimacy and unabashed by its potency. Another example of Hermann’s obtrusive puns comes when he describes the
likeness between himself and Felix. Asserting that they are nearly identical when Felix’s eyes are closed and
pondering that he must look the same when his “eye-eaves” are shut, he blatantly interrupts his narrative with “a
good word, that! Ornate, but good, and a welcome guest to my prose.”11
This distinction is primary in identifying the two
authorial voices within the text. As an amateur author, Hermann’s attempts at wit are obvious, whereas within the
narrative in whole, puns slip into the text, almost catching Herman unawares. For instance, when Hermann talks of
Communism (an Ideology Nabokov abhorred), he refers to the “beautifully square world”12
that Communism will create. He seems incognizant of his oxymoron and the implications carried with it. Hence,
through Hermann’s defense of Communism, Nabokov slyly degrades it, aligning its supporters with the lack of
intelligence one would associate with “microcephalous” fellows.
Another common pun found in Nabokov’s works is the
manipulation of homophones, exhibited nicely through Herman’s appraisal of Lydia’s education and observant
qualities:
Also common are homoforms such as “vague-eyed vagabond:”14 both forms involve
the handling of similar sounding or looking words, that when used together often create a bewildering image. As
in Lydia’s case, the pun can be used to reveal something about the character’s crasis; here it is used in a
negative manner by Herman to display her lack of intelligence, elsewhere Nabokov has used it to relate aspects of
a character’s past or to reveal naiveté and innocence. In this case, divulging the pun backfires on Hermann. Once
again, he plays the cuckold, as he is the one who is both unobservant (unable to recognize his wife’s adultery as
well as the disparity of likeness between himself and Felix), and rather uneducated (numerous times he misquotes
people and confuses adages, he also implies that he received low marks in school due to his ‘creativity’).
Many Nabokovian puns are simply playful: acting as
games within the text, riddles, and jokes within themselves. When Hermann constructs his riddle for his wife, he
does what Nabokov often times, yet again, lacking the skills of an artful author; he reveals the riddle for what it
is and its source of inspiration. After announcing that his candy business is failing, and the chocolate will have
to be liquidated (need I mention this obvious pun?), he hears a sound from the street:
The answer of course is “chocolate.” In itself, it is a rather witty pun, operating on two levels in the final
bit of it: in it’s whole it is it’s own ruin since it will be devoured, and in its whole it will be Hermann’s ruin
(the other ‘my’) since the business is failing; but its textual inclusion is done in a manner befitting of Hermann,
not Nabokov. Had Nabokov merely used the pun, he might have done so without all the contextual clues preceding it,
yet employing it in this manner gives the reader a sense of Hermann’s cleverness while contrasting his incapability
for the subtle designs of art.
While this wordplay adds a bit of spice to the novel,
others shape the meaning of the novel itself. In this sense, Nabokov creates a duplicitous duplicity. Puns
manipulate and play with our linguistic sensibilities, within the novel they manipulate and play with our literary
sensibilities. The best examples of these types of puns are found by analyzing Nabokov’s numerous references to
Dostoevsky and Gogol: two figures of Russian literature that Nabokov considered in wildly different manners. The
first allusion (not truly a pun in itself) arrives early in the novel as we see Hermann “drawing noses in the
margin of the page.”16 While noses may seem like a peculiar doodle for a man
to draw, the allusion guides us towards Gogol’s “The Nose.” Following this train of thought, we can also take
Hermann’s skewed memories of returning home to Lydia (after his first encounter with Felix) to find her making
“moggle-goggle.”17 But then he becomes confused, was it coffee or
moggle-goggle? Perhaps his psyche, once he has committed the murder and begun writing the text, replaces the
coffee with the memory of moggle-goggle—a phrase that evokes a pun of a muddled Gogol.
Indeed, Herman is a muddled Gogol. He is not merely
content to relate his crime to art, as is done in Gogol’s "The Gamblers", rather he takes a failed crime (hence, a
failed artistic endeavor) and tries to turn the failure into art: an ambition that could proceed beautiful had not
Hermann’s ego constantly interrupted. This leads us into Nabokov’s use of Dostoevsky in his puns. It seems that
Dostoevsky is under constant attack by Hermann, yet the puns and reference run even deeper than Hermann may
realize.
Of course, many of the puns concerning Dostoevsky
within Despair are quite obvious to a reader familiar with Nabokov. Yet, these intertwine with the other literary
allusions and concealed puns to form a series of thematic puns that when appraised as a whole create an entirety
for the text, one that inevitably makes the reader revisit it in a new light. Thus, I begin with Alexander
Dolinin’s insightful find of an anagrammatic reference to Dostoevsky in Despair: when caught up in the throes of
meeting Felix again, and perhaps slipping into the early stages of his literary insanity, Hermann notes a
“round-backed Tartar…showing a small blue carpet to a buxom barefooted woman,” both of which he thinks he
recognizes, then sees a “vortex of dust…and the pale sky.”18
According to Dolinin, this phrase can be decoded either
as truncated "text of Dusty" or as a part of the anagram VOrtEx Of DuST + SKY = DOSTOEVSKY.19
The author’s presence, so early in the novel, and alongside Hermann without his knowledge, implies a deeper
subtext than the mere superficial derogations of ‘Old Dusty.’ Following this anagram comes a series of puns in
which Hermann relates Dostoevsky to a variety of negative contexts.
Briefly, many of these puns come after Hermann is fully
imbedded in the insanity of his crime; this alone makes for a fascinating comparison of his character to that of
Raskolnikov. Yet, Hermann denies such associations, “In spite of a grotesque resemblance to Rascalinikov—No
that’s wrong. Cancelled.”20 Here he makes a play upon the word “rascal” in
Raskolnikov and while betraying his fury, betrays his affiliation with the Dostoevskian character (a more proper
double for Hermann than Felix could ever be). Also, while trying to establish himself as a literary genius,
Hermann debases Dostoevsky’s work, punning on his novel as “Crime and Slime,” yet at the same time misquoting the
very text he references from it. “Mist, vapor…in the mist a chord that quivers,”21
while already having changed the words, Hermann does not realize that this is also a phrase from Gogol’s Memoirs
of a Madman. As if subconsciously sealing his insanity, we once again hear the voice of Nabokov, laughing
down upon the text and his pitiable Hermann.
What continues from here are puns that solidify the
main theme of the text. Hermann, through the artificial method of crime, is trying to create art. In failing, he
bastardizes art by imbuing it with the non-aesthetics of his failed and imperfect crime. Thus, Hermann comes to
represent all dabblers in literature who use the methods of the greats (i.e. Pushkin, Gogol, and yes, even
Dostoevsky) to create paltry imitations. Imitators of art. However, Hermann is one step below even these
respectable dreamers; he is a ‘living’ imitation of art. An imitating imitator who is oblivious to his own
fictivty and his confinement in a world in which he is deprived of the free will he so often ponders. Nabokov
hints at this through the newspaper’s article on Hermann after the murder in which journalists have conjectured
“between reports of a political fray and a case of psittacosis.”22
Psittacosis is a pneumonia-like disease that is commonly called “parrot fever.” Alongside apes and mockingbirds,
the parrot is notorious for mimicry. Hence, like acting out a bad plot, but failing at it, Hermann could indeed
have ‘parrot fever.’
Yet at moments, Hermann seems to be aware of his
poorly styled mimicry. When he begins to realize the “Dusty-and-Dusky charm of hysterics,” he capitalizes upon
the moment and seizes his captive audience with the widely understood Doestoevskian hysteria. Yet this advantage
only occurs to him “dimly.” As he progresses into his insanity, his memory (once called flawless), begins to
deteriorate; thus at once distancing him from the literary allusions he so casually invokes, and uniting him with
them as he turns into the madman.
When searching for a title for his novel. He plays
with several Dostoevski works but gets stuck at a title he just can’t quite remember, “for assuredly I had at one
time invented a title, something beginning “Memoirs of a—“of a what?24 He
then plays with puns from some other titular works and finally settles on Despair, hence rounding the text
and exemplifying his consternation with trying to catch “The mighty montibus” of his tale, a bus which he misses
but keeps running for. Thus, we find that Hermann has no inherent, creative spark, no pedestal on which to place
his creation. He is neither a Gogolian hero nor Dostoevsky’ s The Double. In the end, he is reduced to nothing
more than a false double: the anti-hero without the hero and mainly an unequivocal player in his “mock existence.”
With so many literary giants resting upon our shoulder,
Nabokov seemed to be experience what Harold Bloom would eventually term, “the anxiety of influence.” Hoping to
break through this influence and be regarded as an author in his own right, devoid of the subtitles émigré and
Russian, Nabokov created a literary masterpiece that dismembers the constructs of literary greatness and toys with
them. One reason this novel may be so effective is because of its toying nature. The puns allow Nabokov to
disseminate hidden meaning into the text, thus creating subtexts and layers that might have been unachievable
through a different narrative mode and structure. Mimicking the greater context, in the subtext
While the puns in Despair may not alter our outlook on
the world, but they certainly alter our outlook on the novel. Nabokov’s puns open up doors of interpretation and
often turn the text itself upside-down. Recognizing the puns, places Nabokov outside the realm of the authors that loom
over him. Unlike Hermann, Nabokov escapes the anxiety of influence and creates unique and truly wonderous works of art.
2 J ean Paul Sartre, Situations (Paris: Gallimard, 1947). 3 Vladimir Nabokov, Despair (New York: Vintage International, 1986), xiii. 4 Nabokov, xiv. 5 Julia Bader, Crystal Land: Artifice in Nabokov's English Novels (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), 10. 6 A. M. Luxemburg, “Magister Ludi: Word Play in Vladimir Nabokov's Prose in the Light of a Theory of Puns," Rostovskaya Elektronnaya Gazeta, Issue 1 (1999), English Edition, http://lightning.prohosting.com/~regazete/01lux.htm (accessed June 2nd, 2005). 7 Nabokov, 126. 8 Ibid. 48. 9 Another way to consider this pun is to assume that Orlovius transposes his “lip consonants” and would pronounce the word “bessimismus.” In this way it could be joined with the word ‘business’ through their similar letters and sounds, to more forcefully imprint that pessimism is the source of his earnings. 10 Nabokov, 46. 11 Ibid. 29. For other examples of Hermann’s protuberant puns, please note his use of the term “eye to eye monologue,” (59) which he points out to his reader in case they missed such an obvious pun and his “most oval animal of all” the rabbit, due to its breeding capacity, hence the ova in oval-note its repetition of sound-“choleric turkeys with carbuncular caruncles” on page 83. 12 Ibid. 20. (The term ‘microcephalous’ comes from the same page and passage.) 13 Ibid. 23. Also a homophonic pun yet not employed with its double, is the word midst. On page 41 Hermann states, “I developed a somber and painfully acute liking for that lone wood with the lake shining in its midst.” Here we have the colloquialism of a misty lake inverted so that a lake is in the ‘midst’ of another object. 14 Ibid. 11. 15 Nabkov, 50. 16 Nabokov, 5. 17 Ibid. 30. (Moggle-Goggle is a drink made in a variety of ways, due to cultural heritage, which serves the primary purpose of curing ailments. Though the recipes I found tended to vary (as did the drink’s curative qualities for specific illnesses)—for example, just for Russian recipes I found four variations that were attributed to region, religion and wealth—the primary ingredients are always raw eggs and sugar.) 18 Ibid. 67. 19 Alexander Dolinin, “The Caning of Modernist Profaners: Parody in Despair” an expanded version of an essay that originally appeared in Cycnos 12: 2 (1995), 43-54, http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/doli5.htm (accessed June 2, 2005). (Also within this page is what Luxemburg deems “anagrammatic camouflage,” Nabokov’s insertion of himself or other literary characters into the text. In Nabokov’s Early Fiction, Julian Connolly points out the presence of the authors pen name in the “red-haired Christina Forsman.” In this case the anagrammatic camouflage is “Roman Sirina” or Sirin’s novel. 20 Nabokov, 189. 21 Ibid. 177. 22 Ibid. 185. 23 Hermann seems to be searching for the title “Memoirs of a Madman,” a previously referenced Gogol work and one that would aptly fir Hermann during his descent into madness. 24 Ralph A. Ciancio, “Nabokov and the Verbal Mode of the Grotesque,” Contemporary Literature 18:4 (Autumn, 1977), 520.
Ciancio, Ralph A. “Nabokov and the Verbal Mode of the Grotesque,” Contemporary Literature 18:4 (Autumn, 1977), 520. Connolly, Julian W. “The Function of Literary Allusion in Nabokov’s Despair,” The Slavic and East European Journal 26: 3, (Autmn 1982), 302-313 Dolinin, Alexander. “The Caning of Modernist Profaners: Parody in Despair” an expanded version of an essay that originally appeared in Cycnos 12: 2 (1995), 43- 54, http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/doli5.htm (accessed June 2, 2005). Fowler, Douglas. Reading Nabokov. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974. Grayson, Jane. Nabokov Translated: A Comparison of Nabokov's Russian and English Prose. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Luxemburg, A. M. “Magister Ludi: Word Play in Vladimir Nabokov's Prose in the Light of a Theory of Puns," Rostovskaya Elektronnaya Gazeta, Issue 1 (1999), English Edition, http://lightning.prohosting.com/~regazete/01lux.htm (accessed June 2nd, 2005). Nabokov, Dmitri; Shrayer, Maxim D. “After Rapture and Recapture: Transformations in the Drafts of Nabokov’s Stories,” Russian Review 58:4, (October 1999), 548-546. Nabokov, Vladimir. Despair. New York: Vintage International, 1986. Nakhimovsky, Alexander D.; Stone, Alice; Nabokov. “A Linguistic Study of Nabokov’s Russian Prose,” The Slavic and East European Journal 21:1, (Spring 1977), 78-87. Sartre, Jean Paul. Situations. Paris: Gallimard, 1947. Struve, Gleb. “Notes on Nabokov as a Russian Writer,” Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature 8:2, (Spring 1967), 153-164. Rowe, William. “Gogolesque Perception-Expanding Reversals in Nabokov,” Slavic Review 30:1, (March 1971), 110-120.
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