NPPF - Nabokov & Time

[Michael Joseph]

Thanks for accepting the delay in response, Dave. The part of VN's text
about time that seemed an exact match to Bergson's TIME AND FREE WILL
follows immedately below, and then some stuff about Bergson follows that:

> >
> > http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter19.txt
> >
> > We can imagine all kinds of  time,  such  as  for  example
> > "applied  time"--  time  applied to events, which we measure by
> > means of clocks and calendars; but  those types  of  time  are
> > inevitably  tainted by our notion of space, spatial succession,
> > stretches and sections of space.

The quotation from HLB reads "... two possible conceptions of time, the
one free from all alloy, the other surreptitiously bringing in the idea of
space" (TIME AND FREE WILL 100). In this spatialized time sense, time is
"conceived under the form of an unbounded and homogeneous medium" (99), in
other words, history.

Not only does VN repeat Bergson's idea, virtually exactly as Bergson
expressed it, but his normatively inflected "tainted" seems to echo
Bergson's "free from alloy."

Perhaps Nabokov's other "contrapuntal" concepts have parallel affinities
with Bergson's non-historical time.  Bergson defines this concept in terms
of "the heterogenous duration of the ego, without moments external to one
another" (108). ("Heterogeneous duration" certainly sounds Nabokovian.)
Bergson explains that when the human consciousness "refrains from
separating its present state from its former states . . . it is enough
that, in recalling these states, it does not set them alongside its actual
state . . . but forms both the past and present states into an organic
whole." (100)

Rennie notes that this double time sense was seminal in Eliade's
formulation of sacred time as characteristic of archetypal humanity (homo
religiosus) and historical time as characteristic of modern humanity (homo
faber). For archetypal humanity, rituals not only evoked the memory of the
archetypal deeds of the gods, ancestors, first beings, creators, etc., but
reactualized them. They were recalled and fused with the moment in which
the rites were enacted. According to Eliade, the rites constituted an
oscillation which annulled the baleful sense of historical time and
reinstated sacred time.

It would not be surprising to find that Nabokov's other "contrapuntal"
concepts of time possess elements relating to Eliade's sacred, and, as I
browse through my notes, I see the comparison between their novels and
stories has been made that includes a consideration of their notions of
time. In his essay "Wrestling with Time: Some Tendencies in Nabokov's and
Eliade's Later Works," the Romanian scholar, Virgil Nemoianu noted,
"Eliade and Vladimir Nabokov were both lifelong emigres; both are East
Europeans. In consequence, the literary work of both is marked by an
obsession with the injustice and destructiveness of historical Time which
has wreaked havoc in their lives and in that of their family, class, or
nation. THeir work can be seen as an attempt at a historical retaliation.
[And thus that] in the struggle betweeen normal time and mythical time the
first is usually the villain and more often than not the loser."
(Southeastern Europe 7, no. 1 (1980): p. 82.)


Michael