In his autobiography Nabokov tells us that English was his first reading language, and that at five he acquired French as a part of the expected cultural capital of the late 19th century Russian aristocracy. Nabokov’s multilingualism is integral to his art as both writerly practice and a series of metaphors for real and imagined migrations between continents and cultures. Written, translated and revised across three languages (Russian, English, French), Nabokov’s work is, like his identity, perpetually transitional. Nabokov’s dynamic approach to multilingualism supplies him with figures of speech and often multi-level trilingual allusions. It also allows him to re-invent himself and his work in unfamiliar contexts while retaining the perceived essence of his identity and memory.
Even before Nabokov’s 1940 move to the United States and the attendant turn to English as the principal language of his creative writing, Nabokov’s predilection for code-switching was an integral part of both his synaesthetic perception of the world (he saw sounds as colors) and his art which is marked by the continuous interplay of visual arts and the written word. Integrating visual and performing arts, such as cinema, painting, photography and theatrical performance in his work, Nabokov challenges assumptions about the strict separation of monolithic and monolingual art forms and the stability of (aesthetic) identities. Focusing on the intermedial dimension of Nabokov’s art, this panel addresses the aesthetic multilingualism of Nabokov’s work, including the translation, alternation and combination of different representational modes in Nabokov’s fiction and life-writing. The panel addresses the integration of different visual media, including cinema, painting and photography, in Nabokov’s fiction and life-writing. In particular, the three papers will discuss code-switching between words and images, the transgression of conventional medium-specific borders and the challenge to aesthetic hierarchies in Nabokov’s work which shows a remarkable commitment to aesthetic diversity.
This panel builds on the growing interest in the intermediality of Nabokov’s work such as those of Appel, Nabokov’s Dark Cinema (1974); Wyllie, Nabokov at the Movies (2003); de Vries and Johnson, Nabokov and the Art of Painting (2006); Shapiro, The Sublime Artist’s Studio (2009); Frank, Nabokov’s Theatrical Imagination (2012) as well as recent essays by Dobbin (2014), Parker (2018), Bozovich (2018), and Jensen (2019).
Robyn Jensen will set off the panel with a paper on Nabokov’s examination of ontological assumptions evident in the “perversity” of intermedial relations embedded in Lolita, as the novel’s narrator repeatedly attempts to translate his temporal narrative into the spatial realm of the visual as a means of preserving his nymphet from the corruption of time while all thh time violating aesthetic as well as erotic laws.
Christine Fouirnaie contrasts the stable identity of the photographic memorabilia with the continuous metamorphoses Speak, Memory undergoes in linguistic translation during its journey across the globe. The transposition of these images into different historical contexts constitutes a “political language” in which memory and desire as well as image and caption battle it out.
The final paper by Erica Camisa Morale continues to examine the theme of memory but this time in the context of moving (rather than still) images. Morale’s paper situates Nabokov’s integration/translation of cinematic techniques like flashback and the close-up. Nabokov's use of these medium-specific properties of cinema force us to reconceive his conceptions of human memory in such work as Mary, Kamera Obskura, “Spring in Fialta,” Despair, Invitation to a Beheading, and Lolita.
We intend to divide the discussion time between (1) the panelists responding to each other and (2) taking questions from the floor.
We have deliberately chosen not to overwhelm the rating committee with detailed information on, or arguments for this topic as a deserving variant of the Presidential theme. Aesthetics of inter-art studies, thinking grounded in visual culture, and theories of self-representation in our culture of visual digital presence should not need much of an argument. We as a Society admit to being somewhat late to this topic, but the time and place are perfect for it. There is also a practical issue: the second session, especially this year, is also needed for the Nabokov Society to re-establish the critical mass needed to see the MLA convention once again, especially after the COVID19-induced lag, as the Society’s default site for intellectual exchange, international fellowship, and face-to-face mentoring of incoming members.