Nabokov's Otherworld by Vladimir E. AlexandrovReview by: Jane GraysonThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 153-155Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4210882 .

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REVIEWS I53

churches suggests that this kind of theological compromise creates more problems than it solves. Department of Linguistic Studies A. E. Moss University ofSurrey

Abyzov, Iurii. Russkoe pechatnoe slovo v Latvii i9i7-1944: biobibliograficheskii spravochnik. Stanford Slavic Studies, 3: I-4. Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University, Stanford, I990. 424 + 4I8 + 434 + 437 pp. No price available.

IN the inter-war years the independent Baltic states formed hardly less of a focus for Russian literary activity than the other major centres of e'migre'culture such as Paris and Berlin. A valuable outline of this period has been written by Temira Pachmuss (Russian Literature in the Baltic between the World Wars, Columbus, Ohio, I987), and Iurii Abyzov's massive and scrupulously pro- duced bibliography provides invaluable additional material, with particular reference to Latvia and especially to the two major Rigan newspapers of the time, Segodnia and Slovo, neither of which has been readily available to specialists hitherto. Arranged alphabetically, the bibliography includes original and translated poetry and prose fiction, philosophical, memoir and religious literature, materials on the Russian diaspora, socio-geographical writings, studies of contemporary printing and the press, and information on emigre writers, journalists and other cultural activists. The Soviet period (I 94o4 ) is adequately recorded elsewhere and therefore not included here; Soviet literature itself only appears in so far as its major figures were written about by writers abroad (for example, in memoirs). Reprints are not included, nor are theatrical reviews, except where they concern such outstanding figures as Chaliapin (names in this bibliography are given in their most common Western form). Biographical details of many relatively little-known local writers further enhance the overall usefulness of this compendious work.

To the growing band of serious students of the Russian emigration this bibliography will provide a valuable tool and open new research possibilities. Even to the casual reader it presents a rich and varied picture of a living Russian culture, which at this time and place flourished more vigorously than its metropolitan manifestation across the border in Stalin's Soviet Union. School of Slavonic and East European Studies ARNOLD MCMILLIN

University ofLondon

Alexandrov, Vladimir E. Nabokov's Otherworld. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NewJersey, I99I. 270 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $29.95.

PROFESSOR ALEXANDROV is making three main points in this study. Firstly, that Nabokov is essentially a metaphysical not a metaliterary writer, but a writer in whom metaphysics are inseparable from ethics and aesthetics. Secondly, that there is an elusiveness at the core of his works which reflects the ambiguities in his belief in the 'otherworld'. Thirdly, that his thinking is not so

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154 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

un-Russian as emigre critics were fond of suggesting, but has considerable similarity with that of poets and writers of the Silver Age, especially the period from I905 to 19I 7. The case is argued substantially on the evidence of six of the novels (The Defence, Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Lolita and Pale Fire) and three of Nabokov's non-fictional writings: his autobiography, Speak, Memory, and two essays, 'Pouchkine ou le vrai et le vraisemblable' (I 937) and 'The Art of Literature and Commonsense' (pub- lished posthumously, I980).

These points are all valid and valuable, but none of them is as novel or neglected as Alexandrov suggests. In legitimizing his own work, he is unduly dismissive of what he terms the partial, inconclusive findings of a 'handful of earlier investigators' (p. 4). In fact D. BartonJohnson, for one, had already in I98I (in an article 'Belyj and Nabokov: A Comparative Overview', Russian Literature, 9, 4, pp. 379-402) investigated Nabokov's indebtedness to Sym- bolism, and focused on Vera Nabokov's statement (made in her Preface to the edition of her husband's poems, Stikhi, I 979) that potustoronnost' was his main theme. Later, in his book, Worlds in Regression (Ardis, Ann Arbor, I985), Johnson described Nabokov's concern with the hereafter as already 'well- established' in the critical literature (p. 2) and offered a study entirely devoted to the 'two worlds theme'. He also gave a rather less limited choice of texts than does Alexandrov, who claims to be presenting the first book-length study of the subject, and yet does not treat in any detail Nabokov's three last novels in which the theme is most explicit, not even Look at the Harlequins! which contains the poem which introduces the term potustoronnost'.

Nevertheless, aside from these tetchy territorial matters, Alexandrov's study has quite a lot to offer both in the development of the argument and in the readings of the texts. He effectively highlights the importance that artifice in nature has in Nabokov's thinking, demonstrating how the patterning in his fictional texts emerges as imitation of a larger, invisible natural design, and drawing parallels with the views on mimicry in nature of the late nineteenth- century thinker Petr Uspenskii and the theatre director Nikolai Evreinov. He describes with admirable clarity what he calls the 'hermeneutic imperative' (p. 14) at work in Nabokov's fictions - the seductive suggestion that there is an all-embracing meaning to things which may certainly elude the characters, but which tantalizingly does seem to be within the grasp of the attentive reader. His insight into Nabokov's quasi-Gnostic idealism leads him, rightly, to dispute the fashionable trend which places Nabokov directly in the camp of Post-modernists where ambivalence and insufficiency are all, and rather to see affinities with the Symbolists and post-Symbolists. Besides Blok and Belyi he looks to connections with Gumilev - not just for the well-known Acmeist programmatic statement about the poet's attitude to the 'unknowable', but, interestingly, for the image which Gumilev offers of an heroic death, a model for the artist's transcendence over mortality.

The readings of the novels contain a wealth of careful observation. Alexan- drov is particularly successful in illustrating the primacy of the artistic imagination in Nabokov's writing. Imagination can yield 'not mere fantasy but truth' (p. 145) and frequently override the limitations of plain fact. Thus, in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the narrator V. discovers that his imagined

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REVIEWS 155

emotional proximity to Sebastian is as valid as if he had really been near him on his deathbed; thus, in The Gift, Fedor recognizes that it does not really matter that the blue dress that so intrigued him was not in fact Zina's; thus, in Pale Fire, John Shade allows that the misprint of 'fountain' for 'mountain' ('Life Everlasting - based on a misprint') need not disabuse him of the reality of the 'otherworld'. However, one or two of the analyses (that of The Defence, in particular, where we are asked to see chess as the 'pinnacle of the hierarchy of values') are impaired by the author's over-eagerness to demonstrate his thesis, and in the succession of chapters on the six novels there is altogether too much recapitulation, and too little attention paid to the development of the theme of the otherworld in Nabokov's writing as a whole. Lacking this perspective, and lacking an examination of the last novels, this study invites the same judge- ment as Alexandrov himself made of the work of an earlier investigator (p. 252, n. 26): 'thorough, but inconclusive'. And, unwittingly, the printer provides corroboration of this by omitting the final page of the bibliography, leaving us with an entry, on page 265, suspended in mid-sentence. School of Slavonic and East European Studies JANE GRAYSON University ofLondon

Klimenko, Michael. Ehrenburg: An Attempt at a Literary Portrait. American University Studies, Series xii, Slavic Languages and Literature, vol. 7. Peter Lang, New York, Bern, Frankfurt on Main, Paris, I990. X + 273 pp. Appendix. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index of names. ?32.00.

IT is difficult to understand why this book was considered worthy of publi- cation in its present form, for it is very seriously flawed.

It aims 'to present a general descriptive survey and analytical evaluation of Ehrenburg's life and literary work' and to provide 'a foundation and some guidelines' for future research (p. ix). The longest chapter in the book devotes eighty pages to a survey of Erenburg's biography. Other chapters cover his poetry, novels and publicistic works. In general, Erenburg's life and writings are seen to fall into three distinct periods: scepticism until the late I92oS; true faith in Communism until the death of Stalin; and liberal humanism from then on. Much of Professor Klimenko's discussion, however, is conducted at such an uncritical level that one wonders for whom the book was intended. The quality of comment on Erenburg's works rarely rises above that of a modest undergraduate essay. Some chapters, for example 'Features of Style' and 'In Retrospect', are too brief and superficial to be worthwhile.

To make matters worse, the book is badly written and poorly presented, and has clearly not been professionally edited or typeset. Not only is the author's English style rather artless and unpolished, but the text is also littered with errors of spelling and punctuation, and even of vocabulary and syntax. The English definite article is frequently misused, while other inappropriate Russian structures are discernible in places. One example may suffice to demonstrate the book's faults: 'Since the Bolsheviks had emerged victorious, Ehrenburg could not accuse them of betraying Imperial Russia. He thought

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