A 1964 diary in which Vladimir Nabokov recorded more than 50 of his dreams – ranging from the erotic to the violent to the surreal – is about to be published for the first time.
The author, who struggled with insomnia all his life, began the dream diary after reading the British philosopher John Dunne’s An Experiment With Time, in which he advances a theory that dreams can sometimes be inspired by future events.
According to the Nabokov expert Gennady Barabtarlo, a professor of literature at the University of Missouri who has compiled and edited the diary, Nabokov’s experiment “followed the pedantic guidelines he found in the singularly rum and once very influential little book by John Dunne, an eccentric British philosopher of genius”.
“The chief object was to prove that in dreamland, that twilight zone between material and spiritual realms, timeflow goes backwards as it were, from effect to cause,” said Barabtarlo. “To give a rough example: the evening paper brings the news that in New York a Muslim ploughed into a crowd in a lorry. You vaguely remember your dream last night and check the record: indeed, you saw yourself on a tricycle hurtling downhill trying desperately, but failing, to avoid hitting a girl you knew in college. According to Dunne’s theory, it wasn’t your dream that previewed the actual event but the reverse – it was that horrific event that led to your dreaming that dream the night before. Nabokov was keenly interested in this theory and its ramifications and set out to put it to trial in that 1964 experiment.”
According to the Nabokov expert Gennady Barabtarlo, a professor of literature at the University of Missouri who has compiled and edited the diary, Nabokov’s experiment “followed the pedantic guidelines he found in the singularly rum and once very influential little book by John Dunne, an eccentric British philosopher of genius”.
“The chief object was to prove that in dreamland, that twilight zone between material and spiritual realms, timeflow goes backwards as it were, from effect to cause,” said Barabtarlo. “To give a rough example: the evening paper brings the news that in New York a Muslim ploughed into a crowd in a lorry. You vaguely remember your dream last night and check the record: indeed, you saw yourself on a tricycle hurtling downhill trying desperately, but failing, to avoid hitting a girl you knew in college. According to Dunne’s theory, it wasn’t your dream that previewed the actual event but the reverse – it was that horrific event that led to your dreaming that dream the night before. Nabokov was keenly interested in this theory and its ramifications and set out to put it to trial in that 1964 experiment.”
For a period of 80 days, the author of Lolita wrote down everything he could remember of his dreams as soon as he woke up, amassing 118 index cards recording 64 dreams. The text is reproduced in the book Insomniac Dreams, alongside material placing the experiment in the context of his life and writing.
The results were inconclusive, Barabtalo continued, particularly as “in several instances Nabokov failed to notice a staring similarity between his dream’s plotline and that of his earlier fiction, Russian or English”.
In one example, Nabokov declares an “incontestable success” in his experiment when he has the “absolutely clear feeling” that a dream set in a museum was inspired by a film he saw on television three days later. In the dream, Nabokov listens to a museum director while absentmindedly eating samples of rare soils which he had taken to be “some kind of dusty insipid pastry”.
“What he fails to register,” Barabtalo writes in Insomniac Dreams, “is that his dream distinctly and closely followed two scenes in his 1939 short story The Visit to the Museum: the dreamlike encounter of the narrator with the museum’s director in his office, and the odd exhibits in the local museum that looked like spherical soil samples, the chief subject of his dream.”
A scattering of the dreams has been published before, but Barabtalo said he had wanted to bring out a complete edition ever since coming across the cards in a thick ring-binder containing some drafts for Nabokov’s 1969 novel, Ada or Ardour. “The 1964 experiment, and the lines of thoughts it bred, seem to have engendered the kernel from which Nabokov’s largest novel, Ada, was to evolve next, for its foundational section, part four, is a tract on the ‘texture of time’.”
The results were inconclusive, Barabtalo continued, particularly as “in several instances Nabokov failed to notice a staring similarity between his dream’s plotline and that of his earlier fiction, Russian or English”.
In one example, Nabokov declares an “incontestable success” in his experiment when he has the “absolutely clear feeling” that a dream set in a museum was inspired by a film he saw on television three days later. In the dream, Nabokov listens to a museum director while absentmindedly eating samples of rare soils which he had taken to be “some kind of dusty insipid pastry”.
“What he fails to register,” Barabtalo writes in Insomniac Dreams, “is that his dream distinctly and closely followed two scenes in his 1939 short story The Visit to the Museum: the dreamlike encounter of the narrator with the museum’s director in his office, and the odd exhibits in the local museum that looked like spherical soil samples, the chief subject of his dream.”
A scattering of the dreams has been published before, but Barabtalo said he had wanted to bring out a complete edition ever since coming across the cards in a thick ring-binder containing some drafts for Nabokov’s 1969 novel, Ada or Ardour. “The 1964 experiment, and the lines of thoughts it bred, seem to have engendered the kernel from which Nabokov’s largest novel, Ada, was to evolve next, for its foundational section, part four, is a tract on the ‘texture of time’.”
Nabokov always seemed to be going and coming in his work. These two examples date from the period shortly after the dream diary, though one had its origins decades earlier:
Nabokov, Vladimir, Glory (McGraw Hill, 1st ed., 1971). ISBN 07-045733-6. First published in Russian in 1932, Nabokov and his son, Dmitri, translated it into English for this edition. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, very good condition. A dress rehearsal for his memoir, Speak, Memory, it tells the story of a young Russian emigre in England who then returns to the new Soviet Union. HBB price $50 obo.
Nabokov, Vladimir, Quartet (Phaedra Publications, 1st ed., August 15, 1966). LOC 66-28101. In a long, January 1966 review in The New Republic, John Appel, Jr. noted,
Now in his sixty-seventh year, Vladimir Nabokov is suddenly upon us. Of course, he was here all along, but his oeuvre was like an iceberg, the massive body of his Russian novels, stories, plays, and poems remaining untranslated and out of sight, lurking beneath the visible peaks of Lolita (1955), Pnin (1957), and Pale Fire (1962). In the last eight years, however, six of his books in Russian have been translated and three out of print novels reissued. Nabokov's own translation of Lolita into Russian and a collation of stories known as Nabokov's Quartet appeared quietly this autumn…” These four stories, two published in the U.S. for the first time, show the master in top form. Hardcover, unclipped dust jacket, white end papers, boards covered in a rough printed cloth pattern with the author’s signature on the lower right front cover. 8.75” x 5.5”, 104 pp. Very good condition. HBB price: $100 obo.
*****
Henry Bemis Books is one man’s attempt to bring more diversity and quality to a Charlotte-Mecklenburg market of devoted readers starved for choices. Our website is at www.henrybemisbookseller.blogspot.com. Henry Bemis Books is also happy to entertain reasonable offers on items in inventory; for pricing on this or others items, kindly private message us. Shipping is always free to US locations; local buyers are welcome to drop by and pick up their purchases at our location off Peachtree Road in Northwest Charlotte if they like. We accept electronic payments via Facebook Messenger, powered by Stripe.
We offer 25% off to fellow dealers.
What’s your favorite social media outlet? We’re blogging at www.henrybemisbookseller.blogspot. com. We tweet as Henry Bemis Books. Have you liked us on Facebook yet? Henry Bemis Books is there, too. And Google+!
You can also see Henry’s alter ego, Lindsay Thompson, on a three weekly Facebook Live programs: Rare Book Cafe, a 2:30-3:30 pm EDT Saturday panel show about books; Book Week- Rare Book Cafe’s weekly Thursday noon news program (both on Rare Book Cafe’s Facebook page); and Gallimaufry, an occasional program about literary history on Henry Bemis Books’ Facebook page.
#FirstEditions #HenryBemisBooks #Charlotte
No comments:
Post a Comment
We enjoy hearing from visitors! Please leave your questions, thoughts, wish lists, or whatever else is on your mind.