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Nabokov Studies, 1 (1994), 69-82.
D. BARTON JOHNSON (Santa Barbara, CA, U.S.A.)
THE NABOKOV-SARTRE CONTROVERSY
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)were, in their very different ways, leading figures on the Western intellec-tual scene during the middle decades of the twentieth century. The twomen held radically divergent views of the world, and it is not surprisingthat they came into conflict. Their dispute arose from Sartre's 1939 review of Nabokov's novel Despair and expanded, at least on Nabokov'spart, to an attack on Sartre's views of literature, politics, and, ultimately,philosophy. While the Nabokov-Sartre controversy is less well knownthan the Nabokov-Wilson feud, it was no less elegantly acidulous. BrianBoyd and Andrew Field briefly discuss the Nabokov-Sartre exchange intheir books, as does Simon Karlinsky in his notes to the Nabokov-Wilsoncorrespondence and in a subsequent essay.' Both of the protagonistshave published and republished their contributions.2 My purpose is togather and summarize the available information and to suggest that anearly Nabokov story may have some relevance to the imbroglio.
In 1926 Nabokov wrote a short story called "Uzhas" or "Terror"about a world suddenly devoid of meaning.3 The first person poet-narra-tor is nameless, as is his mistress, the only other character of consequence. There is no dialogue. Events take place in a nameless Russiancity, and in an equally anonymous non-Russian city, all set in a featureless
3. Vladimir Nabokov, "Uzhas," in Sovremennye zapiski (Paris), No. 30 (Jan. 1927), pp.214-20; Terror," in Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975),pp. 113-21. Page citations to Nabokov's works in the text of the article refer to both theRussian and the English versions, e.g. (R201/E118).
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present. The Russian poet-narrator tells of earlier, brief episodes of exis-tential estrangement. He has survived these, thanks, in part to his relation-ship with his beloved mistress whose gay simplicity seemingly protectshim from the abyss of a stark, unmediated reality. The narrator's affairsrequire a solitary business trip abroad. On the fifth sleepless day, he goesout for a stroll. His head feels as if it were made of glass. On the street hesuddenly sees "the world ... as it actually is" (R201/E118). Houses, trees,cars, people have all lost any connection with ordinary life: "My line ofcommunication with the world snapped, I was on my own and theworld was on its own, and that worid was devoid of sense. I saw the ac-tual essence of all things" (R202/E119). Floundering to regain his former,habitual "reality," he feels he is "no longer a man but a naked eye, an aim-less glance moving in an absurd world" (R203/E120). At that momenthe receives a telegram telling him that his mistress is dying. His existentialtenor instantly vanishes in the face of simple human grief. He travels backto her bedside, where she dies without regaining consciousness. Herdeath has saved him, but what is to protect him now?4
Hayden Carruth's "Introduction" to Nausea provides necessarybackground (ix). The "essence" of an object is everything that permits usto recognize it Not only does this include obvious features such as size,weight, texture, color, but also function and history, all of which defineobjects in the human context. The "existence" of an object is simply thatit is—quite apart from its perceptual qualities, its past or anything that
4. For an analysis of the philosophical antecedents of this story and a survey of priordiscussions, see D. Barton Jonnson, ""terror': Pre-texts and Post-texts," in A Small AlpineForm: Studies in Nabokov's Short Fiction, ed. Charles Nicol and G. Barabtarlo (New York:Garland, 1993), pp. 39-64.
5. Ronald Hayman, Sartre. A Life (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1987), p. 108.6. Ibid., pp. 132-33.7. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, tr. Uoyd Alexander, intro. by Hayden Carruth (New York:New Directions, 1969). Quotes in the text of my article are from this English translation and
Hayden Carruth's "Introduction."
The Nabokov-Sartre Controversy 71
gives it meaning. Perception of objects thus stripped of their humanizingessence ends in existential horror and the "nausea" of Sartre's title. In thenovel's most famous scene, the distraught Roquentin collapses on a parkbench under a chestnut tree. He notices the black root of the tree by hisfoot.
I couldn't remember it was a root any more. The words had van-ished and with them the significance of things, their methods ofuse, and the feeble points of reference which men have tracedon their surface. I was sitting, stooping forward, head bowed,alone in front of this black, knotty mass, entirely beastly, whichfrightened me. Then I had this vision.... Never until these last fewdays, had I understood the meaning of "existence."... And thenall of a sudden, there it was, as clear as day: existence had sud-denly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstractcategory: it was the very paste of things,.... Or rather the root thepark gates, the bench, the sparse grass, all that had vanished: thediversity of things, their individuality, were only an appearance, aveneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses,all in disorder—naked, in a frightful, obscene nakedness (126-27).
Like Nabokov's hero, Roquentin struggles to find words to express hisloathsome vision (129 & 131). The entire world becomes ooze: "I wasnowhere, I was floating. I was not surprised, I knew it was the world, thenaked world suddenly revealing itself, and I choked with rage at thisgross absurd being" (134). Partially recovering from his vastation,Roquentin visits his ex-wife, but this proves ineffectual. The novel ends in-determinately with a hint that perhaps art, specifically a novel, shall beRoquentin's mode of accommodation with existence.
Before proceeding, we must pause for a clarification. Sartre's hero isclearly undergoes the same experience as Nabokov's, but this is somewhat confused by matters of philosophical terminology and translation.Sartre, the philosopher, is using "essence" and "existence" in the technicalsense described above. Nabokov's term "essence" is his translation ofthe Russian periphrastic [mir]...kakov on est' na samom dele" (202), i.e.,'[the world] as it is in actual fact' Thus Nabokov's "essence" is identicalwith Sartre's stark "existence."
The hom'fying existential illumination that Sartre assigns to his hero isloosely derived from an incident in his own life that he described in a1931 letter to his companion Simone De Beauvoir: "...I looked at thetree. It was beautiful, and I have no hesitation in setting down two factsvital to my biography: it was at Burgos that I understood what a cathe-
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dral is, and at Le Havre what a tree is. Unfortunately, I am not sure whatkind of tree it was."" He enclosed a sketch and asked De Beauvoir toidentify what was apparently a chestnut tree. Nabokov would have beenperversely amused, for Sartre's blind eye to the natural world, both realand metaphoric, evokes that of Nikolai Chernyshevsky, the myopic utili-tarian social and literary critic, whom Nabokov considered the bad seedin nineteenth century Russia's cultural and political development.Nabokov had recently incorporated into his novel The Gift a mockingbiography of Chernyshevsky in which the radical martyr's myopia andignorance of nature were a central metaphor.
Sartre's preface not only cites Nabokov as a forerunner of the anti-novel but exalts Nabokov's fellow ex-Russian, Nathalie Sarraute, for precisely those qualities that he had condemned in his 1939 review ofDespair. Apparently Sarraute's parodie detective story succeeds whereNabokov's had failed. Her "stumbling, groping style, with its honesty andmisgivings" creates a psychology of "authenticity" that Nabokov hadpresumably failed to achieve. Nonetheless, Sartre's view of Nabokovwas apparently changing for the better. He was important as a predeces-sor, although not an innovator.
Nabokov's friend Edmund Wilson had meanwhile become interestedin Sartre and had done a New Yorker review essay of the novel, The Ageof Reason, accompanied by a discussion of Existentialism.'7 Nabokovwrote Wilson that he had liked the essay.'· The following April, Wilsoninquired whether Nabokov had seen the republished Sartre review ofDespair.19 The published correspondence does not contain Nabokov'sanswer, if any, but on June 1 Wilson writes that he is sending the Sartre.
17. Edmund Wilson, "Jean-Paul Sartre: The Novelist and the Existentialist," The NewYorker, Aug. 2 1947; rpt. in Edmund Wilson, Classics and Commercials (New York: Farrar,Straus, 1950), pp. 393-403.
18. Karlinsky, Letters, p. 192.19./bid., p. 198.20. Nabokov, "Sartre's First Try," pp. 3 & 19.
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of the review is devoted to making fun of Sartre's misapprehensionsabout Sophie Tucker's "Some of these Days," and to complaints aboutthe translation which, if nothing else, show that Nabokov had examinedthe French text.
Nabokov's modest reputation continued to grow slowly until theAmerican publication of Lolita in 1958 when he, like Sartre, became apublic figure. Nabokov now returned to the attack. A 1962 letter to theLondon Times objected strongly to the unauthorized use of Nabokov'sname in the program of the Edinburgh International Festival Writers'Conference. Nabokov was appalled to find himself listed alongside llyaEhrenburg, Bertrand Russell, and Jean-Paul Sartre "with whom I would notconsent to take part in any festival or conference whatsoever."21
Nabokov's opportunity for a major riposte came with the Americanreissue of Despair.24 Nabokov's "Introduction," dated March 1, 1965,tacitly devotes two of its ten paragraphs to M. Sartre (8-9). AlthoughSartre's name does not appear in the text, Nabokov is obviouslyresponding to the Frenchman's 1939 review: "Despair, in kinship with therest of my books, has no social comment to make, no message to bringin its teeth. It does not uplift the spiritual organ of man, nor does it showhumanity the right exit." The allusion to Sartre's play No Exit is un-mistakable. After dismissing Freudians and critics who will discover "theinfluence of German Impressionists," whom the Germanless Nabokovhad never read, he continues: "On the other hand, I do know French andshall be interested to see if anyone calls my Hermann 'the father of exis-
21. Page, Nabokov, pp. 7-9 & 23.22. Harvey and Heseltine, Oxford Companion, pp. 662 & 576.23. Nabokov, Strong Opinions, p. 212.24. Vladimir Nabokov, Despair (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965).
Sartre returned to haunt Nabokov once again in Edmund Wilson'sfamous review of the Eugene Onegin translation.25 Wilson did not ap-prove of Nabokov's literalist approach to Pushkin's masterpiece: giventhe inventiveness and virtuosity of Nabokov's English style, his bald, un-rhymed translation can be explained only as perversity: "... one suspectsthat his perversity here has been exercised in curbing his brilliance; that—with his sado-masochistic Dostoevskian tendencies so acutely noted bySartre — he seeks to torture both the reader and himself by flatteningPushkin out and denying to his own powers the scope for their full play."The critic could scarcely found a more effective way of outragingNabokov.
Wilson's July 1965 resurrection of Sartre's comment seems to havefallen on fertile soil. At the end of October the English translation of TheEye appeared.26 One of the most substantial reviews was by StephenKoch in The Nation.27 Nabokov is caught in the tension between"modernity and nostalgia." Although admiring in some ways, the review isultimately dismissive, holding Nabokov to be "a virtuoso, rather than anoriginal genius." In an attempt to locate Nabokov historically, Koch citesSartre's introduction to Portrait d'un inconnu in which the philosopherspeaks of novels that demote plot and character to mere technical devices while their subject matter becomes fiction itself. Sartre is, Kochthinks, "at least partly right" in assigning Nabokov to this dubious cate
25. Edmund Wilson, The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov," The New YorkReview of Books, July 15, 1965, pp. 3-6; revised rpt. in Edmund Wilson, A Window onRussia (New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1972), pp. 209-37.
26. Juliar, Vladimir Nabokov, pp. 87-88.27. Stephen Koch, Rev. of The Eye. The Nation. Jan. 17, 1966, pp. 81-82; rpt in Page,
Nabokov, pp. 183-87.
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gory. Like Sartre in his review of Despair, Koch sees Nabokov's chieftheme as self-consciousness. Although Koch does not refer to the on-go-ing Eugene Onegin feud between Nabokov and Wilson, the latter's recent reference to Sartre may well have caught the reviewer's eye. Or per-haps he may have noticed that The Eye shares certain thematic concernswith Sartre's No Exit.
Nabokov's connection with the Sartrean category of the "anti-novel"came up again in a 1970 interview in which Nabokov commented uponseveral French writers, including Nathalie Sarraute.28 The interviewer,Alfred Appel, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, posed the following question:
"The New French Novel does not really exist apart from a littleheap of dust and fluff in a fouled pigeonhole." When pressed forhis opinion about Sartre's remark, he added: "I'm immune to anykind of opinion and I just don't know what an 'anti-novel' isspecifically. Every original novel is 'anti-' because it does not resemble the genre or kind of its predecessor" (173).
Given the time of the interview just a year after the publication of Ada,that lush portrait of Antiterra, one might wonder whether Ada is, in part,Nabokov's massive response to the French New Novel and to his oldarch-enemy to whom he refers later in the interview as "that... awful M.Sartre" (175).29 That Ada is permeated with French subtexts has beenadmirably shown by Annapaola Cancogni's The Mirage in the Mirror:
Nabokov's Ada and Its French Pretexts, but these subtexts are from theFrench Romantic and Realist traditions rather than the New Novel.30Perhaps Ada is an "anti-anti-novel"?
The controversy was over much more than personal and political dif-ferences. It was ultimately philosophical. To put the matter in existentialistterms, Nabokov was a writer of essences, those sensual textures that en-rich the world; Sartre—a writer of existences, an abstract universe lackinghuman features. In his early story, "Terror," Nabokov graphically por-trayed existential terror arising from "the world as it is," an idea that antic-ipates much of Sartre's work, French Existentialism, and the French NewNovel. For Nabokov, the image was just that—an artistic speculation.Moreover, it was one that ran counter to the general tenor of his work. Inany case, it is virtually certain that Sartre never saw the story. There wasapparently no contemporary French translation. Sartre did not knowRussian, and although the story reportedly appeared in a German transla-tion in 1928,32 it is most unlikely that he encountered it. On the other
30. New York: Garland, 1985.31. Hayman, 5ar£re, pp. 89 & 92-93.32. Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1990), p. 262.
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hand, Appel's hypothesis about the role of Despair in the French NewNovel may have some merit as may the thought that Ada is a reaction tothat "school."33
Nabokov and Sartre were polar opposites in almost every respect.The oddity is that they shared at least one central idea. Both men agreedon the primacy of consciousness and fiercely held man capable of freechoice.