The gift of the commentator

Detailed, exhaustive comments on national classics are probably one of the most important indicators of the maturity of culture. Back in the 19th century, the great philologist August Buke argued that a significant part of the ancient literature came to us in the comments - the texts of local laws, quotes from poets or philosophical arguments are extracted only from explanations with which ancient grammars supplied exemplary texts. Buke himself created, among other things, the work in which, on the basis of many comments and indirect data, he restored ancient weights and lengths that are different in every city, believing that this is no less contribution to modern civilization than the construction of bridges or railways: after all, knowing how the difference in measures and canons did not prevent the cities with each other, you can better plan modern economic development.

There are eras in which the commentary became the main node of culture or its main sensitivity, a nerve that was not so much changing the structure of culture as revitalizing it after a long vegetation. So, in the era of scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas or William Okam wrote comments on the “maxims” of Peter Lombard, a schematic presentation of theology, and these comments became textbooks for centuries. The commentary of Yuri Lotman to Evgeny Onegin Pushkin also became a textbook on the history of Russian culture for the whole generation, moreover, a kind of rules of new nobility, true evidence that aristocratic customs can become the norm and ideal for the entire national culture. Educated readers in such comments were attracted by a love of details, attention to the living voices of the long -dead, the confrontation of hasty theorizing and the naive use of ready -made ideas. Sometimes they say that Soviet philologists took up a comment from censorship reasons, deprived of the right to open statement in books, that the official genre, like biographical, was safer. But one of the founders of Soviet culture Comment, Pushkinist Boris Tomashevsky defined commenting as a high art of assessment. The Pushkinist must be able to evaluate which of the manuscript versions of Pushkin’s poem is more consistent with the author’s will than Pushkin was inspired, processing the work or going to process that he loved, before which he had a good thing. Then a comment is more than a study of individual examples, it is a reconstruction of the culture of the era.

Alexander Dolinin, professor at the Visconsin University in Madison, a researcher of Nabokov’s work, published a separate book in a vast commentary on the novel “Gift” - the result of many years of work begun by the first Soviet edition of the novel (1989). It was necessary to unravel the numerous riddles of the novel, starting from phonetic games and ending with the reconstruction of the general plot, and at the same time fit into a strictly designated volume. The Soviet commentary on the popular publication in the spirit of “Goethe is the great German poet” was not suitable for this, it was necessary to explain why Nabokov here hidden this episode from Dostoevsky, and openly calls Dostoevsky in another place. Now we see a huge comment, in fact, a study on the work of the Nabokov text. Dolinin read the same thing that Nabokov himself read, and much more, exploring how the novel was possible about the novel. Such inquisitiveness, mapping of large areas and the study of how the living arises and develops, we associate with the natural sciences, even with the work of large centers and laboratories, here one humanitarium did it alone.

Only one example. In the words of Godunov-Cherdyntsev “Little Gemuta Germany”, most critics see sarcasm, Nabokov himself, the very tidy of Germany and the teasing of Russian writers, fascinated by Germany, its romanticism, mythology, and inspiration. As if Nabokov shared with his generation of emigration a disappointment in a country that became a temporary refuge. But Dolinin notes that usually Russian writers, including Westerners, did not like the philistine life of Germany, at the same time for them to be too provincial in comparison with industrial England and closed in comparison with cheerful France or Italy. Godunov-Cherdyntsev’s words are sung by Saltykov-Shchedrin's essay from his book “Abroad”, where the writer praised the purity and order of Germany, referring to the well-being of German villages. Thus, Godunov-Cherdyntsev collapses, as it turns out, not to Germany, but on the idyllic enthusiasm of Russian literature, on the idealization of the village. It is difficult to judge whether the main character of the novel or not, but it is important that the commentary shows not what Nabokov thinks like a person, but how his novel lives. As biology at one time ended with teleology in nature, so Dolinin committed the question “what Nabokov thought when he wrote his novel.”

The output of this comment is all the more important that it is opposed by mythologists, which was subjected to Nabokov after it began to officially print in our country: they saw either an exemplary master and a nobleman, then the Western Snob, the subject of world pride and the world’s indicator of Russian literature of the twentieth century, then the first Russian postmodernist, for whom all previous Russian literature turned into an excess for the game. Having broken these crooked mirrors, Dolinin showed another Nabokov: the history of Russian literature that is problematic and problematizing itself, leading a hidden dialogue not only with Pushkin, but also with symbolists and futurists (for example, sharing the concept of Andrei White about the proximity of the rhythm of poetry and prose, but not turning it into a specialized tool for researching a prose Pushkin), suffering and thin. Thanks to Dolinin Nabokov, he became a classic about the same way as in due time, thanks to the commentary of Sergei Averintsev and Alexander Mikhailov, Dante's “New Life”, Dante, became a classic for the Soviet reader, the creator of the key meanings of culture, and not just the representative of the transitional era between the gloomy Middle Ages and the bright revival, but thanks Classics, not incident of their literary generation. As soon as the philosophical, theological, historical and cultural subtexts and the “literary life” came out, Dante or Akhmatov ceased to be reduced to intracolitural reforms, and they appeared by the creators of the culture of meanings, who taught them to love and suffer in a new way.

“Gift”, as you know, is a metaroman, at the same time a novel and a treatise on how the novel is written, how creative imagination works, how the writer's conscience differs from ordinary habits. It is difficult to comment on such works: it is clear that Nabokov may have references to anything that the then reader knew, to films, Kabaret poems or feuilletons, which are now known only to units of specialists. But it is also certain that Nabokov built his novel as a new stage in the development of Russian literature, in other words, as a novel after the experience of expressionism. Expressionism for Nabokov was also important as a source of then that was already quite formed socialist realism in the USSR, with naturalism, satirism and accessibility to the reader, and as a common spirit of the era, in which the old type writer, a thoughtful writer, alien excesses and effects, have nothing to do. Nabokov’s main problem was how, having dispelled the previous myths about writing, including “left” myths about the direct reflection of reality in the works and emigrant myths about the simple preservation of traditions in exile - not to lose a sensitive writer's soul.

Another example of a subtle commentary: reconstructing the life and death of Chernyshevsky, Nabokov compares the lips of Godunov-Cherdyntsev by the thinness of Chernyshevsky in the coffin, the dark pallor of the skin with the “removal from the cross” of Rembrandt. But Pypin, the philologist and cousin of Chernyshevsky, recalled the “removal from the cross” in the form of reproduction, without indicating the author of the picture, but only the impression. Nabokov notes, Dolinin notes, unites the variant of Rembrandt into one image, where there is a “steepness of the ribs”, and the version of Rubens, where there are “long fingers”: both paintings hang in the Hermitage and should have been memorable to Nabokov since childhood. In other words, the writer corrects both Russian literature and Russian criticism, often feeding on reflections and attributing all the picturesque decisions of this scene of Rembrandt, Nabokov and his hero thereby showed what the witness should be: not the reader of the brochures and the audience of reproductions, but the real natural scientist, expert in museums and collections. This is only one of the hundreds of examples showing that Nabokov’s novel does not so much reflect or rethink Russian literature, but supplement it with rather avant -garde and expressionist moves, direct vision, responsibility and competence.

Alexander Dolinin in his huge book relies on the works of many colleagues, for example, on the achievements of Mandelstaman studies: it turns out that the synthesis of the image of Mandelstam is not so far from many stylistic experiments of Nabokov. After all, both of them knew how to talk about the unpleasant, but at the same time show how to talk about it. He also indicates that the protagonist of Dara, Alter Ego of Nabokov himself, learned not only poetics, but also the theory of poetry of Russian Symbolists, and if Andrei Bely spoke about “baskets” as deviations from the metric scheme, then a shaky tower of baskets, which balances on the stick, will certainly become one of the metaphors of the poetic gift. And there are thousands of such observations in the book!

I want to supplement the comment very rarely, based on the constantly going out articles about Nabokov’s intertexts, for example, when Nabokov mentions the allegedly existing film “Eine alte Geschichte”, called a quote from Heine about love and death, is it necessary to see the reference only to Bazarov’s words “The old thing death”? Maybe these are words from the Protestant hymns about the Bible and the cruel films about the love of “Old Story”: then this means that the cinema replaced the gospel for modern man. But to prove that this would be appropriate in the style of Nabokov, at the modern level of development of naborets, it is impossible yet. Perhaps, in the parody of Kesibir, there is a reference not only to the satirical novel by Gabriele Tergit about the Duto of the genius “Cesebir conquers Elector (1931), but also to the Sorenian work of Jean-Paul Richter“ Zibenkez ”, the Great example of romantic irony?

And is it not heard in the name of the Soviet chess player P. Mitrofanov from Tver the hint not only at Fonvizinsky Mitrofanushka, but also on the attempt of Soviet writers to compete with Pushkin, which means that the Pushkin’s “Belvedere Mitrofan”, and maybe if Nabokov knew this, who wrote under the pseudonym “Mitrofan Gorotnya”? But this is a matter of future generations of commentators.

So far, Alexander Dolinin’s commentary, tracing everything from Tram tickets to routes along Berlin, from school readers of poetry to names of butterflies, from stamps of the liberal press to gastronomic habits, remains exemplary and necessary for everyone who wants to understand how the literature of the twentieth century is arranged. “Dar” is a novel about immortality, a life on life in contrast to literary cliches, about the possibility of continuing the life of both the writer’s dream and, in reality, literature. The commentary of Alexander Dolinin, directly calling anything from the metaphysics of the novel, made it possible to understand and comprehend it all.

Alexander Markov,
doct. Filol. sciences