Vladimir Nabokov: Glory

[Peder]

Was that what Nabokov was trying to put across? So many in the emigre community may have felt just that.

Pontalba,
And that is probably the most convincing of your convincing surmises for why Nabokov would choose such a topic for publication to an emigre community. Anti-Soviet books went over rather well in the US during the height of the Cold WAr. So I think you get a big y - e - s on that one!
Peder

And what is that striking new avatar that I have been noticing?
P.

 

[pontalba]

Great Minds and all that...

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba,
And what is that striking new avatar that I have been noticing?
P.

LOL, Lost in Cornwall, Mud Maiden...

 

[Peder]

LOL, Lost in Cornwall, Mud Maiden...

Pontalba,
Neat! Somehow it seems appropriate for a late-night reader.
Or the morning after.
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Yeah, I love the colors of it and just the idea.

 

[Peder]

Pontalba,
I just can't let go of Sonia.
Apart from the main line of Martin's story, there are so many other fascinating scenes crammed into Glory also. For example, he returns to Berlin in the Spring to visit Sonia (p.151)

As he entered her room he said, (being anxious to express it before the familiar frustrating effect of her lustreless eyes had reasserted it self): "Like this, like this, I shall return some day, and then, ah, then -----"
"There'll never be anything," she excalimed in the tones of Pushkin's Naina ("Hero, I still do not love thee")

The message is clear enough, but what impresses me is the manner.
Martin comes in expressing a heroic thought poetically, and very nicely I thought, and Sonia responds with an actual line from a poem by Pushkin!
Any girl who can recite poetry is not nothing, I don't think. But moreover, here is another indication, in addition to Zoorland, that in some very real sense Martin and Sonia had kindred spirits within themselves. That two people could communicate through poetic allusions strikes me as very rare and something special.*
In another scene, she kisses him on the bridge of the nose and tells him he is very sweet. So she could also at least see that much in him, even if she preferered a different boy-friend at the time (the pompous fool Bubinov, I think).
And then of course there is the final scene where she instinctively grasps the situation and breaks down inconsolably.

What just was the matter that they couldn't get together?

And of course Martin's mother adored her.
So why couldn't they defy Nabokov and like each other?
I always wish for happy endings.
Peder

*Vera recited Vladimir's poetry to him on their first date and she had him for life.
P

 

[pontalba]

Pontalba,
*Vera recited Vladimir's poetry to him on their first date and she had him for life.
P

Thats exactly what I thought of at the time!

I suppose Martin was not outwardly dramatic enough for Sonia, and it wasn't until she realized she'd lost him that she wanted him. She assumed he would always be there at her beck and call. She told him to leave her alone, and probably meant it at the time, but not in the long run. Oh!, I don't think Sonia thought at all, or knew what she wanted. Thats pretty obvious.

 

[pontalba]

Now, Darwin was the most steadfast of friends. Sonia used him badly IMO, just as she used Bubnov. She gave Bubnov the Zoorland story, and Martin thought to himself upon seeing the story in the Russian emigre paper

"How treacherous she is, after all," Martin reflected and in a surge of acute and hopeless jealousy recalled having once observed Bubnov and her walking arm in arm down a dark street; and how he had tried to believe what she told him on the following day--that she had gone to the movies with the Veretennikov girl.

Even with Sonia in the picture between Darwin and Martin, Darwin did not fail his friend. He tried to stop Martin, but no one could have. Perhaps Sonia, but that was it.

 

[Peder]

She told him to leave her alone, and probably meant it at the time, but not in the long run.

Pontalba
That sounds like it could fit. No mere man could understand that.
VN just didn't give us enough to go on to know what made her tick. Or even enough to know just what Martin, or Darwin, saw in her either. From Sonia until he wrote Lolita, though, it sounds like he learned a lot about how to write a heartbreaker female. And also a man consumed by passion for a girl. Adding it up more and more, it sounds like the distance between Glory and Lolita , at least with respect to describing their main characters.
Peder

 

[Peder]

Now, Darwin was the most steadfast of friends. Sonia used him badly IMO, just as she used Bubnov. She gave Bubnov the Zoorland story, and Martin thought to himself upon seeing the story in the Russian emigre paper

Even with Sonia in the picture between Darwin and Martin, Darwin did not fail his friend. He tried to stop Martin, but no one could have. Perhaps Sonia, but that was it.

Pontalba,
Hmm, your comments remind me that I should really reread those final pages to get them more clearly in mind. But yes Darwin was definitely his friend.
Peder

 

[Peder]

Time to pull the plug and take the evening walk.
See you all tomorrow.
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Right-o.

 

[pontalba]

When Martin visits Sonia for the last time, he doesn't really know what to hope. He is actually surprised to see her at home, where she has stayed for the day from work due to a headache. Her welcome is a bit on the mocking side and poor Martin only thinks her adorable. (Oh brother!) He gives her the lie about his Berlin stay and she tells him...

"You've lost your good looks," said Sonia meditatively. "And there's something coarse about your face--maybe its the tan." "I've wandered all over southern France," Martin said huskily, "worked on farms, lived like a bum, and, on Sundays, got dressed up and went to Monte Carlo for a bit of good time.

All Sonia can do is complain about "the ancestors" and Irina. Oh!, but she cheers up when she hears Darwin is in town, probably hopes she can set Darwin and Martin against each other again (IMHO).

"Oh, do bring him! You absolutely must, it would be such fun."

I bet she enjoys pulling the wings from flies too. Oh worse luck, Darwin is engaged, and Sonia has some really lovely (not!) things to say about Darwin's imagined fiancee...

".....I can imagine her so well: tall, eyes like saucers, and her mother just like her, only leaner and ruddier. Poor Darwin!"

Meooowww! Martin is about to spill the beans to Sonia, when her father comes home. After dinner, upon leaving, Sonia again finds it necessary to criticize him...

"I don't like your hat," she remarked. "They don't wear them like that anymore?" "Proshchay," said Martin, and skillfully grabbing Sonia pushed his lips against her bared teeth, her cheek, the tender part behind her ear, then let her go (she backed away and almost fell), and quickly left, involuntarily slamming the door.

So. The last time they see each other. No wonder she breaks down upon learning Martin was missing. Too little, too late.

A little later we find from another source that Sonia has broken off her relationship with Bubnov, but what surprised me was that Martin did not make more of that knowledge. He does visit Bubnov, but thats another post.

 

[pontalba]

Actually, I was wondering if there was a bit of Nabokov in Bubnov...he is a writer for an emigre newspaper, and Martin mentions that he has read another of Bubnov's novellas that uses elements of Martin's visit to Bubnov that day.

...Bubnov, though seemingly engrossed in his grief, had appropriated as would a deft thief who wipes his tears with one hand while removing a man's watch with the other.

Darwin had moved on and grown up. Martin felt the loss terrifically, but tells Darwin the truth of his "adventure". Darwin really tried to get Martin to see the foolishness of the quest and failing that, refused to believe the truth of it.

"So long," said Martin but Darwin did not respond. "So long," Martin repeated. "Nonsense, it can't be true," thought Darwin...........For some time there endured an amusing silence. At last Darwin laughed softly and turned his head. But there was nobody in the room.

Martin had disappeared from their lives, without anyone taking particular note, or any fanfare. In the end, he almost had not existed.
Except for the feelings engendered by his absence and final loss.
What really surprised me was that Darwin kept his peace about the whole thing, and actually mailed the postcards as requested for three weeks!!! For someone as sensible as Darwin appeared to have become, its almost impossible for me to accept that........blindness.

 

[pontalba]

Peder wrote

And of course Martin's mother adored her.

(meaning Sonia).
However on Martin's last visit to her, Sofia

was tormented by the thought that perhaps the Zilanov girl did not love Martin enough and would make a bad wife for him.

Sofia was so upset about Martin leaving, and kept trying to find excuses for putting off his departure, or his not leaving at all.

In the roomy entrance hall downstairs stood Mrs. Edelweiss, her hands thrust into the pockets of her raincoat, and hummed as was her wont in moments of stress. "Hadn't you better stay at home?" she said as Martin came down. "Really, why go away?"

Vibes.

 

[pontalba]

From Sonia until he wrote Lolita, though, it sounds like he learned a lot about how to write a heartbreaker female. And also a man consumed by passion for a girl. Adding it up more and more, it sounds like the distance between Glory and Lolita , at least with respect to describing their main characters.
Peder

Absolutely! The difference between Martin and Humbert is measured in light years! And I don't only mean morally. I am taking the emotional baggage into account. You know even from Arthur to Humbert is measured in light years when you think about it.

The emotional baggage that Humbert carries is tangible and actually palpable. Martin's character is almost sterile by comparison.

 

[Peder]

Martin had disappeared from their lives, without anyone taking particular note, or any fanfare. In the end, he almost had not existed.

Pontalba,
Your posts convince me I have to reread the final pages, but your comment above really strikes home. Previously Martin was 'around' and his relationships a mixed bag - Darwin a friend, Sonia not quite an enemy but uninterested and, for a while, the social cricle that he fell into through Sonia during one stay in Berlin when he saw her quite frequently. But at the end, from your posts it sounds as if, when it counts, he can't even break through and convince people that he should be taken seriously even when he tries his hardest. If so, that would have probably downgraded even further any thoughts he had of the worth of returning.

As an after thought, add one more point in Sonia's favor. She could be sensible -- sometimes. Earlier, when Martin tried to impress her by mentioning a connection with the counter-revolutionaries (which he exaggerated for effect), her response was quite the sensible and accurate one -- paraphrased, that "if you are really getting into acrivities like that, then you had best not be talking so freely about them with anyone." Carrying the thought further, that was probably what made it easy for Gruzinov to sniff out his charade and advise that Martin's 'friend' should abandon his project and stay home. Martin simply sounded like an amateur (which he was). That being the case his chances for survivng were plummeting even further as we read. So reading back, and in retrospect, the 'surprise' ending to the book can, in one sense, hardly be called a surprise. It is Nabokov's mastery that runs us right off the cliff.

See next post,
Peder

 

[Peder]

Pontalba, SIL, Breaca
So what did happen to our hero who tried so hard during his entire life?

I think that Nabokov tells us quite clearly, even though we probably go right by it on first reading. Consider his encounter in the forest one evening (p15)

There was also that night, that warm Crimean night, with the blue-black of cypresses, when on his way home from Adreiz, where Lida's family lived, a human shape abruptly appeared at a turn of the flinty path that led to the highway, and a deep voice asked, "Who goes there?" Martin noticed with chagrin that his heart missed a beat.....and in the gleam of moonlight, Martin noticed that he [the man] was holding a large revolver in his hand.

Later on, think about Martin's mother in her despair (p100)

In later years when she remembered her relief [at the Crimean fighting being over] and her calm, Mrs. Edelweiss groaned aloud -- oh yes she could have preserved him, should not have so easily dismissed her forebodings, been more observant, been more on the lookout ....But why harbor such thoughts, why give in to depair? More courage, more faith. People do get lost and then come back. A rumor may circulate that someone has been seized at the border and shot as a spy, yet, all at once, there he is, alive, with his familiar laugh and deep voice, right there in the entry hall.

It breaks one's heart to reread her bereavement.

But has not Nabokov told us the end of the story?

Martin walked along the winding path through the Latvian wood to the border and crossed over, when suddenly and quite unexpectedly he was confronted by an armed border guard with a rifle aimed straight at his heart. He quickly realized the futility of his situation, braced himself bravely and in that moment took a bullet through his chest, knowing he was dying courageously.

And whY?

For that most simple and elemental of human desires that he carried with him his whole life, ever since hearing it for the first time from his mother in the Story of Ruslan --the desire to get the girl, marry her and live happily ever after.

He was Ruslan, and he died a hero's death.

At least, so it seems to me,
Peder

 

[pontalba]

Whilst mucking about for more on the Story of Ruslan, I came across this site. The pictures are gorgeous!!! Ya gotta click on them to get the full detail. http://www.arco-iris.com/George/r_n_l.htm

Peder Somewhere you mentioned that Ruslan's "occidental brother" actually meaning (probably) that Martin had read and heard the tales in English instead of the Russian. Thats probably the case. Right after that reference in the book, p.4--

But then what does it matter whence comes the gentle nudge that jars the soul into motion and sets it rolling, doomed never again to stop?

And the very passage you quote above regarding Mrs. Edelweiss' grief was the one that made my stomach knot and the end was evident. I'd just forgotten rolleyes: ) exactly what had upset me.

 

[Peder]

Clarification.

To all,
In rereading my earier post it seems to me I could have been clearer, and should have made it explicitly clear, that the following passages in my earlier post were my own conjecture about Martin's ultimate fate, answering my own rhetorical question based on the two quoted paragraphs from Glory.

But has not Nabokov told us the end of the story?

Martin walked along the winding path through the Latvian wood to the border and crossed over, when suddenly and quite unexpectedly he was confronted by an armed border guard with a rifle aimed straight at his heart. He quickly realized the futility of his situation, braced himself bravely and in that moment took a bullet through his chest, knowing he was dying courageously.

And whY?

For that most simple and elemental of human desires that he carried with him his whole life, ever since hearing it for the first time from his mother in the Story of Ruslan --the desire to get the girl, marry her and live happily ever after.

He was Ruslan, and he died a hero's death.

That all just seemed natural to me to suppose, in view of the possible prefigurings that Nabokov worked into the early text. And, anyway, it satisfies my romantic ideas for an ending, once he doesn't return.

Other sections of the text might of course be selected that would suggest different outcomes. Everyone is free to speculate, and perhaps dream like Martin. I think such wondering helps pull the overall story together and make sense of it, something this story needs IMO.

So, enjoy speculating,
And please share,
Peder