Subject
RJ: THAT IN ALEPPO ONCE ... (fwd)
Date
Body
EDITORIAL NOTE. Roy Johnson <Roy@mantex.demon.co.uk> continues his series
of essays on VN's short stories. I would note that Johnson's final
paragraph raises a theme that merits particular discussion. Your
comments are invited. If you are following this series and wish to do some
pleasant "homework," read "A Forgotten Poet" for next week's presentation.
-------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
This week's story - THAT IN ALEPPO ONCE ...
----------------------------------------------------
In 'That in Aleppo Once...' (May 1943) VN returns to the same
themes as 'Spring in Fialta' - recapturing the past, a woman, or
a country that has been lost - and he gives the material a new
twist by providing an outer frame to the narrative which
technically 'sets' the story in the USA. It takes the form of a
letter written by a Russian emigre in Central Park to his fellow
countryman 'V', relating the incidents of his emigration and
inviting him to make a story out of it.
His tale combines two elements - the narrator's flight from Paris
to the south of France, and his brief marriage to a woman who has
made him so unhappy that he now wishes to doubt her existence.
She is much younger than him, and in recording this fact he draws
parallels with Pushkin and Othello, both of whom were jealously
possessive of their young wives. On their honeymoon and escape
journey to Marseilles he is separated from her when their train
pulls off from a brief stop, leaving him on the platform. When
he locates her some days later in Nice she tells him she met a
man and spent some time with him in Montpellier. This sends the
narrator into paroxysms of jealousy, after which she admits that
her story was a lie - told perhaps to test him. But when they
eventually obtain exit visas she disappears again, for good. The
narrator goes on to New York alone, wants to forget her, and is
very unhappy.
In terms of meta-fiction there is an interesting twist to the
story in that it ends by the narrator imploring his friend V
*not* to take up the Othello references in the story: "It may all
end in *Aleppo* if I am not careful. Spare me, V: you would load
your dice with an unbearable implication if you took that for
your title" (ND,p.157). Since the story *does* have part of the
famous quotation as its title, the implication is that V is
publishing the letter and that therefore the narrator *has*
committed suicide like Othello. Certainly from various hints in
his narrative we are led to suspect that he is not
psychologically stable. His jealousy leads him to incessant
questioning of his wife: "It went on like that for aeons, she
breaking down every now and then...answering my unprintable
questions" (p.151) and possibly to a physical ill-treatment of
her: "I could imagine the accursed recurrent scene...with the dim
limbs of my wife as she shook and rattled and dissolved in my
violent grasp" (p.151).
This appears to be confirmed when, searching for his wife after
she has finally left him, a third party in whom she has confided
accuses him of being a "bully and a cad" (p.154). But his wife
has also told this woman that the narrator hanged their pet dog
before leaving Paris, and we know that there *is* no dog: it is
one of her fabrications. And since we have her own evidence that
she is capable of sustaining a lie, we are therefore in a
dilemma. Whose testimony do we accept, knowing that it is all
being presented to us by the narrator?
There does not seem to be any answer to this problem: we are
forced to accept the general account given to us by the narrator
- of an older, jealous man married to a capricious young woman.
That we may do so with some confidence is suggested by the fact
that it is a subject about which Nabokov writes over and over
again, from the beginning to the end of his creative life. There
is a whole study to be made of Nabokov's persistent interest in
adultery in general and cuckoldry in particular. 'That in Aleppo
Once...' is a successfully short variation on a theme which forms
a sombre leitmotiv in his *oeuvre*.
--------------------------------------------------
Next week's story - A FORGOTTEN POET
--------------------------------------------------
'A Forgotten Poet'
--
Dr Roy Johnson | Roy@mantex.demon.co.uk
PO Box 100 | Tel +44 0161 432 5811
Manchester UK | Fax +44 0161 443 2766
of essays on VN's short stories. I would note that Johnson's final
paragraph raises a theme that merits particular discussion. Your
comments are invited. If you are following this series and wish to do some
pleasant "homework," read "A Forgotten Poet" for next week's presentation.
-------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------
This week's story - THAT IN ALEPPO ONCE ...
----------------------------------------------------
In 'That in Aleppo Once...' (May 1943) VN returns to the same
themes as 'Spring in Fialta' - recapturing the past, a woman, or
a country that has been lost - and he gives the material a new
twist by providing an outer frame to the narrative which
technically 'sets' the story in the USA. It takes the form of a
letter written by a Russian emigre in Central Park to his fellow
countryman 'V', relating the incidents of his emigration and
inviting him to make a story out of it.
His tale combines two elements - the narrator's flight from Paris
to the south of France, and his brief marriage to a woman who has
made him so unhappy that he now wishes to doubt her existence.
She is much younger than him, and in recording this fact he draws
parallels with Pushkin and Othello, both of whom were jealously
possessive of their young wives. On their honeymoon and escape
journey to Marseilles he is separated from her when their train
pulls off from a brief stop, leaving him on the platform. When
he locates her some days later in Nice she tells him she met a
man and spent some time with him in Montpellier. This sends the
narrator into paroxysms of jealousy, after which she admits that
her story was a lie - told perhaps to test him. But when they
eventually obtain exit visas she disappears again, for good. The
narrator goes on to New York alone, wants to forget her, and is
very unhappy.
In terms of meta-fiction there is an interesting twist to the
story in that it ends by the narrator imploring his friend V
*not* to take up the Othello references in the story: "It may all
end in *Aleppo* if I am not careful. Spare me, V: you would load
your dice with an unbearable implication if you took that for
your title" (ND,p.157). Since the story *does* have part of the
famous quotation as its title, the implication is that V is
publishing the letter and that therefore the narrator *has*
committed suicide like Othello. Certainly from various hints in
his narrative we are led to suspect that he is not
psychologically stable. His jealousy leads him to incessant
questioning of his wife: "It went on like that for aeons, she
breaking down every now and then...answering my unprintable
questions" (p.151) and possibly to a physical ill-treatment of
her: "I could imagine the accursed recurrent scene...with the dim
limbs of my wife as she shook and rattled and dissolved in my
violent grasp" (p.151).
This appears to be confirmed when, searching for his wife after
she has finally left him, a third party in whom she has confided
accuses him of being a "bully and a cad" (p.154). But his wife
has also told this woman that the narrator hanged their pet dog
before leaving Paris, and we know that there *is* no dog: it is
one of her fabrications. And since we have her own evidence that
she is capable of sustaining a lie, we are therefore in a
dilemma. Whose testimony do we accept, knowing that it is all
being presented to us by the narrator?
There does not seem to be any answer to this problem: we are
forced to accept the general account given to us by the narrator
- of an older, jealous man married to a capricious young woman.
That we may do so with some confidence is suggested by the fact
that it is a subject about which Nabokov writes over and over
again, from the beginning to the end of his creative life. There
is a whole study to be made of Nabokov's persistent interest in
adultery in general and cuckoldry in particular. 'That in Aleppo
Once...' is a successfully short variation on a theme which forms
a sombre leitmotiv in his *oeuvre*.
--------------------------------------------------
Next week's story - A FORGOTTEN POET
--------------------------------------------------
'A Forgotten Poet'
--
Dr Roy Johnson | Roy@mantex.demon.co.uk
PO Box 100 | Tel +44 0161 432 5811
Manchester UK | Fax +44 0161 443 2766