Nabokov: "... precise
timing is deliberately used by Tolstoy to characterize, with ironic overtones,
Karenin's scrupulously ordered existence that will be shattered before
long." (LORL,Harvest Book, page 193)
Cf. also:
"so is the gifted reader a universal figure, not
subject to spatial or temporal laws... (He identifies
himself) with the mind that conceived and composed that
book" ("Russian Writers, Censors, and
Readers")
Dear
List,
Nabokov's investigation of the nature and texture of time can
be witnessed in the episode of Shade's (apparently?) incorrect prediction
that he'd wake up the next day.
(a) his irony is clear
- should we accept that Shade was killed in July 21st;
(b) his irony is almost clear - should
we suppose Kinbote faked the facts.
In the Introduction to "Lectures on
Russian Literature", Fredson Bowers wrote: "Nabokov is fascinated by Tolstoy's time schemes. The
how of the feeling that the reader's and the author's time-sense completely
coincide in a manner that produces ultimate reality he gives up as an
unsolved secret. But Tolstoy's juggling of the time-scheme between the
Anna-Vronski and the Kitty-Lyovin actions is worked out in most interesting
detail."
Bowers on
VN's "understanding through feeling" and "facts":
"the most valuable contribution that
Nabokov made to his students was not merely his emphasis on shared experience
but on a shared informed experience"..."the scientist's respect for
fact* combined with the writer's own understanding through
feeling"...
.....................................................................................................................
* (xi,footnote: "But Nabokov does
demand, for all his rejection of crude reality - 'those farcical and fraudulent
characters called Facts' - a powerful semblance of reality, which, as he himself
might have put it, is not the same as a resemblance." )