JM: One of
such interesting points in Freud's "Moses and Monotheism" lies in how
practical, for political, tactic or economic reasons, it is to crush
cultural and individual differencesm by the establishment of a unified
Godhead.
Nabokov was partial (ie, not "whole"*)
to specific aesthetic ideals, which we don't need to share or
understand in order to enjoy his writings. He was often
ambiguous or contradictory. For example, he often spoke
depreciatively about Cervantes' Don Quixote, but he read all its bits
and pieces - and wrote a book about them, a loving
sensitive book. Perhaps he denies his fascination with
Cervantes' madman,
one who wholeheartedly believed in valiant
noble knights, because he himself (or one part of
him) believed in theosophy, in Mme Blavatsky's or in other
spiritualistic theories. He once wrote to his mother that he was
certain that he'd meet his father in the "Hereafter." (it seems to me
that, like Shade, he was unable to let this "faint
hope" disappear, even while resorting to self-mockery).
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
* I suggest a comparison between what we read in
Nabokov's early The Enchanter, and what Fowlie describes
about Baudelaire's idea of Beauty, for the poet "was always struck by the very special privilege given to beauty to
survive moral deficiencies [...] a blasphemous idea in a line of poetry did not
necessarily diminish the formal beauty of the line. He would accept the belief
that beauty may continue within the realm of evil." ( Wallace
Fowlie: introduction to Baudelaire's selected works). In Nabokov's early The Enchanter, his character
states: “I have tried to catch myself in the transition
from one kind of tenderness to the other, from the simple to the special,
and would very much like to know whether they are mutually exclusive, whether
they must, after all, be assigned to different genera, or whether one is a rare
flowering of the other on the Walpurgis Night of my murky soul; for, if they are
two separate entities, then there must be two separate kinds of beauty, and the
aesthetic sense, invited to dinner, sits down with a crash between two chairs
(the fate of any dualism).” (p.23, Picador,1987). However,
later on Nabokov will affirm that “a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I
shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss” described as "a
sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where
art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness) is the norm." (AL,
Afterword, p.314-15.)
When Nabokov says that he is an
"indivisible monist," this probably indicates
that he'd once felt closer to "Arthur"(the character in "The
Enchanter"), and to Baudelaire, than to singling out the positive "states of
being" which demand the exclusion of the ugly or
corrupted.
In "Lolita" (somewhat contradictorily) he tries to deny what
he's expressed in "The Enchanter" and, in "Pale Fire," this
"aesthetic split" is almost complete, as we see in Kinbote's
moralistic commentary:“His misshapen body […]the bags
under his lusterless eyes, were only intelligible if regarded as the waste
products eliminated from his intrinsic self by the same forces of perfection
which purified and chiseled his verse." ( Pale Fire, p.453. The Library
of America.). Perhaps only a Godhead can be a true "indivisible
monist" whereas we, poor humans, have to make choices and recognize (like
Kinbote) that we are only able to see "through a glass,
darkly."