Vladimir Nabokov's Ada: Art,Deception, Ethics

Dragunoiu, Dana.
Contemporary Literature, Volume 46, Number 2, Summer 2005, pp. 311-339 (Article)
Published by University of Wisconsin Press DOI: 10.1353/cli.2005.0022

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cli/summary/v046/46.2dragunoiu.html

Access Provided by University of Bucharest at 04/05/11 11:58AM GMT

D A N A

D R A G U N O I U

Vladimir Nabokovs Ada: Art, Deception, Ethics

an Veen, the third of Vladimir Nabokovs infamous first-person narrators, turns to autobiography after a life spent as a playboy, acrobat, philosopher, psychologist, and writer of science fiction. Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) is the outcome of a collaborative effort with Ada Veen, Vans sister and lover. As a result of a complicated affair between their parents, Demon and Marina, Van and Ada are brought up as first cousins, a domestic ruse that fails to deceive them. They fall in love during their first idyllic summer at Ardis and for the remainder of their lives strive to overcome the obstacles that keep them apart. As an unapologetic celebration of their mutual love and genius, the novel takes the form of an unfinished manuscript penned by Van and glossed by Ada at the end of their long lives. More mutedly, it is also an attempt to assuage their sense that they might be complicit in the death of their half sister Lucette.1 Among Vans recollections of Lucette is a visit she pays him at Kingston University to deliver a letter from Ada. During this visit,
I would like to thank Stephen Blackwell, Mary Esteve, Andr Furlani, Mark Huston, and my anonymous reviewers at Contemporary Literature for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Brian Boyd, Don Barton Johnson, Christine Korsgaard, and William Peck generously answered the questions I put to them. 1. In Nabokovs Ada: The Place of Consciousness, Brian Boyd offers the most sustained ethical reading of the novel and argues that Lucettes fate is its principal preoccupation. Boyd demonstrates that a web of symmetries and thematic correspondences underscores Van and Adas culpability in Lucettes suicide. This essay extends and revises Boyds pioneering work.
Contemporary Literature XLVI, 2 0010-7484; 1548-9949/05/0002-0311 2005 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

312

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

Lucette reminds Van of the past schemes devised by him and Ada in order to snatch a few moments of sexual pleasure apart from Lucettes prying eyes. Whether tying her to a tree in imitation of a fairy-tale plot or locking her in a bath or closet, their seemingly innocent games are, from Lucettes perspective, cruel acts of deception.2 She alludes to a library closet in which Van and Ada locked her up at least ten times. Vans response is revealing: Nu uzh i desyat (exaggeration). Once and never more. It had a keyless hole as big as Kants eye. Kant was famous for his cucumicolor iris (373). This exchange looks back to a moment in Van and Adas childhood at Ardis, when they could no longer restrain their amorous excitement, and under the absurd pretext of a hide-and-seek game they locked up Lucette in a closet . . . and frantically made love, while the child knocked and called and kicked until the key fell out and the keyhole turned an angry green (213). Vans offhand reference to Kant and his cucumicolor iris is another instance of the chronicles dense allusiveness and dazzlingly sensual diction. But it also provides the reader with an incisive clue about the ethical dimension of Nabokovs work, and the extent to which ethics and aesthetics are always intertwined in his fiction. That Lucettes green eye should conjure up Kants cucumber-colored eye in Vans guilt-stricken conscience is not surprising given Vans formal training as a philosopher and Kants fame (much greater than the fame associated with the color of his eyes) for his uncompromising prohibition against all forms of deception. But to see Kants moral philosophy as the watermark that lies suspended in Nabokovs fiction seems counterintuitive in the context of a writer for whom art is inseparable from deception.3 According to Nabokov, art is inescapably untruthfulart at its greatest is fantastically deceitful and complex (Strong Opinions 33)but it derives its powers of deception from nature: Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature. Nature always deceives

2. As young adults, Van and Ada turn to more dangerous games by using Lucette as a bed pet during a dbauche trois from which she flees in anguish (41820). 3. Unlike Richard Rorty, Gerard de Vries, and Peter Levine, who argue that Nabokov rejected general moral principles in favor of a context-based and decidedly anti-Kantian version of morality, I read Ada as an explicit endorsement of Kantian moral standards.

D R A G U N O I U

313

(Lectures 5).4 In addition to being a kind of natural first principle, deception is an important philosophical category for Nabokov. The human subjects ability to uncover deception signals the birth of consciousness, that elusive ontological category whose mysteries shape human identity: It occurs to me that the closest reproduction of the minds birth obtainable is the stab of wonder that accompanies the precise moment when, gazing at a tangle of twigs and leaves, one suddenly realizes that what had seemed a natural component of that tangle is a marvelously disguised insect or bird (Speak, Memory 298). Ever the controversialist, Nabokov sought to refute Darwinian evolutionary theory by arguing that natural mimicry is less a survival strategy than an aesthetic device. This argument is a part of Nabokovs general resistance to the bte noire of determinism which also fuels his antagonism toward Marx and Freud. As he writes in Speak, Memory:
Natural selection, in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of the struggle for life when a protective device was carried to a point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance, and luxury far in excess of a predators power of appreciation. I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.
(125)

For Nabokov, natures inherently aesthetic sensibility and the human subjects receptiveness to aesthetic experience raise humanity above the strict Darwinian determinism he so strenuously resists. Nabokov wields his theory of artistic design as confirmation that the human mind is at once within and outside nature. His theory of natural mimicry becomes emblematic of the ontological dualism that defines what it means to be human: although natures most successful mimetic projects will indeed deceive predators, Nabokov refuses to believe that mimicrys aesthetic surplus is reducible to a

4. Nabokov repeats this assertion on several occasions: all nature is magic and deception (Eugene Onegin 3.498); all reality is a mask (Nikolai Gogol 148); and [d]eception is practiced even more beautifully by that other V.N., Visible Nature (Strong Opinions 153).

314

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

survival instinct. This aesthetic surplus, which only the human mind can appreciate, raises the human above causal determinism. As a man of science, Nabokov did not deny that a natural mimics disguise also serves as an instrument for survival, and as an artist he recognized that art and nature draw different forms of sustenance from the well of deception. Though Nabokovs aesthetics of deception strives to declare humanitys freedom from the determinism of nature, the utilitarian function of natural mimicry subverts freedom by demonstrating that art, too, can be co-opted into a deterministic figuration of reality. Nabokovs most sophisticated exploration of the ties that bind ethics to aesthetics originates in this curious notion that deception both affirms and undermines human autonomy.

E. A. C. Wasianski, Kants friend, amanuensis, executor, and the last of his three official biographers, tells a story that offers a useful point of entry into Adas moral vision. Wasianskis recollection has been repeated by Kants subsequent biographers, but the most moving rendition of this event comes from Erwin Panofsky:
Nine days before his death Immanuel Kant was visited by his physician. Old, ill and nearly blind, he rose from his chair and stood trembling with weakness and muttering unintelligible words. Finally his faithful companion realized that he would not sit down again until the visitor had taken a seat. This he did, and Kant then permitted himself to be helped to his chair and, after having regained some of his strength, said, Das Gefhl fr Humanitt hat mich noch nicht verlassenThe sense of humanity has not yet left me. The two men were moved almost to tears. For, though the word Humanitt had come, in the eighteenth century, to mean little more than politeness or civility, it had, for Kant, a much deeper significance, which the circumstances of the moment served to emphasize: mans proud and tragic consciousness of self-approved and selfimposed principles, contrasting with his utter subjection to illness, decay and all that is implied in the word mortality.
(1)5

5. The original story appears in Wasianski 298. It is repeated in Stuckenberg 443 and (in an abridged form) in Kuehn 422.

D R A G U N O I U

315

As a parable of human autonomy, Kants seemingly gratuitous act signals the dual ontology Nabokov sees at the heart of human identity. If natural mimicry can serve both as proof and refutation of Darwinian evolution, an action that overcomes excruciating physical disability signals the individuals simultaneous subjection to and autonomy from the laws of nature. Kant derives a universally binding moral law from the premise of individual autonomy. His argument that human ontology is both free and determined recognizes that human beings are at once part of nature and members of a noumenal dimension. Every event in nature is bound inescapably by the law of causality (Critique of Pure Reason A 536, B 564); as such, human action is always constrained by external necessity.6 Yet we simultaneously insist that we are the authors of our own actions, from which Kant infers that we are at once empirical beings, bound up by the laws of causality, and transcendent beings, bound by the laws of duty. According to this model, autonomy manifests itself most fully through the choice of moral action. The moral agent disregards fear, inclination, and other empirical conditions as it commits itself to actions that square only with the imperatives of reason.7 Nabokovs antipathy toward deterministic models of reality is well-known, but Ada is far more subtle than his characteristic polemic against Marxist and Freudian determinism, because it acknowledges that individual freedom is frequently (and perhaps always) compromised by external forces. Brian Boyds argument that Van and Adas premature initiation of Lucette into their erotic games sets off a chain of events that culminates in Lucettes suicide is both persuasive and morally attractive. But to read Lucettes tragedy as a direct consequence of Van and Adas sexual

6. My references to Kants work follow the general practice of citing the page numbers of the standard German edition published by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften as Kants gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1900 ). With the exception of Kants Lectures on Ethics, the English translations I have used include page references to the standard German text. Any edition that follows this practice can be used to locate these references. When taken from Kants Critique of Pure Reason, page numbers refer to the first (A) and second (B) editions. 7. For Kants development of this argument, see Critique of Pure Reason, A 54258, B 57086, and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals 4:440.

316

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

manipulation subjects Lucettes fate to the kind of deterministic thinking that can just as easily exonerate Van and Ada from charges of ethical misconduct. Though Nabokov does not forgive Van and Ada for their abuse of their half sisters affection, he nonetheless suggests that Lucette is a free agent and that suicide need not be the outcome of a causal sequence of events. Lucettes autonomy is most explicitly demonstrated by her selfless courtesy to Robert and Rachel Robinsonold bores of the family (475)on the night of her death. For Boyd, this is the novels consummate moral action, and it establishes a standard against which all others must be weighed (Nabokovs Ada 145). Van and Lucette, who have encountered each other on an ocean liner bound for America, attend a film screening on board the ship. Van is on the verge of succumbing to Lucettes persistent sexual advances when Ada, now an actress, appears on screen in the film they are watching. Van leaves the theater, and Lucette is about to pursue him in an attempt to reverse the damage that has occurred. Her pursuit is intercepted by the Robinsons, who take advantage of Vans departure to seat themselves next to Lucette. Replicating Kants legendary civility toward his physician, Lucettes response at this moment is emblematic of the potential to rise above the self-interest that is at the heart of deterministic models of human conduct. Knowing that her own happiness hangs in the balance, Lucette still manages to bestow upon the Robisons her last, last, last free gift of staunch courtesy that was stronger than failure and death. They were craning already across her, with radiant wrinkles and twittery fingers toward Van when he pounced upon their intrusion to murmur a humorous bad-sailor excuse and leave the cinema hall to its dark lurching (490). Lucettes courtesy seals her fate. Van is able to escape from her and masturbate in her absence, thus releasing himself from the desire that had tempted him to succumb to her passion. Lucettes sublime generosity during a moment of extreme emotional turmoil stands in sharp contrast to the sexual frustration that Van allows to engulf his potential for self-control. Van seems to recognize that he could have overcome his physical desires, but he buries that acknowledgment by presenting Lucettes death as an unavoidable consequence of living on Antiterra. In other more

D R A G U N O I U

317

deeply moral worlds than this pellet of muck, he writes in his letter to Ada in the wake of Lucettes suicide, there might exist restraints, principles, transcendental consolations, and even a certain pride in making happy someone one does not really love; but on this planet Lucettes are doomed (498). Coming only five pages after his poignant description of Lucettes selfless act, this assertion throws into question Vans metaphysical vindication in his letter to Ada. Lucettes courtesy to the Robinsons preemptively refutes Vans claim that only self-interest and the promise of transcendental consolations could inspire or justify moral action. By choosing not to pursue Van, Lucette rises above self-interest and follows instead the Kantian injunction that one ought and therefore can be courteous even to those one does not love. Vans feelings of culpability further undermine his denial that absolute moral values exist on Antiterra. Having penned his defense of his actions in his letter to Ada, Van immediately offers readers a glimpse of the remorse that punctuates his family chronicle: Some poor little things belonging to [Lucette]a cigarette case, a tulle evening frock, a book dogs-eared at a French picnic have had to be destroyed, because they stared at me (498). That Van should experience such harrowing feelings of guilt is further evidence that he implicitly acknowledges the existence (and even, perhaps, the value) of an ethical standard from which he strives unceasingly to extricate himself.

To see Lucettes last free gift of staunch courtesy as the thematic core of Ada is to argue for the importance of moral obligation in a novel that is always, at least implicitly, denying its existence. Vans narrative is largely invested in attenuating the force of such moral imperatives. Recurring cross-generational patterns would seem to commit the novels cast of characters to a relentless determinism that appears to minimize free choice. A glance at the family tree which precedes the opening chapter reveals that Princess Sofia Temnosiniys marriage to Prince Vseslav Zemski (at the ages of fifteen and seventy-one, respectively) prefigures a series of marriages between young girls and aging men (Peter Zemskis to Mary

318

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

OReilly at fifty-two and eighteen; Ivan Durmanovs to Dolly Zemski at thirty-nine and fifteen; Dedalus Veen to Countess Irina Garin at thirty-eight and seventeen). Marina draws attention to this pattern when she tells Van, [t]he Zemskis were terrible rakes (razvratniki), one of them loved small girls (233), not yet knowing that both Demon and Van will follow this trend with an intensity all their own. The shadow of genetic determinism further reveals that Van and Ada are more intimately related than Ada and Lucette. Whereas Adas coloring identifies her as the daughter of her putative Uncle Demon, Lucettes freckles and red skin identify her as Dan Veens only true daughter. In addition to these patterns, an uncanny parallelism seems to inform the lives of parents and children. Demon and Marinas manipulation of Aqua (Marinas sister and Vans alleged mother) prefigures Van and Adas cruelty toward Lucette. The fact that Aqua commits suicide at an astorium in St. Taurus (27), and Lucette commits suicide shortly after a vacation on Minataor (477), appears to bind them to patterns of almost preternatural specificity.8 The workings of fate and heredity suggest a deterministic order that undermines the claims of autonomy and duty. Van invokes these patterns, in part, to exonerate himself and Ada from any blame regarding the death of Lucette.9 This is made explicit when he suggests that physical suffering impedes ethical judgment: Rather humiliating that physical pain makes one supremely indifferent to such moral issues as Lucettes fate. Van concludes, however, with a tacit acknowledgment that his search for such exculpatory physical impediments is callously opportunistic, and rather amusing, if that is the right word, to constate that one bothers about problems of style even at those atrocious moments (587). Vans attempt to ignore his complicity in Lucettes destiny by making an appeal to physical pain contrasts sharply with Kants pain-defying civility in the presence of his physician. And yet Vans
8. For these and similar parallels, see Boyd, Nabokovs Ada 147. 9. As my discussion of Vans reference to Rimbaud will show, these patterns also intimate Vans remorse and penitence.

D R A G U N O I U

319

capacity to worry about problems of style during moments of acute physical agony is a cheeky assertion of autonomy in the face of external pressures. This inadvertent affirmation of moral values turns on his cherished ability to respond to aesthetic principles. It is another instantiation of Nabokovs characteristic conflation of ethics and aesthetics. As Nabokov writes in his afterword to Lolita, For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm (On a Book 31415). For Richard Rorty, curiosity binds art to ethics in Nabokovs scheme of thought because the artists curiosity about what others ignore equips her to notice the suffering of others (159). As Rorty rightly points out, however, being curious about ones own artistic obsessions often prevents one from being sensitive to the obsessions or suffering of others. Together with Van, Humbert Humbert of Lolita (1955) and Charles Kinbote of Pale Fire (1962) exemplify this form of egotism. According to Rorty, Nabokov yearned for artistic gifts to map effortlessly onto moral virtue, although he was wise enough to recognize that there is no necessary connection between the selective curiosity of the artist and the kind of moral concern that pits itself against cruelty and suffering (160). But Rortys astute analysis leads to an insight that he seems to overlook. As Nabokov shows by way of Van, artistic virtues can make the lack of moral virtues glaringly conspicuous. The meticulousness and generosity of Vans aesthetic engagement with the world call attention to his moral transgressions and undermine his denials of moral responsibility. As Ada repeatedly illustrates, aesthetic sensibility can be only superficially detached from ethical concern.10 To focus on such moral issues as Lucettes fate in a novel almost exclusively preoccupied with Van and Adas passionate love affair is much like the
10. Nabokov sometimes endows his villains with a heightened artistic sensibility and withholds this sensibility from some of his most compassionate characters, as de Vries demonstrates in his analysis of Laughter in the Dark. For de Vries, as for Rorty, this polarization reflects Nabokovs distrust of his own assertions regarding the ties that bind art to ethics (14647). But Nabokov is also signaling here the inadequacy of intellectual categories that impose an artificial barrier between ethics and aesthetics. Though the artistic gifts of men such as Humbert, Kinbote, and Van are incontrovertible, these gifts are

320

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

desire to extract a single sumptuous image from a mass of detail as if the woman-sized strawberry prized by Demon were somehow the core of Boschs triptych (437). Yet it is precisely this kind of attentiveness that lies at the heart of Nabokovs ethical and aesthetic vision. Van and Ada recognize that ethics and aesthetics are interdependent, but they are unwilling to acknowledge that this connection also presides over human relations. Their aesthetic commitments depend upon a lovingly precise observation of the natural world and faithfulness to the artistic authorship of others. Adas description of herself and Van as a unique superimperial couple is of a piece with her sense that they each recognize an intense moral connection between themselves and the world in which they live:
The song of a Tuscan Firecrest or a Sitka Kinglet in a cemetery cypress; a minty whiff of Summer Savory or Yerba Buena on a coastal slope; the dancing flitter of a Holly Blue or an Echo Azurecombined with other birds, flowers and butterflies: that has to be heard, smelled and seen through the transparency of death and ardent beauty.
(71)

Their appreciation of these details is fashioned as a moral injunction. A similar injunction animates Van and Adas attacks on sloppy

diminished by their moral incompleteness. Humbert seems to be aware of this deficiency in himself when he admits that during his first car trip with Dolly, We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing (Lolita 175). Similarly, those characters who lack a formally recognized aesthetic sensibility register their kinship with the animating forces of art by demonstrating their capacity to feel the pain of others. Maximov, Krugs loyal friend in Bend Sinister, is a case in point: No subtlety of thought tainted his honesty, he was as reliable as iron and oak, and when Krug mentioned once that the word loyalty phonetically and visually reminded him of a golden fork lying in the sun on a smooth spread of pale yellow silk, Maximov replied somewhat stiffly that to him loyalty was limited to its dictionary denotation. Commonsense with him was saved from smug vulgarity by a delicate emotional undercurrent, and the somewhat bare and birdless symmetry of his branching principles was ever so slightly disturbed by a moist wind blowing from regions which he naively thought did not exist. The misfortunes of others worried him more than did his own troubles, and had he been an old sea captain, he would have dutifully gone down with his ship rather than plump apologetically into the last lifeboat (87). Maximovs vigorous concern for others seems to connect him to those other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm, even though in theory he is not an artist.

D R A G U N O I U

321

translations. Careless or inept translations are decried as the product of irresponsible engagements with the external world.
Old storytelling devices, said Van, may be parodied only by very great and inhuman artists, but only close relatives can be forgiven for paraphrasing illustrious poems. Let me preface the effort of a cousin anybodys cousinby a snatch of Pushkin, for the sake of rhyme For the snake of rhyme! cried Ada. A paraphrase, even my paraphrase, is like the corruption of snakeroot into snagrelall that remains of a delicate little birthwort.
(24647)

Adas denunciation points to a commitment to things as they exist in themselves. An ethical engagement with the external world whether that be art or naturedemands an ego that will abstain from projecting itself upon that which is ineliminably other. Van and Adas dirty secret is that they are unwilling to extend to others the loving attentiveness they lavish on the natural world and the act of translation. This conflation of ethics and aesthetics is still more explicit in the novels most sustained account of the responsibilities of translation. It is here that Adas denunciation of English-speaking transmongrelizers for whom the practice of translation is guided by reasons other than the artistic and moral is associated with Lucette (64). As Boyd has painstakingly demonstrated (Nabokovs Ada 5354), Adas gloss on Vans quotation from Rimbauds Mmoire (les robes vertes et dteintes des fillettes [the green and washed-out frocks of the little girls]) sets up a leitmotif of correspondences between Lucette, the color green, and the ethics of translation:
Well, Larivire allows me to read him only in the Feuilletin anthology. . . . Incidentally, she will come down after tucking in Lucette, our darling copper-head who by now should be in her green nightgown . . . the nuance of willows, and counting the little sheep on her ciel de lit which Fowlie turns into the skys bed instead of bed ceiler.
(64)

The significance of Rimbauds Mmoire to Van and Adas romance (the poem provides the key to their coded letters during their first separation) and Lucettes lifelong partiality for the color

322

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

green redirect this discussion about the ethics of translation to include the story of Lucette.11

Adas most curious feature rests in its relative lack of interest in the ethical dimension of Van and Adas incestuous relationship. Instead, the novels most heated ethical problems converge on and arise from Van and Adas treatment of Lucette. This apparent incongruitythat is, the novels interest in cruelty rather than the social taboo of incestinvites readers to differentiate between authentic moral transgressions and socially contingent prohibitions.12 The ethical model that emerges from this distinction signals the novels concomitant investment in a radical libertarianism and a strict moral rigorism. This framework offers a theoretical justification for the argument that sexual relations based on equality and consent (like incest and homosexuality, for example, but unlike pedophilia) cannot be categorized as ethical misconduct. This distinction is made possible by a yoking of ethics and aesthetics that Nabokov borrows from Kant. According to Kant, the faculty that enables us to derive universally binding moral laws also enables us to make aesthetic judgments that we can suppose to be valid for all humankind (Critique of the Power of Judgment 5:353). The connection originates in a process of abstraction that insulates the mind from all private concerns, such as inclination, desire, and ambition: Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest. The object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful (5:211). Kants insistence that detachment binds the aesthetic to the moral anticipates Nabokovs own insistence that good reading must combine the artists passion with the scientists patience. Nabokovs argument also turns on the idea of detachment: The enthusiastic artist alone is apt to be too subjective in his attitude

11. For Lucettes affection for the color green, see Ada 198, 229, 410, and 575. 12. In Rortys view, Nabokov is a liberal par excellence because his fiction illustrates Judith Shklars contention that cruelty is the worst moral failure from the perspective of the liberal subject (146).

D R A G U N O I U

323

towards a book, and so a scientific coolness of judgment will temper the intuitive heat (Lectures 5). For both Kant and Nabokov, aesthetic impartiality derives from a moral commitment to that which is other. Roger Scruton glosses this central premise of Kants aesthetics in terms that are equally suited to Nabokov: Disinterested contemplation is a recognition that the object mattersmatters so much that our interests have no bearing on our judgment (104). It is possible to view Adas investment in an ethics of translation as a challenge to the integrity of Nabokovs argument that art is born of deception. Vans assessment of his conduct on the fateful night of Lucettes suicide provides a point of entry into this problem by drawing moral distinctions between different kinds of deception. Before jumping overboard, Lucette makes one final effort to seduce Van. She calls Van on the telephone and asks him if she can join him in his suite, as he had promised. Having masturbated twice during her absence, Van can now withstand temptation, and to avoid another encounter, he tells her that he is not alone: No doubt he was morally right in using the first pretext at hand to keep her away from his bed; but he also knew, as a gentleman and an artist, that the lump of words he brought up was trite and cruel, and it was only because she could not accept him as being either, that she believed him (491). Vans attempt to justify his lie (no doubt he was morally right) highlights the distinction between ethical frameworks based on the good and frameworks that privilege the right. Vans deception can be justified from a consequentialist perspective because it is motivated by a desire to protect Lucette from what would have become a heartbreaking affair. But Vans deception is morally wrong when viewed from a Kantian perspective because it violates Lucettes right to self-determination. It is not surprising that Vans artistic sense should be more trustworthy than his moral sense, and it is his recognition as an artist that he has betrayed Lucette that undermines the moral vindication of his deception. As a gentleman, he knows that human relations should be grounded in the kind of respect and courtesy that Lucette shows the Robinsons at the expense of her own happiness. As an artist, he knows that Lucette deserves the same kind of scrupulous honesty as a translation. Nabokovs insistence that art can serve as a moral yardstick seems frivolous in a culture that views aesthetics

324

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

with suspicion, but it is precisely this connection between ethics and aesthetics that leads Nabokov to equate art with curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy. Although Van knows that his deception does not cause Lucettes death, he feels culpable, which may be the reason why he claims to have done precisely what his lie prevented him from doing.13 Vans letter to Ada fails to mention Lucettes telephone call and suggests instead that his appeal to Lucette was based on reason: The romantic attachment she had formed, the infatuation she cultivated, could not be severed by logic (497). Vans deception diminishes Lucettes humanity because it denies that she is, as Kant would have said, an end-in-herself.14 He justifies his deception on the grounds that it is a necessary strategy for Lucettes own protection, but he fails to acknowledge that Lucette is capable of determining her own ends. Christine M. Korsgaard has used Kants formula of humanity to justify his uncompromising (and often criticized) prohibition against deception. Her argument is instructive. In the terms set out

13. Only moments before Lucettes telephone call, Van describes a much more appropriate way of dealing with the situation: He welcomed the thought which suddenly seemed so absolutely true, and new, and as lividly real as the slowly widening gap of the sitting rooms doorway, namely, that on the morrow (which was at least, and at best, seventy years away) he would explain to Lucette, as a philosopher and another girls brother, that he knew how agonizing and how absurd it was to put all ones spiritual fortune on one physical fancy and that his plight closely resembled hers, but that he managed, after all, to live, to work, and not pine away because he refused to wreck her life with a brief affair (491). 14. The first two variants of Kants supreme principle of moral conduct (the categorical imperative) include the formula of the universal law (act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law [Groundwork 4:421]) and the formula of humanity (So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means [Groundwork 4:429]). Though the first imperative is formal insofar as it tests maxims against the demands of universality, the second imperative provides the content of the moral law by commanding that all rational beings be treated as autonomous and deserving of respect (Groundwork 4:436). Together, these principles lead to the categorical imperatives third formulation, the formula of the kingdom of ends, which dictates that every rational being do no action on any other maxim than one such that it would be consistent with it to be a universal law, and hence to act only so that the will could regard itself as at the same time giving universal law through its maxim (Groundwork 4:434).

D R A G U N O I U

325

by Korsgaard, Vans deception is immoral because it sets up a situation in which Lucette cannot endorse his plans for her welfare (139). Rae Langton has similarly noted that in Kants view, deception makes a person thing-like: something that cannot choose what it does (489). Even if it cannot be said to have caused Lucettes suicide, Vans deception is wrong because it blocks her ability to take part in determining her own ends. Van knows that Lucette would have killed herself even without the intervention of his lie, but he nonetheless feels guilty about the role his lie plays in her tragedy. The afternoon before their fateful midnight telephone conversation, Lucette accuses Van of being involved with a woman on board. Van is not, but his promise not to deceive her on this count is met by Lucette with skepticism: You deceived me many, many times when I was a little girl. If youre doing it now tu sais que jen vais mourir (483). To Vans reminder that only days before she had promised him a harem, Lucette replies, Not today, not today! Today is sacred. Vans claim that he is not alone naturally convinces Lucette that he had already deceived her earlier that day, and the structure Van lends to the days events in his narrative demonstrates that he knows this. The sequence of events must also cause Van considerable pain given that his deception leads to the fulfillment of Lucettes figurative threat: she dies because Van has lied to her on the day she had begged him to set aside as sacred. Vans narrative decisions generate a series of possible interpretations. On the one hand, we know that Vans deception does not cause Lucettes suicide, because she had decided on that course, if Van would not have her, prior to embarkation. On the other hand, Vans lie and Lucettes threat that she would die as a result of any further deceptions seems to insist on an uncanny connection between Vans deception and Lucettes suicide. Vans anxiety about his role in the tragedy is a reminder that the most painful consequences can attend even the most convenient and innocuous of lies. Vans account of the events leading up to Lucettes death unfolds in a way that appears to endorse Kants pair of claims about the moral duties of truth-telling. First, Kant argues that one must under no circumstances or for any purpose tell a lie, because lying undermines truthfulness and the contract of reciprocity upon which

326

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

human relations depend.15 Van cannot ignore the tragic irony at the heart of his deception: the fictitious betrayal in which he implicates himself during the telephone call casts doubt upon all his other statements to Lucette, including his promise that he would not conceal from her his involvement with other lovers on board. This invented betrayal, which hopelessly negates any possibility of truthfulness between them, is the novels most emphatic statement about deception and moral duty. Kants second claim about the duty of truthfulness contends that the liar is responsible for all consequences that ensue, even if those consequences were completely unforeseeable.16 Van knows that his lie does not, in and of itself, lead Lucette to drown herself. Yet despite the triviality of his deception, Van suspects that his betrayal is a kind of culpability. Though he denies such culpability when speaking of Lucettes tragedy, his guilt guides the structure he retrospectively assigns to his narrative reconstruction of her death, and he draws an implicit link between Lucettes figurative threat (jen vais mourir) and her leap overboard only minutes after he intimates that he had deceived her. Though there is no causal relationship between Lucettes figurative threat to die and her suicide, the narrative structure in which Van frames these scenes draws attention to the false distinction between good and bad deceptions in the domain of human relations. Van maintains that his lie was morally justified, but in his

15. Truthfulness in statements that one cannot avoid is a human beings duty to everyone, however great the disadvantage to him or to another that may result from it; and although I indeed do no wrong to him who unjustly compels me to make the statement if I falsify it, I nevertheless do wrong in the most essential part of duty in general by such falsification, which can therefore be called a lie (though not in a jurists sense); that is, I bring it about, as far as I can, that statements (declarations) in general are not believed, and so too that all rights which are based on contracts come to nothing and lose their force; and this is a wrong inflicted upon humanity generally (On a Supposed Right 8:426). 16. That is to say, if you have by a lie prevented someone just now bent on murder from committing the deed, then you are legally accountable for all the consequences that might arise from it. But if you have kept strictly to the truth, then public justice can hold nothing against you, whatever the unforeseen consequences might be (On a Supposed Right 8:427). Statements such as these are responsible for the outcry against Kants inflexible moral rigorism.

D R A G U N O I U

327

more speculative moments he acknowledges a vexed attitude toward his actions. In the immediate wake of Lucettes death, Van is profoundly uneasy about the extent to which he might be judged responsible:
As a psychologist, I know the unsoundness of speculations as to whether Ophelia would not have drowned herself after all, without the help of a treacherous sliver, even if she had married her Voltemand. Impersonally I believe she would have died in her bed, gray and serene, had V. loved her; but since he did not really love the wretched little virgin, and since no amount of carnal tenderness could or can pass for true love, and since, above all, the fatal Andalusian wench who had come, I repeat, into the picture, was unforgettable, I am bound to arrive, dear Ada and dear Andrey, at the conclusion that whatever the miserable man could have thought up, she would have pokonchila s soboy (put an end to herself) all the same.
(49798)

Van draws consolation from the knowledge that Lucettes fate was independent of his actions, but his offhand remark that it is impossible to know how Ophelias life would have unfolded without the help of a treacherous sliver suggests that his own treachery, however trivial, is inescapably implicated in Lucettes demise. Vans predicament is a reminder that the doctrine of consequentialism is no adequate foundation for ethics. Based on the pursuit of the good, consequentialism rejects the view that actions can be right or wrong in themselves, because the rightness or wrongness of an act is always judged by its outcome. By contrast, the deontological tradition associated with Kant privileges the right over the good and argues that agents must refrain from doing things that are wrong in and of themselves even if they foresee that such actions will have good outcomes. This distinction is best illustrated by a consideration of the ethical validity of deception. According to the consequentialist model, deception is acceptable if it leads to a greater good; according to Kants deontological model, deception is always wrong and should be avoided even if it might lead to a greater good. Vans claim that he was morally right to deceive Lucette during their telephone conversation turns on the idea that he was protecting her from his lust. Lucettes suicide, however, highlights the problems that bedevil ethical theories that privilege potential good over the right. Vans deception is wrong precisely

328

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

because he betrays his half sister in the name of an outcome he can neither predict nor bring about. To put ones trust in deception, however well-intentioned the deception may be, is to have the arrogance of thinking that one can foretell the future.

Art, ethics, and deception converge in Vans response to Lucettes allusion to the library closet in which he and Ada locked her up at Ardis. Van attempts to correct Lucettes misleading exaggeration regarding the frequency of such events by drawing attention to her angry green eye spying through the closets keyhole. For Van, this recollection calls to mind Kants cucumicolor iris, an association that he still remembers decades later when he composes his family chronicle. It is unclear if Van is aware of the irony that suffuses his offhand reference to Kant. Though he ostensibly invokes Kants exacting vision in response to what he sees as Lucettes overstatement, his own feelings of culpability offer the most probable reason for the quip: Van seems to imagine himself held to a Kantian standard. Yet the most revealing aspect of this remark is its sensuously clinical diction. Kants green eye, his cucumicolor iris, seems to use art to deflect attention from a gross moral delinquency.17 Van and Adas aesthetic engagement with the world repeatedly identifies them as creatures capable of reveling in natural beauty. What they fail to see, or perhaps pretend not to see, is that, within the Kantian framework to which Van subjects himself in his remark about Lucettes accusing eye, their capacity to experience aesthetic pleasure is also a sign of the moral obligations that attend their actions.
17. Such a strategy is most conspicuously evident in Lolita, where Humbert Humbert harnesses arts capacity for deception (You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style, he explains at the outset of his narrative) to trick readers into suspending their own urge to deliberate on the problems posed by his moral transgressions. Lolita is structured as a dilemma: the aesthetic pleasures to be derived from Humberts stylistic virtuosity are positioned against the crimes that virtuosity simultaneously describes and occludes. But our sense that this is in fact a dilemma may be the novels most cunning deception, in light of Nabokovs insistence that our experience of aesthetic pleasure is tied ineluctably to our capacity to make ethical judgments, and that our freedom and self-determination originate in that shared enterprise.

D R A G U N O I U

329

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant argues that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good because aesthetic experience transcends empirical conditions in the same way as moral actions transcend the demands of inclination and desire (5:353). The correlation is made possible by the autonomy of the imagination. As the essence of aesthetic enjoyment, imagination provides the only occasion for freedom to become not just a fact of reason, but also a matter of experience (5:354). The aesthetic surplus of Vans sensuously clinical reference to Kants eye is an index of the ethical stakes that attend Van and Adas surrender to sexual desire and their cruel treatment of Lucette. Additionally, the fact that Van addresses Lucette when he flaunts his aesthetic responsiveness echoes Kants conclusion that ones capacity to make an appeal to aesthetic judgment confirms the autonomy of others endowed with a similar capacity. After Van tells Lucette that the closets keyless hole was as big as Kants eye, he seems unsure that this analogy will have any meaning for her. His follow-up explanationKant was famous for his cucumicolor iris (373)can be read as a philosophers attempt to speak about Kant in the language most familiar to Lucette, a student of art history at Queenston College. But his assumption that Lucette will appreciate his evocative description of Kants eye underscores his failure to grant Lucette the autonomy and respect she deserves as someone who shares his love of beauty. This seemingly innocuous exchange marks a collision between the rigorous Kantian standards that haunt Vans artistic and philosophical projects and Vans repeated attempts to acquit himself of the guilt he feels for his role in Lucettes death. Kants argument that the right to self-determination prohibits all actions that would jeopardize it is the cornerstone of his moral philosophy. As Korsgaard writes: According to the Formula of Humanity, coercion and deception are the most fundamental forms of wrongdoing to othersthe roots of all evil. Coercion and deception violate the conditions of possible assent, and all actions which depend for their nature and efficacy on their coercive or deceptive character are ones that others cannot assent to (140). It is thus no accident that Van alludes to Kant when Lucette reminds him of the various forms of coercion and deception that he and Ada perpetrated against her. It is also no accident that Van and Ada attempt to

330

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

exonerate themselves of any responsibility regarding Lucette by an appeal to a consequentialist model that assigns moral value to the good rather than to the right. Vans suggestion that nothing short of his love of Lucette would have prevented her suicide (49798) is a shrewd attempt to vindicate himself by making her survival depend on an intolerable and impossible deception. Ada, too, invokes this consequentialist model when she suggests that Vans marriage to Lucette was a plausible proposition:
Oh, Van, oh Van, we did not love her enough. Thats whom you should have married, the one sitting feet up, in ballerina black, on the stone balustrade, and then everything would have been all rightI would have stayed with you both in Ardis Hall, and instead of that happiness, handed out gratis, instead of all that we teased her to death!
(586)

Adas rhapsodic attempt to frame in these stark alternatives the ethical problems posed by Lucettes suicide is an effort to exonerate Van and herself from any wrongdoing. The proposition that Lucette could have been saved had Van simulated a lifelong passion for her is at once absurd and callously opportunistic. If moral obligation is seen to depend on calculated deception, Van and Ada can count on the readers of their chronicle to forgive them for failing to meet it. But if this consequentialist model fails to vindicate Van and Ada, it also fails to convict them. To read Lucettes suicide as a consequence of Van and Adas actions is to deny Lucette the autonomy and integrity due to her as a rational being. In fact, a guilty verdict for Van and Ada secured on the basis of a consequentialist ethics replicates their crime against Lucette. A more reliable ethical standard must refuse to sacrifice Lucettes dignity to the ethics that would defend her. Such a standard must focus, as Kants does, on what is right rather than what is good, a distinction which also helps us come to terms with the paradox that unsettles our response to the novels preoccupation with ethics. The twin pressures facing the reader of Ada emerge from a set of apparently contradictory ethical demands. The first of these dictates that we should not seek to secure a guilty verdict for Van and Ada at the expense of Lucettes autonomy. The second imperative dictates that Lucettes autonomy should not give others the license

D R A G U N O I U

331

to mistreat her. To blame Van and Ada for Lucettes suicide is to suggest that we can track a sequence of actions that led to her demise. But the gap between action and consequence (for example, the gap between the cruel schemes devised by young Van and Ada to escape from Lucettes irritating intrusiveness and Lucettes suicide) makes this an impossible project. This methodology fails not because Van and Ada are innocent, but because consequentialism is an inadequate measure of moral actions. Vans own philosophical treatise on time is another attack on consequentialist ethics. Vans denial that the future exists is a reminder that without the guarantee that tomorrow will come, moral actions must be based on the right rather than on a probable future good. Narrative itself abets Van and Adas effort to acquit themselves of any wrongdoing in relation to their half sister. By its very nature, narrative affords a delimited view of history and singles out for attention those events that offer a causally determined version of the past. If Van expects his readers to acquit him and Ada by seeing their love affair as ineluctably determined by external forces, Nabokov counts on his readers to see beyond Vans family chronicle by resisting the overdetermined quality of his narrative.18 Only by resisting Vans seductive narrative determinism can readers begin to perceive that ethical standards are relevant even on Vans pellet of muck. In
18. The fact that Van and Ada are fictional characters does not put them beyond an ethical reading, nor does it diminish their ethical accountability within the narrative. By stating that his characters are galley slaves when asked if his characters were ever known to evade his control and determine the course of his novels, Nabokov was countering E. M. Forsters trite little whimsy with a self-evident ontological truth (Strong Opinions 95). Yet Nabokov also knew that a dogmatic application of this truism would abolish the very conceits that make fiction possible. Though all fictional characters are by definition galley slaves, they must conduct themselves as if their choices matter. As Nabokov illustrates at the end of Bend Sinister, Krugs realization that he is a character of fiction plunges him into madness (23334). To enjoy such an epistemic privilege is to escape metaphysical anguish and moral responsibility, but it also means being permanently exiled from ones fictional world. Adas explanation of her choice of a theatrical career reflects the incommensurability of the authorial and fictional domains: In real life we are creatures of chance in an absolute voidunless we be artists ourselves, naturally; but in a good play I feel authored, I feel passed by the board of censors, I feel secure (426). If Adas choice of profession can be read as a yearning to live beyond the reach of moral responsibility, Nabokov prevents her from knowing that she is authored and passed by the board of censors. Ada, like all Nabokovs fictional characters, must bear the burden of her freedom.

332

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

the nondeterministic world crafted by Nabokov, Van and Ada can neither be said to have caused Lucettes suicide nor to be exempted from the moral laws that ought to govern all human relations. Those laws make them complicit in, but not the cause of, Lucettes fate.

The ethical model established in Ada prohibits all actions that diminish another human beings autonomy by making use of her without her free consent. This principle makes it possible to measure the extent to which Van and Ada are guilty of mistreating Lucette without lapsing into the problems that attend consequentialism. Van and Ada are guilty of failing to treat Lucette as an end in herself. In terms of her suicide, they are only guilty to the extent that Vans deception makes him responsible for the consequences that arise from it. This ethical standard is complicated, however, by the fact that Lucette frequently consents to, and sometimes even invites, such debasement.19 Interestingly, it is almost exclusively in those moments that Van is able to act morally. For example, when Lucette implores Van to deflower her, he refuses to indulge her. This scenario is particularly relevant to Lolita, where Humberts perception that Dolly initially seduces him cannot exonerate his brutish crimes against her. A Kantian framework is especially pertinent here because Adas and

19. Lucettes suicide is the most extreme example of this self-debasement. For Kant, suicide is wrong because it leads to a contradiction under the formula of the universal law: the principle of self-love, whose function is to promote life, cannot be used to destroy it (Groundwork 4:422). Most commentators agree that this argument does not work as stated, partly because it is unclear why self-love should have the function of promoting life, partly because it is unclear why self-love cannot serve two opposite functions (such as motivating us to stay alive when life is pleasant and stop living when it becomes insufferable) (Feldman 268). Korsgaard attempts to rescue Kants prohibition against suicide by invoking the formula of humanity: if the human being is the source of all value, it is both criminal and incoherent to act in a way that denies and eradicates this repository of value (152). Seeing Lucettes suicide in this framework is to ascribe blame to Van and Ada for instigating the debasement that will prevent Lucette from becoming a responsible steward of her own life. Boyds conclusion that Van and Adas premature sexual initiation of Lucette leads to her suicide coincides with this reading even if the moral reasoning that leads to it proceeds by a different route.

D R A G U N O I U

333

Lolitas moral rigorism seems to collide with the permissiveness of libertarianism. The moral complication that arises from Lolitas and Lucettes sexual desire suggests that Kants Formula of Humanity is in need of qualification in specific contexts. Kant was aware of this problem, and he distinguished sexuality as the one domain that mandates a more detailed examination of the moral law. Sexual desire, he argues in the Lectures on Ethics, is a degradation of human nature; for as soon as a person becomes an Object of appetite for another, all motives of moral relationship cease to function, because as an Object of appetite for another a person becomes a thing and can be treated and used as such by every one. This is the only case in which a human being is designed by nature as the Object of anothers enjoyment (163). This inherently degraded view of sexual relations can, for Kant, be recuperated only in the context of monogamous matrimony. Kants argument turns on two key ideas, both of which help untangle the ethical problems that plague both Lolita and Ada. The first has to do with the principle that sex cannot be considered as a service to be bought or sold: Man cannot dispose over himself because he is not a thing; he is not his own property (165). According to this maxim, neither Dollys nor Lucettes sexual desire can provide a moral justification for sexual relations with men who cannot offer a relationship of perfect mutuality. This qualification is anticipated by the second principle, which states that only perfect equality between partners can prevent the degradation of the weaker partners dignity. It is on these grounds that Kant makes concubinage and polygamy morally unacceptable (16667). Only in monogamous matrimony, then, can the dignity of both partners be said to embody Kants ideal of mutual surrender and possession:
If, then, one yields ones person, body and soul, for good and ill and in every respect, so that the other has complete rights over it, and if the other does not similarly yield himself in return and does not extend in return the same rights and privileges, the arrangement is one-sided. But if I yield myself completely to another and obtain the person of the other in return, I win myself back; I have given myself up as the property of another, but in turn I take that other as my property, and so win myself back again in winning the person whose property I have become.
(167)

334

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

This obligatory exchange of rights is a useful index of the crimes that pervade Lolita and Ada. Though rape and incest are legal transgressions for which Humbert can be tried in a court of law, neither charge is sufficiently precise in describing the complex nature of his moral offense against Dolores Haze. Pedophilia comes closest to enunciating the vast inequality between Humbert and Dolores, an inequality that leads to the most destructive kind of sexual degradation for the young girl. Kants model offers an especially compelling interpretive tool for reading Adas preoccupation with the ethics of sex. By making equality the determining factor in the moral judgment of sexual relations, Kant both circumscribes and expands the parameters of what counts as a legitimate sexual encounter. As Korsgaard suggests, the most startling consequence of Kants writings on sex emerges in his statements about incest (195). Though Kant argues that incest is dangerous from a reproductive point of view and should therefore be avoided, he also points out that from a purely ethical perspective, [t]he sole case in which the moral grounds against incest apply absolutely is that of intercourse between parents and children (Lectures 168). Once again, this restriction rests on inequality: in sexual intercourse each person submits to the other in the highest degree, whereas between parents and their children subjection is one-sided; the children must submit to the parents only; there can, therefore, be no equal union. Vans sterility enables Nabokov to brush aside the reproductive objections to incest. By emphasizing the striking similarities between Van and Ada (their physical likeness, exceptional intellectual ability, sexual voracity), Nabokov seems to suggest that their affiliation is almost preternaturally egalitarian. When Demon uncovers their incestuous relationship, his insistence that they separate is nothing more than a feeble invocation of social prohibitions: You force me to bring up the tritest terms such as family, honor, set, law.. . . All right, I have bribed many officials in my wild life but neither you nor I can bribe a whole culture, a whole country (443; ellipsis in original). Vans surrender to his fathers reasoning also fails to provide us with a coherent argument against the intrinsic immorality of incest; he writes in a hurried missive to Ada:

D R A G U N O I U

335

Do what he tells you. His logic sounds preposterous, prepsupposing [sic] a vague kind of Victorian era, as they have on Terra according to my mad [?], but in a paroxysm of [illegible] I suddenly realized he was right. Yes, right, here and there, not neither here, nor there, as most things are. You see, girl, how it is and must be.
(44445)

Van cannot defend his relationship with Ada because his moral integrity has been compromised by his relationship with Lucette. Were he to invoke his right to engage in consensual, nonreproductive sexual relations with his sister, he would also have to acknowledge Lucettes right to be treated with honesty and respect. The difficulty of finding unconditional reasons for the banning of nonreproductive incest among consenting adults contrasts sharply with the novels critique of all sexual relationships that are not grounded in reciprocity. Demons cruelty and brutality are obscured during his relationship with the equally ruthless Marina. Those tendencies are painfully evident, however, in his relationships with partners much weaker than himself, such as the helpless Aqua or the Spanish girls who were getting more and more youthful every year until by the end of the century, when he was sixty . . . his flame had become a difficult nymphet of ten (39192). Incest, the red herring of the novels preoccupation with ethics, serves to highlight an ethical philosophy that is at once radically permissive and uncompromisingly rigorous in its moral demands. To read Lolita and Pale Fire in light of this ethical framework is to identify moral standards that are universally binding and therefore independent of sociohistorical conditions. Though Humbert attempts to vindicate his relationship with Dolly by appealing to the fact that some cultures have cultivated (and some still cultivate) a tolerant attitude toward sexual relations with minors (43, 150, 124), the novels concern with the young girls pain dismisses such appeals to moral relativism. By contrast, Charles Kinbotes homosexuality fails to elicit the moral reprobation that accompanies his preying upon young boys and his consistent treatment of others as means to his own ends.20 Nabokovs habit of exploiting
20. Bringing Kant to bear on the representation of homosexuality in Pale Fire requires qualification, given that Kant condemns homosexuality as a vice. Kant speaks of a class of

336

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

homosexuality for the purpose of humor is regrettable, yet it is important to note that nowhere in his fiction does homosexuality conjure up the moral repugnance elicited by deliberate cruelty. In maintaining such a distinction, Nabokov is following in the footsteps of his father, whose admission that he did not understand homosexuality did not prevent him from being one of the first Russian jurists to seek the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults.21
duties to oneself that he justifies not only in terms of the formula of humanity but also in terms of natures purposes (defined as self-preservation, the preservation of the species, and the preservation of the persons biological capacity to enjoy life). Our duty, Kant argues, is to avoid vicessuch as suicide, sexual self-debasement, gluttony, and drunkennessthat compromise these objectives (Metaphysics 6:420). Kant further differentiates between two kinds of sexual vices, both of which violate ones duty to oneself as an animal and moral being. As contrary to sound reason, crimina carnis secundum naturam (natural vices such as fornication and adultery) must be avoided because they degrade humanity by placing it on a level with animal nature (Lectures 169, 164). Crimina carnis contra naturam (unnatural vices such as masturbation, pederasty, and bestiality) are contrary to natural instinct and to animal nature and thus place humanity below the level of animals (Lectures 16970). Since these unnatural sexual activities are incompatible with the ends of nature, Kant declares them to be wrong in all contexts. Commentators such as Lara Denis and Alan Soble have convincingly argued that Kants appeal to nature cannot justify his unconditional rejection of unnatural sex. Denis outlines eight reasons why nature alone cannot furnish Kant with an argument for self-regarding duties (23539). [N]atures ends, she asserts, are not equipped to serve as an independent justification for duties to oneself, nor are they a conclusive indication of what [the formula of humanity] requires (236). As Kant himself admits, only the formula of humanity can determine the rightness or wrongness of an act, and as Denis and Soble demonstrate, the formula of humanity fails to establish homosexuality as a vice. What is more, Kants view that monogamous (heterosexual) marriage is the only social configuration that makes sex compatible with the formula of humanity can be mobilized in defense of same-sex marriage. To quote Denis: There seems to be no support for the view that homosexual sex as such is wrongthat it cannot, like heterosexual sex, be made permissible by being put into a context of a mutually respectful (perhaps contractual) relationship. . . . Homosexual sex should be viewed as only as morally risky as heterosexual sex, and for the same main reason: because of the objectification that is part of sexual desire. The fact that one cannot procreate through homosexual sex does not seem to show, according to [the formula of humanity], that there is anything self-regardingly vicious about it (23940). Like Denis, Soble argues that Kant makes limited use of natures objectives as an argumentative tool, and that his uncharacteristic appeal to nature provides him with nothing more than an opportunity to express his antipathy toward sexual perversion. 21. In his diary entry for March 28, 1922, Nabokov recalls talking with his father about his brother Sergeys strange, abnormal inclinations (qtd. in Boyd, Russian Years 192). Nabokovs father, V. D. Nabokov, was one of the most eminent criminologists in

D R A G U N O I U

337

To read Nabokovs novels as exercises in aesthetic frivolity is to confuse Nabokov with Adas David van Veen, the eccentric Dutch architect who brings to life a project conceived by his dead grandson. David van Veen resolves to erect a thousand and one floramors (glamorous brothels for the enormously wealthy) all over the worldperhaps even in brutal Tartary, which he thought was ruled by Americanized Jews, but then Art redeemed Politics profoundly original concepts that we must condone in a lovable old crank (349). As always, Van is willing to overlook what Nabokov, his creator, cannot. Nabokovs art never condones anti-Semitism and never ignores the political realities of dictatorships such as Tartary, Antiterras version of the Soviet Union. That art often lures our attention away from such moral delinquencies, that it often tempts us to look the other way, is a function of its kinship with deception: None could help admiring David van Veens knack of making his brand-new Regency mansion look like a renovated farmhouse or of producing a converted convent on a small offshore island with such miraculous effect that one could not distinguish the arabesque from the arbutus, ardor from art, the sore from the rose (35051). Plato banished poets from his republic because of arts seductive deceptions. His prescription should remind us that art is never above suspicion. But if art can disguise vice as beautythe sore as the roseit does not follow that we must abandon art as one of our most significant repositories of value. Within Nabokovs special cosmology, our capacity to experience aesthetic pleasure and our capacity to be attuned to disinterested moral imperatives are the twin consequences of our freedom. If arts charming deceptions sometimes blind us to arts kinship with ethics, we must remember what the Muses tell Hesiod at the beginning of Theogony: We know to tell many lies that sound like truth, but we know to sing reality, when we will. Carleton University
pre-Soviet Russia. His appeal to decriminalize consensual adult homosexuality is made in the same essay in which he praises the increased protections for minors instituted by recent reforms in Russias criminal code. Boyd refers to the article and provides a brief account of V. D. Nabokovs contributions to criminal jurisprudence (Russian Years 54).

338

C O N T E M P O R A R Y

L I T E R A T U R E

WORKS CITED
Boyd, Brian. Nabokovs Ada: The Place of Consciousness. 1985. Christchurch: Cybereditions, 2001. . Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990. Denis, Lara. Kant on the Wrongness of Unnatural Sex. History of Philosophy Quarterly 16.2 (1999): 22548. Feldman, Fred. Kantian Ethics. Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Louis P. Pojman. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1989. 26173. Hesiod. Theogon; and, Works and Days. Ed. and trans. M. L. West. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. 1790. Trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Ed. Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. . Critique of Pure Reason. 1781, 1787. Trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. . Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. 1785. Practical Philosophy 37108. . Lectures on Ethics. 1930. Trans. Louis Infield. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1963. . The Metaphysics of Morals. 1797. Practical Philosophy 353603. . On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy. 1797. Practical Philosophy 60515. . Practical Philosophy. Ed. and trans. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Korsgaard, Christine M. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Kuehn, Manfred. Kant: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Langton, Rae. Duty and Desolation. Philosophy 67 (1992): 481505. Levine, Peter. Lolita and Aristotles Ethics. Philosophy and Literature 19.1 (1995): 3247. Nabokov, V. D. [Vladimir Dmitrievich]. Plotskie prestupleniya [Carnal Offenses]. Vestnik Prava [Law Bulletin] 32.910 (1902): 12989. Nabokov, Vladimir. Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969. . Bend Sinister. 1947. New York: Vintage, 1990. , trans. Eugene Onegin. A Novel in Verse. By Aleksandr Pushkin. 4 vols. Bollingen Ser. 72. New York: Bollingen, 1964. . Lectures on Literature. Ed. Fredson Bowers. San Diego: HarvestHarcourt, 1980. . Lolita. 1955. New York: Vintage, 1997. . Nikolai Gogol. 1944. Corr. ed. New York: New Directions, 1961. . On a Book Entitled Lolita. 1956. Lolita 31117. . Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. New York: Putnams, 1966. . Strong Opinions. 1973. London: Weidenfeld, 1974.

D R A G U N O I U

339

Panofsky, Erwin. Meaning in the Visual Arts. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1955. Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. Scruton, Roger. Kant: A Very Short Introduction. 1982. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Soble, Alan. Kant and Sexual Perversion. Monist 86.1 (2003): 5589. Stuckenberg, J. H. W. The Life of Immanuel Kant. 1882. Bristol: Thoemmes, 1990. Vries, Gerard de. Perplexd in the Extreme: Moral Facets of Vladimir Nabokovs Work. Nabokov Studies 2 (1995): 13552. Wasianski, E. A. C. Immanuel Kant in seinen letzten Lebensjahren. 1804. Immanuel Kant, Sein Leben in Darstellungen von Zeitgenossen. Ed. Felix Gross. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968. 215306.