Studia Slavica 40. (1995 )

1-4. szám - Tartalomjegyzék

Peter I. Barta The mood and tonality of the story remind one of Kafka’s world. As in “Metamorphosis”, The Trial, The Castle or America, Nabokov’s protagonist ap­pears “ordinary” in a “normal” world but gradually he discovers that he is trapped in a different dimension (albeit an invisible one) from his environment. While in Kafka, however, no one solution has been encoded to lead the way out of the existential maze, in Nabokov a “correct” reading is recommended which contains tacit landmarks leading to a comprehensible, two-dimensional ideology. On the contrary, Kafka’s world is impenetrably multi-dimensional, and it is the reader who is urged to look for a way out of the chaotic system, if any is available. The ideological charge of the story arises from Nabokov’s interpretation of history. As Hayden White shows, any generalization of what happened in the past is based upon the inclusion and highlighting of some events and the suppression of others.15 White also suggests that “value-neutral” historical events can often be cmplotted as tragic ones in some comprehensive story of the past, because the interpreter privi­leges such elements as will comprise the kind of story he wants to tell.16 In effect, Nabokov’s view of history simply removes events from the plot structure of the official Stalinist version and inserts them into another plot structure, the emigre’s. To present the consequences of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution as tragic leads many readers to re-familiarize themselves with historical events repressed by the Soviets and their sympathizers. Clearly, this is one reason why in today’s less repressive successor to the Soviet state—ready for a different account of the past—Nabokov, the eloquent Russian voice of “otherness,” is enjoying substantial and well-de­served popularity. Of course, “The Visit to the Museum” does not actually de­scribe the Soviet Union, but it invites analogies such as those with the tragic myth of Orpheus. In spite of Nabokov’s claim that he abhors didacticism, he ma­nipulates his reader into patterning the diverse elements in the story into the meaningful scheme he has in mind. The understanding of history upon which the story rests allows for no alternative ways of making sense of the past. If a reader re-employs Nabokov’s version of history, the story can be concretized in ways which the author would presumably regard as unacceptable. And yet, this short story, like so many of Nabokov’s best works, provides so much stimulation for the reader, that its intellectual and structural complexities beg to provoke and challenge. The didactic intention invites not only obedient readings but, also, ironically enough, “misreadings” which question its silent affirmations and open up the text to the making of alternative meanings. 15 Can“7* Studia Slavica Hung. 40, 1995 Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact”, The Writing of History, ed. R. and H. Kozicki, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978,47. Ibid., 48.

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