The Fantasy of Order: Vladimir Nabokov

Abstract

Vladimir Nabokov’s contributions to fantasy literature have not, previously, been adequately appreciated. The over-used, and inaccurately used, adjective ‘Kafkaesque’ has been applied to some of his work, but Nabokov himself insists, with justification, that he was not influenced by Kafka and, more importantly, that his work bears no similarity to Kafka’s. In his introduction to the American edition of Bend Sinister (1963), after issuing his usual warning to Freudians — ‘Keep Out’ — Nabokov declares that an automatic comparison between his novel ‘and Kafka’s creations or Orwell’s clichés would go merely to prove that the automaton could not have read either the great German writer or the mediocre English one’. Kafka’s fantasies are explorations of emotional conditions; their logic is the logic of psychology and their aim is to present a literal account of what is happening subjectively to his characters. Nabokov uses fantasy to emphasise the fragmentation of normal perception, to deny the sense of order, to insist that logic and order are themselves fantasies. Thus Nabokov has more affinity to Jorge Luis Borges, who creates orders which are preposterous and yet compelling.