DOI:

https://www.doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2018-9-8-56

Issue:

2018 №9

Author: Olga Voronina
About the author:

Olga Voronina, PhD, Associate Professor of Russian, director of the Russian and Eurasian Studies Program, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA.

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Abstract:

Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “Camera Obscura” famously ends with the death of its blind protagonist, Bruno Kretschmar, from the hand of Kretschmar’s former mistress, Magda Peters. In the little-known version of the novel’s ending, which the author abandoned in 1931, but nevertheless preserved among his papers, now on hold at the Library of Congress (USA), the blind man fiercely shoots Magda in revenge for her unfaithfulness and cruelty as well as in the hope of regaining his vision after the girl’s demise. This first-time publication of the castoff ending of “Camera Obscura” is preceded with an essay that compares the two versions, along with the last pages of “Laughter in the Dark”, the author’s translation of the novel to English. It also investigates the moral choices and narrative devices Nabokov relied on when choosing the more predictable, but also less brutal finale. Furthermore, the analysis draws parallels between the ending Nabokov chose not to publish and the intriguing scene of Quilty’s murder in “Lolita”, with its motifs of blindness and references to camera obscura as an artist’s tool used for creating an optical illusion. The comparison leads to conclusions about such aspects of Nabokov’s art as his visual poetics, strategies of intertextual concealment, and metaphysical imagination.

Keywords: Vladimir Nabokov, archival discoveries, text variants, “Camera Obscura”, “Laughter in the Dark”, “Lolita”'s prototexts, Nabokov’s metaphysics, visual poetics.
For citation:

Voronina Olga. “But how can this living water be used?” (crossed out): From the castoff ending of “Camera Obscura” to “Lolita”. Literary fact, 2018, no. 9, pp. 8–56.

References:

Aleksandrov V.E. Nabokov i potustoronnost’. Metafizika, etika, estetika [Nabokov and otherworld. Metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics], transl. by N.A. Anastasiev. St. Petersburg, Aleteya Publ., 1999. 312 p. (In Russ.)

Alter R. Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre. Berkeley, The University of California Press, 1978. 248 p.

Appel A. Nabokov’s Dark Cinema. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1974. 324 p.

Babikov A. Nepodoshedshie konechnosti i nedodelannye torsy. Rukopis’ “Rayskoy ptitsy” i rannyaya redaktsiya “Solus Rex” v zamyslе “Lolity” [Discarded limbs and unfinished torsos. The manuscript of “Rayskaia Ptitsa” and the first version of “Solus Rex” in the conception of “Lolita”]. Literaturnyi fakt, 2017, no. 6, pp. 8–29. (In Russ.)

Barabtarlo G. By Trial and Terror. Nabokov and the Question of Morality: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, and the Ethics of Fiction, ed. M. Rodgers and E. Sweeney. New York, Palgrave McMillan, 2016, pp. 87–108.

Barabtarlo G. Nabokov’s trinity (On the movement of Nabokov’s themes). Nabokov and His Fiction: New Perspectives, ed. by Julian W. Connolly. Cambridge and London, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 109–138.

Barabtarlo G. Sochinenie Nabokova [Composition of Nabokov]. St. Petersburg, Ivan Limbakh Publ., 2011. 457 p. (In Russ.)

Boid B. “Blednyi ogon” Vladimira Nabokova: Volshebstvo khudozhestvennogo otkrytiia [Nabokov’s “Pale Fire”: The magic of artistic discovery], transl. by S. Shvabrin. St. Petersburg, Ivan Limbakh Publ., 2015. 571 p. (In Russ.)

Boid B. Vladimir Nabokov. Russkie gody. Biographiya [Vladimir Nabokov. The Russian years. A biography], transl. by G. Lapina. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2010. 695 p. (In Russ.)

Brooks P. Body Work: Objects of Desire in Modern Narrative. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1993. 325 p.

Brooks P. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1984. 363 p.

Buks N. “Volshebnyi fonar’” ili “Kamera obscura” — kinoroman Vladimira Nabokova [“A magic lantern” or “Camera obscura” — Vladimir Nabokov’s cinematic novel]. Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, 1992, vol. 33, no. 2–3, pp. 181–205. (In Russ.)

Connolly J.W. A Reader’s Guide to Nabokov’s Lolita. Boston, Academic Studies Press, 2009. 185 p.

Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940–1971, ed. by S. Karlinsky. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2001. 389 p.

Dolinin A.A. Istinnaia zhizn’ pisatelia Sirina. Raboty o Nabokove [The real life of writer Sirin. Works about Nabokov]. St. Petersburg, Akademicheskii proekt Publ., 2004. 402 p. (In Russ.)

Dzhonson D.B. Miry i antimiry Vladimira Nabokova [Vladimir Nabokov’s worlds in regression]. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2011. 347 p. (In Russ.)

Foster J.B., Jr. Nabokov and Tolstoy. The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, ed. by V. Alexandrov. New York, Routledge, 1995, pp. 518–527.

Grayson J. Nabokov Translated: A Comparison of Nabokov’s Russian and English Prose. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1977. 257 p.

Iangirov R. “Chuvstvo filma”: zametki o kinematograficheskom kontekste v literature russkogo zarubezhya 1920–1930-kh godov [“The film feeling”: Notes on the cinematographic context of Russian émigré literature in the 1920–1930s]. Imperiya N. Nabokov i nasledniki: sb. statei [The N. Empire: Nabokov and his heirs: A collection of essays], ed. by Iu. Leving, E. Soshkin. Moscow, NLO Publ., 2006, pp. 399–426. (In Russ.)

Kuzmanovich Z., Diment G. Approaches to Teaching Nabokov’s “Lolita”. Modern Language Association of America, 2008. 190 p.

Kuzmenko E. Laterna magika V. Nabokova [V. Nabokov’s Laterna Magica]. Kinovedcheskie zapiski, 1993/1994, no. 20, pp. 194–202. (In Russ.)

Meyer P. Lolita and the Genre of the Literary Double: Does Quilty Exist? Wesleyan University, WesScholar, Division III Faculty Publications (January 2009). Available at: http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/div3facpubs/305 (accessed 05.10.2018).

Nabokov V. Laura i ee original: Fragmenty romana [The Original of Laura: A Novel in Fragments], transl., with afterword by G. Barabtarlo, intro. by D. Nabokov. St. Petersburg, Azbuka Publ., 2010. 192 p. (In Russ.)

Nabokov V. Lektsii po zarubezhnoy literature [Lectures on foreign literature]. Moscow, Nezavisimaia gazeta Publ., 1998. 507 p. (In Russ.)

Nabokov V. Pis’ma k Vere [Letters to Vera], comment. by O. Voronina and B. Boyd. Moscow, KoLibri Publ., 2017. 700 p. (In Russ.)

Nabokov V. Polnoe sobranie rasskazov [Collected short stories], ed. by A. Babikov. St. Petersburg, Azbuka Publ., 2014. 748 p. (In Russ.)

Nabokov V. Selected Letters: 1940–1977, ed. by D. Nabokov and M.J. Bruccoli. New York, Harcourt, 1989. 582 p.

Nabokov V. Sobranie sochinenii amerikanskogo perioda: v 5 t. T. 2 [Collected American works: in 5 vols. Vol. 2]. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2008. 669 p. (In Russ.)

Nabokov V. Sobranie sochinenii amerikanskogo perioda: v 5 t. T. 5 [Collected American works: in 5 vols. Vol. 5]. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2002. 704 p. (In Russ.)

Nabokov V. Sobranie sochinenii russkogo perioda: v 5 t. T. 2 [Collected Russian works: in 5 vols. Vol. 2]. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 1999. 780 p. (In Russ.)

Nabokov V. Sobranie sochinenii russkogo perioda: v 5 t. T. 3 [Collected Russian works: in 5 vols. Vol. 3]. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2000. 838 p. (In Russ.)

Nabokov V. Sobranie sochinenii russkogo perioda: v 5 t. T. 4 [Collected Russian works: in 5 vols. Vol. 4]. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2000. 780 p. (In Russ.)

Nabokov V. The Annotated Lolita, ed. by A. Appel, Jr. New York, Vintage, 1991. 544 p.

Nabokov V. Vzgliani na arlekinov! [Look at the Harlequins!], transl., comment. by A. Babikov. St. Petersburg, Azbuka Publ., 2016. 352 p. (In Russ.)

Proffer K. Klyuchi k “Lolite” [Keys to “Lolita”], transl. and intro. by N. Makhlaiuk and S. Slobodianiuk, afterword by D.B. Johnson. St. Petersburg, Symposium Publ., 2000. 301 p. (In Russ.)

Shapiro G. Nabokov and Early Netherlandish Art. Nabokov at Cornell. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1999, pp. 241–250.

Showalter E. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle. New York, Viking, 1990. 242 p.

White D. Nabokov and His Books: Between Literary Modernism and the Literary Marketplace. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2017. 256 p.

Winston M. Lolita and the Dangers of Fiction. Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 21, no. 4 (Dec. 1975), pp. 421–427.