Secondly, when dealing with a work of art we must always bear in mind that art is a divine game. These two elements —
the elements of the divine and that of the game—are equally important. It is divine because this is the element in which man comes nearest to God through becoming a true creator in his own right. And it is a game, because it remains art only as long as we are allowed to remember that, after all, it is all make-believe, that the people on the stage, for instance, are not actually murdered, in other words, only as long as our feelings of horror or of disgust do not obscure our realization that we are, as readers or as spectators, participating in an elaborate and enchanting game: the moment this balance is upset we get, on the stage, ridiculous melodrama, and in a book just a lurid description of, say, a case of murder which should belong in a newspaper instead. And we cease to derive that feeling of pleasure and satisfaction and spiritual vibration, that combined feeling which is our reaction to true art. For example, we are not disgusted or horrified by the bloody ending of the three greatest plays ever written: the hanging of Cordelia, the death of Hamlet, the suicide of Othello give us a shudder, but a shudder with a strong element of delight in it. This delight does not derive from the fact that we are glad to see those people perish, but merely our enjoyment of Shakespeare's overwhelming genius. I would like you further to ponder Crime and Punishment and Memoirs from a Mousehole also known as the Notes from Underground (1864) from this point of view: is the artistic pleasure you derive from accompanying Dostoevski on his excursions into the sick souls of his characters, is it consistently greater than any other emotions, thrills of disgust, morbid interest in a crime thriller? There is even less balance between the esthetic achievement and the element of criminal reportage in Dostoevski's other novels.
*
"English words expressing several although by no means all aspects of poshlust are, for instance: 'cheap, sham, smutty, pink-and-blue, high-falutin', in bad taste.' " See Nabokov's lecture on "Philistines and Philistinism."
72
Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
Thirdly, when an artist sets out to explore the motions and reactions of a human soul under the unendurable stresses of life, our interest is more readily aroused and we can more readily follow the artist as our guide through the dark corridors of that human soul if that soul's reactions are of a more or less all-human variety. By this I certainly do not wish to say that we are, or should be, interested solely in the spiritual life of the so-called average man. Certainly not. What I wish to convey is that though man and his reactions are infinitely varied, we can hardly accept as human reactions those of a raving lunatic or a character just come out of a madhouse and just about to return there. The reactions of such poor, deformed, warped souls are often no longer human, in the accepted sense of the word, or they are so freakish that the problem the author set himself remains unsolved regardless of how it is supposed to be solved by the reactions of such unusual individuals.
I have consulted doctors' case studies* and here is their list classifying Dostoevski's characters by the categories of mental illnesses by which they are affected:
I. EPILEPSY
The four well-marked cases of epilepsy among Dostoevski's characters are: Prince Myshkin in The Idiot; Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov; Kirillov in The Possessed; and Nellie in The Humiliated and Insulted.
1) Myshkin's is the classic case. He has frequent moods of ecstasy ... a tendency to emotional mysticism, an extraordinary power of empathy which permits him to divine the feelings of others. He shows meticulous attention to detail, particularly in penmanship. In childhood he had had frequent paroxysms, and had been given up by the physicians as a hopeless "idiot".
. . .
2) Smerdyakov, the bastard son of old Karamazov by an imbecile woman. As a child Smerdyakov showed great cruelty. He was fond of hanging cats, then burying them with much blasphemous ceremony. As a young man he developed an exaggerated sense of self-esteem, verging at times on megalomania . . . had frequent paroxysms . . . etc.
3) Kirillov, the scapegoat character in The Possessed, is an incipient epileptic; though he is noble, gentle, and high-minded, he has a markedly epileptoid personality. He describes clearly the premonitory symptoms which he had often experienced.
His case is complicated by suicidal mania.
4) The case of Nellie is unimportant . . . adds nothing of consequence to what the first three cases have revealed of the inward consciousness of the epileptic.
II. SENILE DEMENTIA
The case of General Ivolgin in The Idiot is one of incipient senile dementia, complicated with alcoholism ... he is irresponsible . . . borrows money on worthless IOUs to procure drinks. When accused of lying, he is nonplussed for a moment, but soon regains his assurance and continues in the same vein. It is the peculiar character of this pathological lying which best reveals the state of mind which goes with this senile decay . . . accelerated by alcoholism.
III. HYSTERIA
1) Liza Khokhlakov in The Brothers Karamazov, a girl of fourteen, partially paralyzed, the paralysis presumably hysterical and curable by miracles. . . . She is extremely precocious, impressionable, coquettish, and perverse; is subject to nocturnal fevers—all symptoms in precise accord with classic cases of hysteria. Her dreams are of devils. ... In her day-dreams she is
*
Nabokov's discussion of the categories of mental illness is interpolated from S. Stephenson Smith and Andrei Isotoff, "The Abnormal From Within: Dostoevsky," The Psychoanalytic Review, XXII (October 1939), 361-391.
73
Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
preoccupied with ideas of evil and destruction. She loves to dwell in her thoughts on the recent patricide with which Dmitri Karamazov is charged; and thinks that everyone "loves him for his having killed his father," etc.
2) Liza Tushin in The Possessed is a borderline case of hysteria. She is exceedingly nervous and restless, arrogant, yet capable of unusual efforts to be kind. . . . She is given to fits of hysterical laughter, ending in weeping, and to strange whims, etc.
In addition to these definitely clinical cases of hysteria, Dostoevski's characters include many instances of hysterical tendencies: Nastasya ... in The Idiot, Katerina ... in Crime and Punishment, who is afflicted with "nerves"; most of the women characters, in fact, show more or less marked hysterical tendencies.