Certain metaphors recur: images of infinite regression, of cyclic reappearance, the maze, the mirror, the double, tigers, libraries, time itself. "I have some understanding of labyrinths," says his narrator in "The Garden of Forking Paths." For Borges "ambiguity is richness." Thus his endless series of possible worlds differs essentially from the alternate world of a Tolkien, which is unambiguous, solid, roughly con- gruent point by point with our familiar one. Borges plays with ideas like a magician with his props, but the magic is more than legerdemain. His Library of Babel is also a universe and an emblem of infinity; his science fiction tales are not arbitrary fantasies but serious attempts to refute ordinary notions of time; and his many stories of betrayal and frustration penetrate the dream life that floats, dense, shifting, troubling, below the consciousness threshold of ali of us.
As you read Borges you may feel his affinities with other writers discussed in his book: with Cervantes [38], about whose masterpiece he has written the most coolly outrageous story one can well imagine; with Lewis Carroll [91], Kafka [112], surely Garcia Marquez [132], and perhaps Nabokov [122]. But the Borges voice is unique. He has influenced many, but his magic is his own.
I have suggested you try two of his books. Labyrinths con- tains his finest fictions, essays, and parables, as well as a useful bibliography for those who wish to know him better. Dreamtigers contains more parables and a fair selection of his verse, conscientiously translated.
C.F.
122
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
1899-1977
Lolita; Pale Fire; Speak, Memory
One (but only one) way of viewing modern novelists is to divide them into two classes: the engaged and the unengaged. The engaged have a statement to make, often something about the state of our society. They are not necessarily propagandists or message bearers, but they have something on their minds, some special view of the world they are anxious to pass on to us. We may recognize engaged writers in such figures as Swift [52], Huxley [117], Solzhenitsyn [129], and Camus [127], dif- ferent as they are in other respects. The unengaged are less interested in getting something off their own minds than in revealing the configurations, the patterns of other minds. They do not care greatly about altering our view of life. They do care greatly about displaying symbolic structures we may admire or vibrate to. Both the engaged and the unengaged may produce first-rate works of art, but the engaged writer tends to operate on our intelligence, the unengaged on our esthetic sensibility. Borges [121] is such an unengaged writer; and so, preemi- nently, is Nabokov.
Nabokov's Slavic background, his aristocratic stance, his checkered career, his mastery of two national cultures, and his keen interest in formal literary problems—ali connect him
with another towering innovator in modern fiction, Joseph Conrad [100]. Born in what was then (and is now again) St. Petersburg, Nabokov was the scion of an aristocratic family that lost its fortune in the Revolution. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he spent formative years (1922-40) in Germany and France as a struggling and largely unrecognized writer. From 1948 to 1958 he taught Russian and European literature at Cornell, continuing also his extensive researches in entomology. He became a recognized authority on butterflies, as well as a remarkable chess player, and these themes from time to time reflect themselves in his novйis.
The worldwide success of Lolita (1955) gave him financial independence, though he never at any time wrote seriously for any reason except to please himself. He spent his last years living quietly in a Swiss hotel, dying in 1977.
Complete familiarity with the Nabokovian universe is a major adventure of the mind and imagination. To accomplish this it would be necessary to read ali of his novйis, plays, sto- ries, and criticism—including a brilliant, cantankerous study of Gogol [74] and such marvelous fiction as the sad-hilarious Pnin, the metaphysical-sexual time-fantasy Ada, and the tragic The Defense, the best piece of fiction ever written about the passion for chess. But the three books here suggested will sup- ply a first acquaintance with the greatest stylist of our period, who wrote equally well in English and Russian, and whose ele- gant, allusive, and witty prose sets him apart.
Lolita, which deals with Humbert Humberto passion for nymphets, is of course a recognized classic. Completely original, it is an examination of love that is funny, shocking to some, sad, and sophisticated in a manner quite remote from our American notion of sophistication. Pale Pire is partly a one- thousand-line poem in heroic couplets, partly a commentary on them by a mad exiled king—or perhaps a king only in his fantasy. It is a literary joke of enormous intricacy and at the same time, in the opinion of good critics, an addition to world literature. Speak, Memory is autobiographical, a unique recol- lection of Nabokovs childhood and youth, set mainly in pre- revolutionary Rъssia.
The mad Kinbote, in Pale Fire, describes himself in terms that might apply to his creator: "I can do what only a true artist can do—pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things.
The critic Gilbert Highet, reviewing the remarkable thriller King, Queen, Knave, summed up Nabokov as "the most original, the most tantalizing, the most unpredictable author alive." Since then, Nabokov has passed on. But his genius is so unbound by mere chronology that the judgment will stand.
C.F.
123
GEORGE ORWELL
1903-1950
Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Burmese Days
Eric Blair (George Orwell is a pen name) attended Eton, passed up university, and in 1922 shipped out to Burma where for a few years he served in the Burma Imperial Police. The values of the British Establishment did not take; indeed he spent the rest of his life repudiating them. Returning to England, he immersed himself in the culture of the poor, call- ing himself an anarchist, later a socialist. Unlike many British intellectuals of his time, Orwell was never seduced by Communism. The Spanish Civil War, in which he was wounded while fighting on the Republican side, intensified his distrust of ali totalitarian doctrines. Back in England he engaged in journalism and book writing, gradually working out for himself a libertarian-socialist political stance quite at vari- ance with doctrinaire Labour Party socialism.
Animal Farm made Orwell famous. Like parts of Gulliver s Traveis [52] it is a sophisticated adaptation of a simple and ancient literary form, the animal fable. Just as Candide [53] ranks as the classic satire on Leibnizian optimism, so Animal Farm has become the classic satire on Soviet Communism, and its pertinence is unchanged by the breakup of the Soviet Empire. Its lively movement, directness, and wit recall some of Voltaire^ outstanding qualities.