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Vladimir Nabokov’s Solus Rex and the “Ultima Thule” Theme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

D. Barton Johnson
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Nabokov’s unfinished novel, Solus Rex, composed in Paris during the winter of 1939-40, was the final flowering of the author’s “last season of Russian prose writing.” The novel was ultimately abandoned following Nabokov’s emigration to America in May 1940. Nabokov apparently intended to resume work on it, for in a letter of April 29, 1941, to his new friend Edmund Wilson, he remarked that he had “left Europe in the middle of avast Russian novel which will soon start to ooze from some part of my body if I go on keeping it inside.”There was no resumption, however.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , Winter 1981 , pp. 543 - 556
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1981

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References

1. Vladimir, Nabokov, A Russian Beauty and Other Stories (hereafter cited as Russian Beauty) (New York, 1973), p. 1973 Google Scholar. This volume also contains the English translation of the two published chapters of Solus Rex.

2. Simon Karlinsky, ed.. The Nabokov- Wilson Letters : Correspondence between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson, 1940-1971 (hereafter cited as Nabokov- Wilson Letters) (New York, 1979), p. 44.

3. Vladimir, Nabokov, “Solus Rex,” Sovremennye zapiski (hereafter cited as SZ), 70 (1940) : 5–36Google Scholar and idem, “Ultima Thule, ” Novyi zhurnal, 1 (1942) : 49-77. “Ultima Thule” was reprinted in Vladimir Nabokov [Sirin], Vesna v Fialte idrugie rasskazy (hereafter cited as Vesna v Fialle) (New York, 1956). All Russian citations are to the Sovremennye zapiski and Vesna v Fialte versions; all English citations are to Russian Beauty. For the convenience of bilingual readers, all citations to Nabokov's writings are, where possible, given for both the English and Russian texts. The subsequent information on the title of the novel is from Andrew, Field, Nabokov : His Life in Art (Boston, 1967), p. 292.Google Scholar

4. Russian Beauty, p. 164; Vesna v Fialle, p. 291.

5. Falter's father, Il'ia, is the subject of one of the numerous puns in what promised to be one of Nabokov's most verbally playful novels : “povar vash Il'ia na boku” ( “your cook Il'ia is on his side” ), that is, too drunk to stand upright (see Vesna v Fialte, p. 278). The Russian phrase is a punning surface translation of “pauvres vaches, il yen a beaucoup” ( “poor cows, there are many of them” ) (see Nabokov- Wilson Letters, pp. 47-8). There is also a latent reference in “na boku” ( “on his side” ) to author Nabokov.

6. Russian Beauty, p. 158; Vesna v Fialte, p. 284.

7. The riddle of the universe is a frequent motif in Nabokov's novels. In the 1928 work King, Queen. Knave. Franz has a dream in which Dreyer stands atop a ladder and winds a red phonograph which Franz knows will suddenly “bark the word that solved the universe.” During his nightmares he suffers “a certain nonterrestrial sensation, known to those who … have suddenly gone insane after deciphering the meaning of everything” ( Vladimir, Nabokov, King. Queen. Knave [New York, 1968], p. 202Google Scholar; idem, Kurol'. dama, valet [New York, 1968], p. 196). Pnin, while reflecting upon an afterlife, suddenly seems to be on the verge of “a simple solution of the universe” ( Vladimir, Nabokov, Pnin [New York, 1957], p. 58Google Scholar). Similar references in other Nabokov works are cited below.

8. Russian Beauty, p. 147. The artist has entered into Ultima Thule, the island kingdom of the poem he is illustrating. The only textual clue to his transformation into the character Kr occurs when the thoughts of the king momentarily seem to blend with those of “the no longer independent artist Dmitri Nikolaevich Sineusov” as he gazes at a ruby-lettered neon sign RENAULT (ibid., p. 190). In the Russian text, the word GARAGE is in Latin script (SZ, p. 9). This obscure fleeting reference is the only firm link between the two chapters. More tenuous is an association between a friend of Sineusov's referred to as “poor Adolf, ” who may or may not have been transformed into the overthrown and murdered Prince Adulf (see Russian Beauty, p. 152; Vesna v Fialte, p. 281 and Russian Beauty, p. 191; SZ, p. 11). In his preface to the English translation, Nabokov admits that he modeled the physical aspect of Adulf on S. P. Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballet Russe. Adulf, Nabokov says, is one of his “favorite characters in the private museum of stuffed people that every grateful writer has somewhere on the premises” (Russian Beauty, p. 148). One last faint interecho is that the author of the epic poem describes its setting to Sineusov as “a melancholy and remote island” (ibid., p. 164). In the “Solus Rex” chapter the island kingdom is described as that “ile triste et lointaine” (ibid., p. 192). The Russian texts use the identical wording “grustnyi i dalekii” in both occurrences (Vesna v Fialte, p. 291 and SZ, p. 12).

9. Russian Beauty, p. 168; Vesna v Fialte. p. 296.

10. Russian Beauty, p. 172; Vesna v Fialte. p. 301.

11. Russian Beauty, p. 181; Vesna v Fialle, p. 313.

12. Russian Beauty, p. 172; Vesna v Fiahe, p. 301.

13. Russian Beauty, p. 173; Vesna v Fialle, p. 302.

14. Russian Beauty, p. 190; SZ. p. 9.

15. Russian Beauty, p. 165; Vesna v Fiahe, p. 292.

16. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (Norfolk, 1941) was written in Paris in 1938, immediately prior to the Russian Solus Rex. Citations are to the Weidenfeld and Nicolson edition (London, 1960).

17. Maks, Fasmer, Etimologicheskii slovar’ russkogo iazyka, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1967).Google Scholar

18. Nabokov-Wilson Letters, pp. 44, 85-86.

19. Ibid., pp. 136, 168-69. All citations are to Vladimir, Nabokov, Bend Sinister (New York, 1964)Google Scholar. Nabokov's important introduction to this edition is reprinted in Page, Stegner, ed., Nabokov's Congeries (New York, 1968), p. 239–46.Google Scholar

20. Bend Sinister, p. 152.

21. Ibid., p. 168.

22. Ibid., p. 172.

23. Ibid., p. 210.

24. This interpretation is developed at length in my article “Don't Touch My Circles” : The Two Worlds of Nabokov's Bend Sinister.” The theme of consciousness is explored in Richard F., Patteson, “Nabokov's Bend Sinister : The Narrator as God,” Studies in American Fiction, 5 (1977) : 241–53.Google Scholar

25. Russian Beauty, p. 176; Vesna v Fialte. p. 306.

26. Russian Beauty, p. 172; Vesna v Fialte. pp. 301-302.

27. Russian Beauty, p. 174; Vesna v Fialte, p. 304.

28. Russian Beauty, pp. 174-75; Vesna v Fialte. pp. 304-305.

29. Jorge Luis Borges's story “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” also offers the thematic conjunction of knowledge of an alternate world and an encyclopedia volume. The story may be found in Borges's Labyrinths : Selected Stories and Other Writings (New York, 1964). A full discussion of thesignificance of the “encyclopedia title” reference in Bend Sinister will be found in “Don't Touch My Circles.”

30. Russian Beauty, p. 156; Vesna v Fialte. p. 281.

31. Russian Beauty, p. 157; Vesna v Fialte, p. 283.

32. It is not by chance that the name Falter means “butterfly” in German. The butterfly, due to its metamorphic transformations (egg, caterpillar, cocoon-like pupa, and butterfly), is a traditional religious symbol of immortality of the soul and has often been so used by lepidopterist Nabokov. For a particularly clear-cut example, see the 1924 story “Christmas” in Vladimir, Nabokov, Details of a Sunset and Other Stories (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. The Russian version is “Rozhdestvo” in Vozvrashchenie Chorba : Rasskazy i Stixi (Ann Arbor, 1976). A survey of butterflies as intermediaries from the “other” world may be found in Rowe, W. W., Nabokov's Spectral Dimension : The Other World in his Works (Ann Arbor, 1981), p. 1981 Google Scholar. It is curiously apt that Falter, who has completed the metamorphic cycle, is both the past and present tutor of his pupil Sineusov. The words “pupil” and “pupa, ” the cocoon-like state of metamorphosis, are close cognates.

33. Russian Beauty, p. 169; Vesna v Fialte, p. 297.

34. Nabokov via Falter rounds off this discussion of circularity with a word play that is striking in English but stunning in Russian. Compare the English “logical development inexorably becomes an envelopment” (Russian Beauty, p. 169) and the Russian “razvitie rokovym obrazom stanovitsia svitkom” (development inexorably turns into a scroll) ( Vesna v Fialte, p. 297). The verbal root vit means “twist, turn.”

35. Russian Beauty, p. 174; Vesna v Fialte, p. 304 and Russian Beauty, p. 178; Vesna v Fialte, pp. 308-309.

36. Falter's use of “Moustache-Bleue” (Russian Beauty, pp. 175-76) is restricted to the English version. A number of changes have been introduced into the treatment of proper names in the translation. In the original, Falter's brother-in-law and sister and the Italian psychiatrist all remain nameless. In the translation, they become Mr. and Eleonora L., and the doctor becomes Bonomini in another of Nabokov's ritualistic aspersions on psychiatrists. The name Sineusov is drawn from a list of names of extinct Russian noble families supplied to Nabokov by a historian friend in the thirties (see A ndrew, Field, Nabokov : His Life in Part [New York, 1977], p. 200Google Scholar).

37. Bend Sinister, chapter nine.

38. Russian Beauty, p. 189; Vesna v Fialte, p. 8.

39. Russian Beauty, p. 30; Vesna v Fialte, p. 75.

40. Russian Beauty, p. 168; Vesna v Fialte, p. 296.

41. Russian Beauty, p. 173; Vesna v Fialte, p. 300.

42. Russian Beauty, p. 150; Vesna v Fialte, p. 274.

43. Bend Sinister, p. 152.

44. Ibid., pp. 153-55.

45. Ibid., pp. 155-56.

46. Sebastian Knight, p. 178.

47. Ibid., p. 166.

48. Ibid., p. 168.

49. Vladimir, Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading (New York, 1965)Google Scholar and idem, Priglashenie na kazn’ (Paris, 1966). For a more detailed exposition of the “two worlds” interpretation of this novel, see Johnson, D. Barton, “The Alpha and Omega of Nabokov's Prison-House of Language : Alphabetic Iconicism in Invitation to a Beheading, ” Russian Literature , 6, no. 4 (October 1978) : 347–64Google Scholar and D. Barton Johnson, “Spatial Modeling and Deixis : Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading, ” Poetics Today (forthcoming).

50. Invitation to a Beheading, pp. 45-46; Priglashenie na kazn', p. 63.

51. Invitation to a Beheading, p. 223; Priglashenie na kazn', p. 218.

52. Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (New York, 1962).

53. Ibid., p. 62.

54. Evidence for this view is presented in D. Barton Johnson, “The Scrabble Game in Ada or Taking Nabokov Clitorally, ” Journal of Modern Literature (forthcoming).

55. Vera Nabokov, in her preface to the posthumous edition of her husband's collected poems, notes that this theme of potusloronnost’ ( “the hereafter” ) is a dominant one throughout the writer's work (Vladimir Nabokov, Stixi [Ann Arbor, 1979]). It would seem to coincide closely with our definition of the “Ultima Thule” theme.

56. Vladimir, Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins! (New York, 1974), p. 89.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., p. 249.

58. Vladimir, Nabokov, Speak, Memory (New York, 1966), p. 20.Google Scholar