{"id":818,"date":"2018-09-28T15:04:13","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T19:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/?p=818"},"modified":"2022-01-19T08:30:06","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T12:30:06","slug":"defining-nabokovs-exile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/2018\/09\/28\/defining-nabokovs-exile\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining Nabokov’s Exile"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Emily Erdmann<\/p>\n

As part of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies\u2019s lecture series on exiles, \u201cHomesick and Sick of Home,\u201d Miami welcomed Roman Utkin, a Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies professor at Wesleyan University, to present on \u201cBeyond Exile: Nabokov in Berlin and Practices of Not Belonging.\u201d\u00a0 Utkin\u2019s talk informed students on Berlin\u2019s role as a hub for Russian exiles after the 1917 revolutions and as an influencing agent on Vladimir Nabokov as a writer and anti-assimilationist. Despite Nabokov\u2019s self-proclaimed separation from both the title of \u201cexile\u201d (a label he deemed pejorative) and the act of assimilating, Utkin argued that the 20th<\/sup> century writer was actually molded<\/em> by his displacement to the extent that his works reflected his location and his transient status.<\/p>\n

Nabokov personally takes an unprecedented approach to exile: rather than bemoaning the loss of his homeland, as did his contemporaries, he represents exile as a natural state of being. This concept is best represented in his description of \u201cEden,\u201d a city zoo composed of bars which exile mankind from the utopia within. Utkin suggested that Eden evokes thoughts of The Fall of Man as the exile<\/em> of man from paradise. Exile was thus born at the dawn of mankind and is as natural and unavoidable as sin.<\/p>\n

Referring to the zoo, Nabokov claims \u201cIt is Eden nonetheless, insofar as man is able to reproduce it\u201d (95). To him, exile is but a state of mind, to be reproduced<\/em>, or expressed, in man\u2019s creation. Utkin quoted Nabokov as having stated that \u201cAny genuine artist emigrates into his own art and abides there.\u201d Art requires creativity\u2014a process which implies the creation of something new. Creating something new, in turn, requires a unique perspective, which ultimately implies that the creator is, at least intellectually, distinct or set apart from a collective.\u00a0 In this sense, I see the validity in Nabokov\u2019s claim that an artist abides in the exile that is his art; however, I think the exile of an artist is therefore too commonplace, while that of an \u00e9migr\u00e9 is more limited and situational to the point where it is merely a coincidence that these two vastly different states of alienation happen to share the same name.\u00a0 Nabokov is<\/em> exiled as an artist\u2014able to see life from a different perspective than most, able to view a pipe on a more profound level than anyone before him; however, he is also<\/em> exiled as an \u00e9migr\u00e9, determined to \u201cmake Berlin his own [and] attempt to overcome Berlin\u2019s otherness,\u201d as Utkin put it. An artist may choose to self-alienate; an \u00e9migr\u00e9 seldom has a choice.<\/p>\n

Jacob Emery, a Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures Associate Professor at Indiana University Bloomington, defined Nabokov\u2019s \u201cdouble exile\u201d differently, as contingent upon his age. Eric Naiman relays Emery\u2019s argument, which claims that a young Nabokov, \u201cThe writer of \u2018Putevoditel’ po Berlinu,\u2019 had lost his native land [while] the author of \u201cA Guide to Berlin\u201d [had] lost his native tongue\u201d (225). Thus, Nabokov\u2019s temporal location is also a factor in the defining of his exilic state.<\/p>\n

I find validity in each definition of Nabokov\u2019s exile. Each argument, from Nabokov himself to Emery, Naiman, and Utkin, revolves around three key marks: geographic exile<\/em>, assimilation<\/em>, and time<\/em>. A unified definition is best clarified and summarized through the following quotations from Nabokov\u2019s short story \u201cThe Visit to the Museum.\u201d Nabokov\u2019s narrator laments, \u201cAlas, it was not the Russia I remembered, but the factual Russia of today, forbidden to me, hopelessly slavish, and hopelessly my own native land\u201d (258). Relentlessly attached to his own native land and unable to \u201cshed all the integument of exile\u201d (259), Nabokov, despite his opposition to assimilation and exile as a label, was indeed in a state of perpetual transition\u2014an exile in gradual assimilation<\/em>. Barred from the Eden he once called home, and yet still hopelessly chained to this past reality, he could not advance to a future outside of exile. Therefore, Nabokov\u2019s identity cannot be defined without exile.<\/p>\n

Emily Erdmann is a senior majoring in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/p>\n

Nabokov, Vladimir. \u201cThe Visit to the Museum.\u201d Russian \u00c9migr\u00e9 Short Stories from Bunin to <\/em><\/p>\n

Yanovsky<\/em>, edited by Bryan Karetnyk, Penguin Books, 2018, pp. 249-259.<\/p>\n

Nabokov, Vladimir, and Dmitri Nabokov. \u201cA Guide to Berlin.\u201d\u00a0Details of a Sunset: and Other <\/em><\/p>\n

Stories<\/em>, McGraw-Hill International, Inc., 1976, pp. 90\u201398.<\/p>\n

Naiman, Eric. \u201cThe Costs of Character: The Maiming of the Narrator in \u2018A Guide to<\/p>\n

Berlin.\u2019\u201d\u00a0Nabokov, Perversely<\/em>, Cornell University Press, 2010, pp. 221\u2013232.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Emily Erdmann As part of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies\u2019s lecture series on exiles, \u201cHomesick and Sick of Home,\u201d Miami welcomed Roman Utkin, a Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies professor at Wesleyan University, to present … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colloquium-talks","category-havighurst-lecturers","category-lecture_reviews","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}