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Chronophilia: Nabokov and the Time of Desire

Hagglund, Martin.

New Literary History, Volume 37, Number 2, Spring 2006, pp. 447-467

(Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/nlh.2006.0036

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New Literary History, 2006, 37: 447467

Chronophilia: Nabokov and the Time o Desire

Martin Hgglund

T

o inscribe something is rst o all an act o memory. Regardlesso what, to whom, or why I write, my words become traces o thepast at the very moment when they are imprinted. Accordingly,

writing has a capacity to store historical data, to document and recordwhat has taken place. By inscribing what happens on a particular occa-sion, I provide mysel with a supplement that can retain details even iI orget them. I thus increase my chances o recalling past eventsoholding on to my own liebut by the same token I mark a precarioustemporality. Without the thought o a reader to come (whether myselor someone else), there would be no reason or me to write. The ad-dressed uture, however, is essentially perilous. When someone reads

my text I may already be dead, or the signicance o my words may nolonger be the same. Moreover, the inscriptions themselves always riskbeing erased.

Thus, i writing can counter oblivion, it simultaneously reveals a latentthreat. Writing would be superfuous or an immortal being, who couldnever experience the ear o orgetting. Conversely, the need to write(i only a memo or a mental note) stems rom the temporal nitudeo everything that happens. My act o inscribing something already in-dicates that I may orget it. Writing thus testies to my dependence onthat which is exterior to me.1 Even my own thoughts disappear romme at the moment they occur and must be imprinted as traces in theirvery event.

The texts o Vladimir Nabokov strongly reinorce the desire to keepwhat can be taken away, to remember what can be orgotten. Many oNabokovs novels are ctive memoirs where the protagonists narratetheir own lives. I will track how such writing is haunted by temporalnitude.

A good place to begin is Nabokovs own autobiographySpeak, Memory.Here, Nabokov ascribes a tremendous power to his proper conscious-ness and emphasizes his wakeul ability to recreate the past. This posturemay appear to conrm Nabokovs notorious hubris, but such a reproachdisregards the innate risks o Nabokovs sel-assurance. The celebratedconsciousness in Speak, Memory is not an idealized entity, but one hy-


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new literary history448

persensitive to the temporality o its own existence. The section on theauthors insomnia is an instructive example. Unlike most people whosuer rom insomnia, sleep is or Nabokov not to be coveted. On thecontrary, the prospect o dozing o is a humiliating mental torture

and no matter how great my weariness, the wrench o parting withconsciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me.2 There is o course noreason to doubt that Nabokov really had diculty sleeping. But a moreinteresting task is to consider how this theme gures in his text. Sleep is aclassic synecdoche or death, which Nabokov reinorces through a simileo Somnus as a black-masked headsman binding me to the block (SM85). Thus, Nabokovs reusal to abandon himsel to the night answers tohis rm determination not to let events all into oblivion.

Nabokovs battle is impossible to win. No consciousness would be ableto sustain itsel without interruptions or sleep, and Nabokov admits thatthe strain and drain o composition (SM85) sometimes orces him totake sleeping pills in order to gather strength. Analogously, even the mostvigilant mind is susceptible to orgetting. Nabokov mobilizes his powero remembrance against the threat o oblivion, but everything he wantsto remember was transient rom the beginning.3

We can thus discern how the same precarious temporality conditionsthe relation to the present. In a discreet but important episode, Nabokov

recounts how his mother sought to apprehend the various time marksdistributed throughout our country place (SM33). This heedulness,Nabokov explains, was the legacy his mother let to him. When theywent walking together, she would pinpoint some cherished detail andin conspiratorial tones say Vot zapomni: a phrase Nabokov translatesto the imperative now remember. As we shall see, this scene is reenactedthroughout Nabokovs writings and indicates a undamental trait o hischronophobia, to adopt a suggestive term rom Speak, Memory. The

main symptom o chronophobia is a sentience o the imminent risk oloss and a concomitant desire to imprint the memory o what happens.In spite o what Nabokov sometimes claims, chronophobia does not stemrom a metaphysical desire to escape the prison o time (SM18). Onthe contrary, I will argue that chronophobia and chronophilia are twoaspects o the same condition. It is precisely because one desires temporalphenomena (chronophilia) that one ears losing them (chronophobia).The mortal beloved is necessarily marked by its possible disappearance,

which or Nabokov is unacceptable and yet essential. Such a contra-diction is irresolvable, but that is the point. Chronophobia cannot becured, since what one wants to hold on towhat one wants to guardand keepis constituted by the act that it will be lost. Chronophobia isthus intrinsic to chronophilia. Without the chronophobic apprehensionthat the moment is passing away, there would be no chronophilic desireto hold onto it.


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449nabokov and the time of desire

However, Nabokov scholarship is dominated by the thesis that his writ-ing is driven by a desire to transcend the condition o time. The mostinfuential proponent or this view is Brian Boyd, who in a number obooks has argued that Nabokov aspires towards the ull reedom o

timelessness, consciousness without the degradation o loss.4 Accordingto Boyd, the possibility o such a lie beyond death is the pivotal concernin Nabokovs oeuvre. Boyd is aware that Nabokov and his protagonists areresolute chronophiles who treasure their memories and temporal lives.But this does not prevent Boyd rom arguing that Nabokov regards niteand time-bound consciousness as a prison that he hopes to transcendin death.5 Boyds reconstruction o Nabokovs metaphysics hinges on theassumption that these two positions are compatible. For Boyds system

to work, the desire to retain temporal experience must be compatiblewith the desire or immortality. Thus, what Boyd describes as Nabokovsdevotion to the precision o perception, the glory o consciousness inits apprehension o the things in the world must be compatible withthe desire or a supreme negation o time and the restrictions it placeson consciousness (NA62, 65).

Boyd tries to solve the equation by understanding immortal conscious-ness as an unlimited access to the personal past o mortal conscious-ness. While Boyd reinorces that time would not exist or such an ideal

consciousness, he nevertheless describes it as a consciousness to whichthe past is directly accessible and which can endlessly reinvestigate it todiscover new harmonies and designs (NA6465). Boyd does not explainhow a timeless consciousness could have a concept o the past or howit would be able to distinguish memories in the rst place, since thisrequires discrimination between dierent times. Furthermore, a timelessconsciousness could never reinvestigateor discoveranything, since theseactivities require temporality. Thus, the ull reedom o timelessness

could never allow us to enjoy endlessly the riches o time (NA 65).These contradictory claims dissimulate that the riches o time could notbe treasured or even comprehended by a timeless consciousness. It is inprinciple impossible to enjoy the riches o time orever, since temporalexperience, by denition, cannot last.

Moreover, Boyds argument presupposes that time is ultimately ines-sential or the constitution o an event. According to Boyd, the past isinaccessible because o our cognitive limitations, not because the events

themselves were temporal and irrevocably passed away.

6

Only by thusdenying the ontological reality o time can Boyd project an ideal realmin which events remain intact and ready to be inspected by a timelessconsciousness that would bring to light endless patterns in an alwaysavailable past (NA65). For this argument to work, it must be possibleto extract the essence o an experience rom the singular body that gaverise to it and rom the condition o temporality that necessarily marks


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it. But even i such an operation were possible, it would eliminate theparticularity o experience that Nabokov wants to keep. The chronophilicdesire to remember the fnite is not compatible with the metaphysicaldesire to transcend fnitude as such.

Thus, I will argue that the logic o chronophilia in Nabokovs writingundercuts the metaphysics that Boyd ascribes to him. Finitude is not adegraded state o being that can be opposed to a ull lie beyond death.Rather, chronophilia makes it clear that what is desired is temporal inits very essence. This gives rise to the incurable chronophobia at theheart o chronophilia. Whatever is desirablecannot be dissociated romthe undesirableact that it will be lost. There is no way out o this doublebind because the threat o loss is not extrinsic to what is desired, but

intrinsic to its being as such.Consider Nabokovs novel Pale Fire, where a long autobiographicalpoem by the character John Shade broaches the question o death andimmortality. The same poem reverberates in Nabokovs later novel Adaor Ardor: A Family Chronicle, where the lovers Van and Ada Veen translateShade into Russian. Shades narrative poem in Pale Firestages the internalcontradiction o mortal love. In an attempt to cure his ear o death,Shade consults an Institute o Preparation or the Hereater. As is clearrom Shades reasoning, however, immortal lie cannot answer to whathe desires, namely, to keep the traits o his fnite lie. Shade rankly de-clares that he will turn down eternity unless / The melancholy and thetenderness / O Mortal lie; the passion and the pain . . . Are ound inHeaven by the newlydead / Stored in its stronghold through the years.7Shades demand is incompatible with itsel, since immortality would notbe immortality i it preserved the mortal as mortal. Consequently, i oneloves the mortal as mortal there cannot be any transcendental consola-tion or its loss, since even i there were an immortal lie it would annul

the essence o what one loves. In a conversation about Shades poemtowards the end oAda, Van makes precisely this point:

Van pointed out that here was the rubone is ree to imagine any type o herea-ter, o course: the generalized paradise promised by Oriental prophets and poets,or an individual combination; but the work o ancy is handicappedto a quitehopeless extentby a logical ban: you cannot bring your riends alongor yourenemies or that matterto the party. The transposition o all our rememberedrelationships into an Elysian lie inevitably turns it into a second-rate continua-

tion o our marvellous mortality.8

Vans logic elucidates why chronophilia makes chronophobia both in-evitable and incurable. Like Nabokov in Speak, Memoryand John Shadein Pale Fire, Van and Ada are thoroughly devoted to their fnite livesand ragile memories. But or the same reason, they are haunted by the


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ings. The common eature concerns the act o writing as an endeavorto remember, which is reinorced when at the end o the novel Fyodortells Zina about his idea to write an autobiography. The Giftshall com-memorate the history o their love, Fyodor promises. In making this

pledge, he must gure the presence o the promise as a memory orthe uture. One day we shall recall all this, Fyodor refects on the lastpage o the book, as he and Zina leave a restaurant and wander out intothe summer night.

This nal scene is a version o what Fyodor calls uture retrospection(G354), the anticipation o a memory to come. Such uture retrospectionmarks the precarious temporality o arming the git o lie. Both thegit and its armation are threatened rom within by their nitude. The

novels happy ending stages this panicky desire when Fyodor promisesto narrate his lie. This narration must inscribe the pastandthe presentwith regard to the uture, which constitutes both the possibility o re-membering and the risk o orgetting.11

A parallel example is Nabokovs short story The Admiralty Spire.12Here the narrator recalls his rst love, one distant summer when thegramophones played Russian tsyganskie romansy: a kind o pseudo-gypsy,sentimental music. The mood o the music, with its invocations o bygonelandscapes and bittersweet memories, would seem suitable or the one

who is writing in retrospect. But the young couple already apprehendtheir current happiness in the same spirit. The sense o approachinglosso how their tangible circumstances at any time can be takenawayleads them to practice nostalgia and approach the present as iin retrospect, keeping its happening as a beloved memory.

Examples o this moti (now remember) are numerous in Nabokovsoeuvre and would each merit a lengthy treatment. However, in the ol-lowing I want to ocus on Ada, which Nabokov regarded as his crowning

achievement. Here we nd the most proound treatment o the necessaryentanglement between chronophobia and chronophilia.

The rame o the novel is that Van and Ada are writing the story otheir lie-long love, a work begun in 1957 and ended sometime during1967, when Ada is ninety-ve and Van ninety-seven. The book has beeninterrupted, rather than nished, and the text we read is a posthumouslypublished manuscript. Although the manuscript does not relate exactlywhen Van and Ada died or who died beore the other, an editorial note

asserts that neither one o them is still alive at the time o publication.The text itsel vibrates with lie as Van and Ada indulge in a strikinggotisme deux. Constituting what Ada calls a super-imperial couple (A60), they do not hesitate to emphasize their incomparable love. Thisarrogance has been a source o disapproval even among inveterateNabokophiles, and it is true that vain Van Veen (one o his many al-literations) at times becomes quite an intolerable narrator. Nonetheless,


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it would be a mistake to dismiss Vans and Adas vainglorious attitude asa mere eccentricity. Rather, the egotistic desire o their relationship is anemphatic version o the perilous sel-assurance in Speak, Memory. By writ-ing an autobiography, Van and Ada commit themselves to remembering

their love. But as we shall see, the armation o memory underscoresthe threat o orgetting.

The rst lines o the novel recongure the rst lines in Tolstoys AnnaKarenina. In Nabokov, it is unhappy amilies that are all alike, whilehappy amilies are happy each in their own special way. This inversion oTolstoys premise permeates the book. As in so many nineteenth-centurynovels, the romance o Van and Ada is set against a dark amily secret.Ocially, they are cousins, but in act they are brother and sister, due to

a condential love aair they unravel during their rst summer together.At that time, Ada is twelve years old and Van ourteen, but neither theirage nor the incest taboo can soten their passion. On the contrary, theyoung siblings soon become lovers in every sense o the word.

That their orbidden love does not lead to a predestined tragedy, butlives on or more than eighty years, is a cunning demonstration o thehappy amily. Nevertheless, there are dissonances in Vans and Adas well-orchestrated pretensions. Almost hal the memoir is devoted to their rsttwo summers together (1884 and 1888). In between only a ew feeting

meetings take place, and ater the second summer another our yearspass beore they meet again. They spend a winter together in 1892, andbarely a week in 1905. Not until 1922 are they reunited to live togetheror the rest o their lives.

As Michael Wood has argued, these partings point to a persistent sourceo worry in Ada. Love is depicted as a prodigious possibility, but at thesame time there is trepidation in the very realization o happiness. In atrenchant reading, Wood suggests that this is due to an interdependence

o love and loss. Such interdependence unsettles any denite assurancebecause happiness is intelligible only under threat; intelligible only asits own threat.13 This observation is similar to a gure elaborated byJacques Derrida in his reading oRomeo and Juliet, which explores theorce o tragedy as the orce o what he calls contretemps. With this term,Derrida designates the ever-recurrent possibility o accidents, typicallygured as an unortunate timing or aleatory event that shatters theprospect o lasting love. I these tragic contretempstraditionally have been

understood as something exterior and secondary that supervenes uponan ideal love, Derrida argues that the orce o contretemps is intrinsicto every relation. A given promise may be broken and the anticipateduture an occasion o mourning. Love is threatened rom within by aconstitutive nitude.14

Finitude leaves its mark on both levels oAda, as the novel divides intotwo narratives. The rst o these spans rom 1884 to 1922, recounting


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the intricate love story o Ada and Van. Despite a number ocontretemps,the story may seem to reute a tragic sense o love by letting Van andAda emerge rom their partings to reunite and live happily ever ater.Nabokovs story does not end there, however, since Van and Ada also

appear as the aged writers o the book we are reading. Thus, any happyending is shown to be essentially compromised by nitude. In the lastpart oAda, our super-imperial lovers are trying to complete their au-tobiography without knowing how to end or when to stop revising themanuscript. Ater having deerred death or more than ninety years,they are still attempting to prolong their lie and ortiy their power oremembrance. Hence, the perils o their experience are intensied. Wend them worrying about who will die rst and leave the other in solitary

mourning. Van and Ada have managed to survive almost all the classicalcontretempso a great romance, but death cannot be avoided, only delayed.The closing pages o the novel display deant strategies that tryandailto cope with the inevitable contretempso nitude.

One o Nabokovs most ingenious moves is to stage the ten-year periodo writing (19571967) parallel with the story running rom 1884 to 1922.By way o interpolated parentheses, we get to witness Van and Ada recol-lecting their past. Van is the main signatory o the text, but Ada takesover rom time to time. Both o them interrupt the progressing narrative

by inserting additional notes or comments. The desire to keep as muchas possible thus turns out to be a drama in itsel. The narrators moodsvary considerably, ranging rom exorbitant sel-condence to elegiac in-tonations and nervous arrogance. These emotional shits are partly dueto their love story being perorated with partings, partly to the depictedyoung lovers being so distant in time, but also to Van and Ada as writersbeing marked by impending death. Telling takes time, and we are notallowed to orget the irreutable process o aging. On the contrary, it

breaches the act o narration. For example, an enchanted episode inthe rst hal o the novel is disrupted by an inserted marginal commentthat might be Vans last words and that stages a transition rom 1888to 1967. We are here displaced rom a sex-drenched summer scenariowhere Van and Ada are teenagers to a comment rom Van when he isreading the proos and pointing out that he is sick, that he writes badlyand can die at any moment, in a note that ends with an instruction tothe editor o the book: Insert (A174).

Such temporal displacement is always latent in the text, not onlybecause the protagonists are shadowed by their writing selves, but alsobecause o an irreducible risk at the heart o love. Even in the mostbrazenly blissul moments, there is an apprehension o possible mourn-ing. In Nabokovs syntax, every armation o love is haunted by its op-posite. Within the space o single sentences contrary categories clash:


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passion/pain, beau/beast, tenderness/torture, happiness/helplessness.And in a beautiul, entangled phrase Van describes how the sight oAdas twelve-year-old hands gave rise to agonies o unresolvable adora-tion (A85). Vans adoration here signies an irrevocable emotion; it is

unresolvable in the sense that it cannot be dissolved. At the same time,even the seemingly perpetual bond o love can always be broken andis thus characterized by an unresolvable contradiction that permeatesVans adoration with symptomatic agonies. Almost our hundred pageslater, the same word reappears concerning Vans aging: physical despairpervaded his unresolvable being (A448). We can discern the commondenotation. Vans being is unresolvable because his resistance to itsapproaching death yields a confict that cannot be resolved. That what is

loved will disappear is unacceptable but nonetheless inevitable, intrinsicto its very essence. Adaenacts this unresolvable problem.We should here consider an important scene in the summer o 1884,

which recalls the scene in Speak, Memorywhere Nabokovs mother taughthim to remember time marks at their country place. Having recentlyallen in love, Van and Ada undertake an excursion in the resplendentlandscape that surrounds the amily estate, Ardis Hall. With amorousattention, they try to gure out where and when they might have seeneach other or the rst time. They compare their travel itineraries romchildhood in a playul exchange o memories. The critical implicationis marked by a remark o Adas:

But this, exclaimed Ada, is certain, this is reality, this is pure actthis orest,this moss, your hand, the ladybird on my leg, this cannot be taken away, can it? (itwill, it was). Thishas all come together here, no matter how the paths twisted, andooled each other, and got ouled up, they inevitably met here! (A12324)

Vans and Adas interpolated parentheses are usually identied throughan appended description, such as Adas note or late interpolation.It is signicant that the above inserted comment is exempted rom thispractice. It would be easy to read the stealthy it will be taken away, itwastaken away, as a belated insight signed by the aged couple. But sucha reading disregards the pivotal part that these our wordsit will, itwasplay on both levels o the memoir. Already at the moment o itsenunciation, Adas question is shadowed by the possibility o loss. Evenher emphatic Thisreinorces the fight o time. Repeated seven times, itmarks temporal displacement in the very act o trying to mitigate it.

Adas deictic gesture answers to the chronophilic and chronophobicinjunction now remember. Every cherished event is threatened by an im-minent risk o orgetting. This is why Van and Ada promise each otherto hold on to what happens. As Van describes it, their love gives rise toa complex system o those subtle bridges that the senses traverse . . .


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between membrane and brain, and which always was and is a orm omemory, even at the moment of its perception (A174, my emphasis). Thepassage quoted above is a clear example o why perception is alwaysalready a orm o memory. Adas emphatic This, while seemingly pin-

pointing a pure presence, is an act o memorization through which shetries to imprint details beore they disappear. By retaining the event asthis particular event, Ada emphasizes a double temporality. She turnstowards both what is no longer and what is not yet, since the retentiono the event preserves it as a memory for the future.

Such double temporality is doubled once again when the scene isinscribed in the autobiography. On the one hand, Van and Ada turnbackwards in time by recounting past events. On the other hand, they turn

orwards in time by addressing readers to come, including their utureselves. Both their experience and their writing are thus haunted by thererain it willbe taken away, it wastaken away. The perilous implicationso this rerain are reinorced by Vans and Adas decision to publish thebook posthumously. Van and Ada hold on to their memories, but theirdesire to keep them is concomitant with the awareness that every detailwill be lost or them.

Vans and Adas chronophilic passion or relating calendar dates issignicant here. Throughout the novel, they keep track o the inter-relation between certain days, weeks, months, and years, delimitingspecial periods o lie and helping each other to remember their mutualhistory. Dates are congenial markers because they measure the passageo time and oer points o comparison, but also because they providethe possibility to label the current day or uture retrospection. As eachdate implies its own recurrence the ollowing year, there is a chain omemories where each link both guards itsel and remains open towardswhat is to come.

The autobiographical project is thus pregured in Vans and Adaspassionate archiving o dates. At one place, these dates are described aschronographies (A88). Such spatialization o time is highly signicantthroughout the book. Right beore Adas remark cited above (this can-not be taken away, can it?), Van recounts how he on the same summerday, while careully matching his memories with Adas, was conrontedwith questions that would haunt him or the rest o his lie:

[A]s Van casually directed the searchlight o backthought into that maze othe past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only took dierent turns, butused dierent levels (as a mule-drawn cart passes under the arch o a viaductalong which a motor skims by), he ound himsel tackling, in still vague and idleashion, the science that was to obsess his mature yearsproblems o space andtime, space versus time, time-twisted space, space as time, time as spaceandspace breaking away rom time in the nal tragic triumph o human cogitation:I am because I die.(A123)


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Vans obsession with space and timealong with his striking revision oDescartess dictumis crucial or the entire novel. But given Vans al-lusion to the science that was to obsess his mature years, the passageabove should primarily be read against his philosophical treatise The

Texture of Time. This treatise occupies the ourth part oAdaand is inter-twined with a narrative o Vans journey (by car) rom the Dolomites toSwitzerland. We are situated in the middle o July 1922, when Van is onhis way to a hotel where he will meet Ada or the rst time in seventeenyears. During his journey, Van composes the treatise we are reading. Itis a measure o its pivotal status that Nabokov had rst planned to useits titleThe Texture of Timeor the novel itsel.

Nonetheless, in approaching The Texture of Timewe need to be armed

with critical vigilance. On one level, the treatise denies that time andspace are interdependent. Van repeatedly maintains his search or aPure Time that would be completely separate rom space. On closerinspection, however, these assertions do not answer to the logic o Vanswriting. As in the rest o the memoir, there is a necessary coimplicationo time and space, which is accentuated by Vans stylistic ingenuity andsubverts his philosophical claims.

We thus come to a crossroads in our reading. All o Vans meta-phorsincluding the title o his treatisedescribe time in spatial termsand thus contradict his notion o Pure Time. A sympathetic reader maytry to explain away this circumstance by arguing that what Van calls puretime is something immediately given, an unmediated experience thatis incompatible with the spatialization intrinsic to language. From sucha perspective, pure time is an interior quality that is dispersed whentranslated to external, quantitative categories. To measure time wouldbe to distort its proper essence, to discriminate separate phases in whatis originally an indivisible unity. A number o Vans ormulations seem to

invite such a reading, but in act the idea o immediacy is underminedby his writing. The ollowing passage is an instructive example:

What nudged, what comorted me, a ew minutes ago at the stop o a thought?Yes. Maybe the only thing that hints at a sense o Time is rhythm; not the re-current beats o the rhythm but the gap between two such beats, the gray gapbetween black beats: the Tender Interval. The regular throb itsel merely bringsback the miserable idea o measurement, but in between, something like trueTime lurks. How can I extract it rom its sot hollow? The rhythm should be

neither too slow nor too ast. One beat per minute is already ar beyond mysense o succession and ve oscillations per second make a hopeless blur. Theample rhythm causes Time to dissolve, the rapid one crowds it out. Give me, say,three seconds, then I can do both: perceive the rhythm and probe the interval. Ahollow, did I say? A dim pit? But that is only Space, the comedy villain, returningby the back door with the pendulum he peddles, while I grope or the meaningo Time. What I endeavor to grasp is precisely the Time that Space helps me


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to measure, and no wonder I ail to grasp Time, since knowledge-gaining itseltakes time. (A421)

Here, Vans inquiry is guided by one o his metaphysical ideas: that the

essence o time is an indivisible presence. But when examined, the ideaturns against itsel. Van aims at a pure interval that would harbour truetime, but he soon realizes that the interval only comes into being througha distended temporality. The interval cannot be a pure presence. On thecontrary, it divides every moment in its very becoming. Vans argumentis thus haunted by minutes, seconds and oscillations within seconds,despite his attempt to debase measurement as a miserable idea. Vansphilosophical ambition is to elucidate experience at its most immediate,

but what he discovers is that there can be no presence in itsel.The incessant division o time becomes particularly evident when Vanapplies a method he callsDeliberate Presence. Deliberate presence consistsin directing the energy o thought towards what is happening right now.Van describes it as ollows: To give mysel time to time Time I must movemy mind in the direction opposite to that in which I am moving, as onedoes when one is driving past a long row o poplars and wishes to isolateand stop one o them, thus making the green blur reveal and oer, yes,oer, its every lea(A31). Vans ocus on the present demonstrates that

there cannot be an immediate presence. Even i Van brought the car toa halt, he would still be driven towards the uture. Consequently, everymomentlike every detail in the feeting landscapecan only appear aspast. Temporality divides not only what appears or the subject, but alsothe sel-awareness o the subject itsel. Temporal division is here markedby an inherent delay in the refexive act o giving onesel time to timeTime. The interval separates the present rom itsel in its very event,and without such discrimination nothing could ever be distinguished.

A page urther on Van continues in the same vein:

Since the Present is but an imaginary point without an awareness o the im-mediate past, it is necessary to dene that awareness. Not or the rst time willSpace intrude i I say that what we are aware o as Present is the constantbuilding up o the Past, its smoothly and relentlessly rising level. How meager!How magic! (A432)

Here, Van concedes that spatiality is intrinsic to the experience o time.

The purported presence is always already becoming past and couldnever be experienced without spatial inscriptions, which can remain romone moment to another and thus detain the relentless disappearance otime. Vans desire to retain evanescent moments is thus not compatiblewith the desire or an immutable presence. Rather, it is concerned withspatializing time in order to counter its inexorable disappearance. The


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narrative o the treatise archives temporal events in spatial signs. Thelogic o the expositiondriven by Vans desire to keep as much as pos-sibleundermines the purported thesis o the text.

A similar complication can be tracked in Vans discussion o the uture

in The Texture of Time. Van describes the treatise as a Work-in-Progress(A 439) and openly addresses the dawning desk o the still-absentreader (A420). Nonetheless, he makes several attempts to deny thatthe uture is a valid temporal category. Perhaps this can be ascribed toa psychological cause. As Van is writing the treatise, he is on his way tomeet Ada and he is palpably nervous about meeting her ater seventeenyears. He himsel says that the purpose o his philosophical speculationsis to keep him rom brooding over their anticipated reunion.

In any case, Vans line o reasoning encounters severe problems. Hisproclaimed stance is that expectations or ears o the uture are ines-sential phenomena or a proper understanding o time. However, whenVan qualies his argument he pursues a completely dierent thesis:that the uture is not predetermined. His simple point is that comingevents do not yet exist. This argument does not reute the uture as atemporal category, but rather inheres in its denition. Accordingly, weget to witness yet another U-turn in the treatise. What was supposed tobe negated is instead emphatically armed:

The unknown, the not yet experienced and the unexpected, all the glorious xintersections, are the inherent parts o human lie. The determinate scheme bystripping the sunrise o its surprise would erase all sunrays. (A441)

The relation to the uture is here asserted as a necessary condition.Despite Vans overt claims, this insight is at work in his argument romthe beginning. Van has no qualms about appropriating a concept o the

past, while he attempts to denounce what he calls the alse third panelin the triptych o time. However, it is impossible to accept a concept othe past and deny a concept o the uture, since the two concepts areinterdependent. That something is past means that it has been overtakenby a uture. Inversely, anticipations o the uture are anticipations o apast to come. Whatever happens will have beenin a uture anterior thatmarks the becoming o every event.

Although the temporality o the uture anterior operates throughoutthe novel, one scene in particular captures it with striking precision.The scene in question is triggered by a photograph that portrays Vanand Ada as young relatives in the summer o 1884. In a stylized setting,they pose or the amily photographer. The occasion turns out to bememorable indeed:


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Van stood inclining his head above her and looked, unseeing, at the openedbook. In ull, deliberate consciousness, at the moment o the hooded click,he bunched the recent past with the imminent uture and thought to himselthat this would remain an objective perception o the real present and that he

must remember the favor, the fash, the fesh o the present (as he, indeed,remembered it hal a dozen years laterand now, in the second hal o the nextcentury). (A316)

Van seeks to capture himsel in the photographic moment preciselybecause even his most immediate experience is constituted by temporaldierence. His very act o perceiving is divided between the recent pastand the imminent uture. There is no sel-presence that can groundthe passage between past and uture, which is why the moment must be

recorded as a memory in its very event. Without the support o such atrace, there could be no connection between past and uture and con-sequently no experience o time. The same condition is reinorced bythe photograph, which pinpoints a certain moment by duplicating it asa trace on the lm. Similarly, Van is both witness and witnessed whenhe thinks to himselfthat he must memorize the present. The event is in-scribed as a trace in his consciousness, while the interpolated parenthesisdemonstrates how the tracing enables repetitions o the memory. Within

the space o a single sentence we move rom the summer o 1884 tothe winter o 1892when Van encounters the photograph in an apart-ment in Manhattanall the way up to the 1960s, when the sequence omemories is archived in the autobiography.

In Vans series o recollections one should not neglect the connectionto technological memory, which is deeply signicant in the novel. Van andAda have a tremendous ability to recall the past, but they are dependenton supplementary devices to retain the fight o timeeverything romclocks and calendars to photographs and telegrams. Furthermore, thesetting oAdagives a hint as to the importance o technology. To a largeextent, the world o the novel corresponds to our own, but Nabokov re-arranges the historical course o events. For example, in the beginningo the nineteenth century, cars, telephones, and cinemas are part oeveryday lie. Nabokovs revision o the history o technology is not justplayul, but is intertwined with the time-theme o the novel.

In the oreword to Speak, Memory, Nabokov writes that all our memoriesought to be microlmed. His remark is suggestive, since a chronophile has

good reasons to be ascinated by mnemotechnical devices. The possibil-ity o saving sense data, o transmitting visual and sonorous phenomenato the uture, increases dramatically with inventions such as the taperecorder and the lm-camera. Time is but memory in the making (A440), Van claims with a striking phrase in his treatise. A decisive question,then, is what material supports are available or archiving. Time must


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be registered in spatial terms, and an advanced technology provides agreater capacity or storing and transerring what happens.

Nevertheless, humanistic ideologies have traditionally demoted technol-ogy, arguing that its articial modes o production distort the immediacy

o living lie. When phenomena are reproduced mechanically, there isan inevitable spacing between origin and transmission. To surrenderones ace to a camera or to deposit ones voice in a tape-recorder is tobe duplicated by an exterior medium that is subject to reiteration anddislocation. What becomes clear in Ada, however, is that such temporalspacing is not an unnatural process but is always already at work in theinterior o the subject. Even the most intimate sel-awareness can neverrepose in itsel; it is incessantly divided between the already past and an

imminent uture. Hence, the perceptual apparatus must be a memory-machine: retaining what is no longer by opening itsel towards what is notyet. As I have already indicated, such a tracing o temporality dependson spatial inscriptions that can remain rom one time to another, in anecessary mediation o experience that contradicts the very idea o im-mediate presence.15

We notice the necessity o mediation in Vans thoughts beore thecamera in 1884. Parallel to the explicit act o photography there is animplicit act ochronographythat marks the mnemotechnics o the psyche.In both cases, it is a matter o inscribing traces under the risk o erasure.Just as photographs can easily ade or be destroyed, Van will suer romorgetulness and death.

However, there is a dierence o degree to be noted here. The photo-graph is an objective perception capable o preserving details even iVans memory would lose its acuity. At the same time, the photographspotential mnemonic power is dependent on Vans ability to reawakenthe past atmosphere. Such interdependence reveals the treacherous

structure o memory. By transerring sense data to an exterior receptacle,Van strengthens his ability to resist the orce o oblivion. But by the sametoken he calls attention to the possible dispersion o meaning. Whenone is photographed or recorded on tape, there is always the prospecto the ace or voice being reproduced in a dierent context, beyond thecontrol o its presumed origin. The same condition applies to writtenwords, which are still readable and susceptible to manipulation in theabsence o the author. We can thus approach another signicant theme

in Nabokovs novel: that writing is a technology.A rst clue is a number o connections between the project o thememoir and technical devices. On several occasions, Ada and Van imaginethat episodes rom their past are displayed as a motion picture and theyare repeatedly attracted to the idea o a particular event being accessiblethrough magnetic tape or cinematographic recordings. One example o


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chronophilic imagination is a dialogue between Van and Ada in 1884.Their dialogue is supplemented by a commentary rom the aged couple,who regret not having taped the conversation in order to listen to theirvoices eighty years later. It is easy to understand the attraction o this

prospect: the ability to reactivate visual and sonorous details heightensthe sense o the past. Words printed on paper do not exhibit such alink to sensual memory, but they nevertheless enable one to approachvanished circumstances. The exquisite style oAdais perhaps the mostelegant example o such literary mnemotechnics, since it reinorces thequality o memories by dwelling on subtle nuances o experience. How-ever, Ada and Van also pursue a more advanced technology o writing.Already to inscribe an event is a orm o programming, since it relies

on the ability o uture users to translate the marks on the page intoliving impressions. The strategies o writing in Adadistend the scopeo such programming.

As previously mentioned, the novel biurcates into two parallel nar-ratives, as Van and Ada interrupt their autobiography while writing it.They comment on details, admit lapses in memory, and demand thatcertain passages be eliminated or rephrased. Ada, especially, inserts alarge number o notes that supplement, correct, and quarrel with Vansversion o their lie. These notes concern not only revisions o the text,

but also a documentation o the ten-year period o writing as a dramain itsel that gradually evolves in the margins o the book.

For example, the episode when Van and Ada make love or the rsttime is repeatedly interrupted by repartee between the two at the timeo writing, when they recall the event more than seventy years later. Attimes, Van attempts to protect himsel rom the emotionally chargedsubject by having recourse to summarious or lecherous phrases, butAda protests and gives us a more delicate description o what happened,

as they take turns writing the episode. That the alternating process owriting is staged in the text is no coincidence; it is consistent with thechronophilic and chronophobic sense o autobiography that pervadesthe memoir. Throughout the novel, we can observe the desire to narratethe one who is narrating, to integrate the process o writing the autobiog-raphy into the autobiography itsel.

The ambition to narrate the one who is narrating is brought to ahead in a number o supplementary markers that are mainly appended

to Adas notes. An inserted comment may be ollowed by characteriza-tions such as Marginal note in red ink (A104) or Marginal jottingin Adas 1965 hand; crossed out lightly in her latest wavering one (A19). Such specications are recurrent and typographically distinguishedrom the editors notes, which are given in square brackets accordingto the model: [Ed.]. It is thus Ada hersel who provides the additional


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descriptions o her marginal notes, in accordance with a chronophilicand chronophobic logic. When the manuscript is printed as a book,the marginal notes will cease to be marginal and will be transerred tothe center o the page (as indeed they are in the edition we read). For

the same reason, the color o Adas ink will have been erased when herhandwriting is replaced by printed letters. It is thereore necessary todescribe these characteristics in order to prevent them rom vanishingwithout a trace. When Ada writes a note in 1965 she thus adds that it isa note written by hersel in 1965. This doubling is operative even whenimpending death has deprived Ada o physical strength: her waveringhand lightly crossing out text describes itsel as a wavering hand lightlycrossing out text.

Adas inscriptions may seem to be an extreme orm o chronophiliaand chronophobia, but the very project o the memoir resonates in herdesire to keep as much as possible. The text is programmed to retain itscharacter when transmitted rom one material support to another andenables us to track dierent dates o inscription on one and the samepage. The ollowing passage exemplies how the temporally extendedprocess o writing is staged in the text. The point o departure is a sum-mer night in 1884 when Van and Ada make love:

For the rst time in their love story, the blessing, the genius o lyrical speechdescended upon the rough lad, he murmured and moaned, kissing her acewith voluble tenderness, crying out in three languagesthe three greatest in allthe worldpet words upon which a dictionary o secret diminutives was to bebased and go through many revisions till the denitive edition o 1967. Whenhe grew too loud, she shushed, shushingly breathing into his mouth, and nowher our limbs were rankly around him, as i she had been love-making oryears in all our dreamsbut impatient young passion (brimming like Vansoverfowing bath while he is reworking this, a crotchety gray old wordman on

the edge o a hotel bed) did not survive the rst ew blind thrusts; it burst at thelip o the orchid, and a bluebird oered a warning warble, and the lights werenow stealing back under a rugged dawn, the refy signals were circumscribingthe reservoir, the dots o the carriage lamps became stars, wheels rasped on thegravel, all the dogs returned well pleased with the night treat, the cooks nieceBlanche jumped out o a pumpkin-hued police van in her stockinged eet (long,long ater midnight, alas)and our two naked children, grabbing lap robe andnightdress, and giving the couch a parting pat, pattered back with their candle-sticks to their innocent bedrooms.

And do you remember, said gray-moustached Van as he took a Cannabinacigarette rom the bedside table and rattled a yellow-blue matchbox, how reck-less we were, and how Larivire stopped snoring but a moment later went onshaking the house, and how cold the iron steps were, and how disconcerted Iwasby yourhow shall I put it?lack o restraint.

Idiot, said Ada rom the wall side, without turning her head.


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Summer 1960? Crowded hotel somewhere between Ex and Ardez?Ought to begin dating every page o the manuscript: Should be kinder to my

unknown dreamers. (A 9899)

At least our dierent time-levels can be discerned here. Initially, we aretreated to an episode rom 1884, which necessarily was written at a laterdatein its rst version probably sometime in the late 1950s. When therst parenthesis interrupts the narrative we become aware o yet anothertime-level, since Van here is reworkingthe section we read. The narrationo the summer night is resumed, but the depiction o the crotchety grayold wordman is continued in the ollowing paragraph, which displacesus to a hotel room where Van and Ada are working on the manuscript.I we wonder exactly when this scene takes place we soon realize that thesame question occupies Van (Summer 1960? Crowded hotel somewherebetween Ex and Ardez?) when he atyet anotheroccasion reads the textand notes that he ought to begin dating every page o the manuscript.It seems reasonable to attribute the last comment to 1967, since a reer-ence to this year has been inserted into the description o the episoderom 1884i the reerence to 1967 does not testiy to yet another dateo inscription, yet another time-level.

In any case, Van and Ada enable us to track how they return to the

same passage several times, as they record themselves in the act o mak-ing urther additions or commenting on their comments. However,their obsessive investment in the autobiography only serves to accentu-ate their eventual disappearance. Van and Ada apply themselves to aningeniously programmed textual archive, but even the most advancedtechnology runs the risk o being distorted. The possibility o malunc-tion is built into the system rom the beginning, due to the nitude oboth the machine and its designers. It is thus signicant that the book

we are reading is an unnished manuscript. This is easy to orget sincethe prose o the novel is so elegant and arrogant, but there are severalurtive mementos to be noted. In a number o places, incomplete sen-tences remain in the text, and are subsequently repeated and completed.These momentary disruptions o the progressing narrative create thesame eect as when the needle o a gramophone is caught in a track:we become aware o how the act o reading or listening is dependenton a ragile mechanism.

The editors remarks, which appear about twenty times throughout thenovel, underscore the threat o technological corruptibility. As mentionedearlier, what might be Vans last word is a technical instruction (Insert).There are reasons to return to this section anew (pages 17374). Thenote that interrupts an amorous scenario in 1888 is in turn interruptedin the middle o a sentence and ollowed by the editors square brackets,


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where we learn that the rest o the sentence is illegible. Apparently, themargins o Vans proos have not allowed sucient space or his notes,but he has continued writing on a separate sheet. These notes have beeninserted in the printed book ollowing Vans concluding instruction.

In this case, then, the editor appears to be aithul to the manuscript.At the same time, his interventions mark a series o interruptions thatbecome more and more critical. As the book proceeds, one can observethat the editor is insolent in some o his comments. In the middle o adialogue, he begins to speculate on whether Van has obtained the linesrom other sources. Even in Vans and Adas intimate love letters he takesnote o solecisms with a pedantic sic!The man behind these remarks isa certain Ronald Oranger, who, as it turns out, has at least one special

interest in the book. When in the nal chapter Van is about to describehis beautiul secretary (who was to become Mrs. Ronald Oranger) thesentences we anticipate are quite simply replaced by an omission mark.The autobiography o our super-imperial couple has thus been bowdler-ized by a jealous husband. Nabokovs stealthy irony reminds us that thewritten can never protect itsel against being grated onto a dierentcontext. Van and Ada inscribe layer upon layer o memories in theirtexture o time, but their hypermemoir also holds the threat o a lielessrepetition upon its posthumous publication, when readers and editors

can do as they please with the dead letters.Nevertheless, Nabokov scholars have sought to locate a transcendent

meaning that would redeem the displacements o time thatAdarecords.A telling example is Robert Alter, who in an otherwise valuable essaymisreads the part played by Ronald Oranger. Relying on no textual sup-port except the possibility that Ronald Oranger is an anagram (angelnor ardor), Alter claims that Oranger is an angelic gure whose nalresponsibility or the text oAdaconrms the idea that art can create a

perected state o paradise. Indeed, in Alters view the ultimate sensethatAdaseeks to convey is that all threats o evil, including the evil othe corrosive passage o time can be nally transcended by the twinnedpower o art and love.16

My reading o Ada has argued or an opposite view. The very ideao a perect paradise is shown to be untenable in Ada, since threats odestruction are intrinsic even to the most amazing happiness and themost meticulous work o art. It is thus an appropriate irony that the g-

ure Alter assumes to be the angelic guardian o the books metaphysicalambition, in act is a petty editor who disgures the text and remindsus that corruption is always possible. Far rom redeeming corruptibility,the writing o Van and Ada reinorces that the chance o inscription isinseparable rom the risk o erasure. Whether their mnemotechnics areinterior or exterior it is a matter ochronographing: o saving time in


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patial mark. Th chrngraphi anticipat utur radr by makingit pibl t rmmbr th incribd vnt. But in th am prc prrvatin Van and Ada ar rcd t undrlin thir fnitud andthir dpndnc n mark that xcd thir cntrl. Th dubl bind

cannt b liminatd, inc th prmi mmry nly pldg twhat will b rgttn. T xamin th am in th txtur tim ithu t th ragility vry chrihd cnnctin. Th awarn thi cnditin i th chrnphbia that haunt chrnphilia rmbginning t nd.

Cornell University

NoTes

1 Cmpar Jacqu Drrida ay Plat Pharmacy, in Dissemination, tran. BarbaraJhnn (Chicag: Univrity Chicag Pr, 1981), 63171, in particular 109.2 Nabkv, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (Nw Yrk: Pnguin, 1969), 85(hratr citd in txt a SM.)3 s Rbrt Altr ay Nabkv and Mmry, Partisan Review 58, n. 4 (1991):62029, and Michal Wd chaptr n Speak, Memory in The Magicians Doubts: Nabokovand the Risks of Fiction, 83102 (Lndn: Chatt & Windu, 1994). Bth Altr and Wdpuru imprtant dicuin hw Nabkv attmpt t prrv th particular thrughth pwr hi pr, which nnthl i markd by th irrvcabl paag tim.4 Brian Byd, Nabokovs Ada: The Place of Consciousness(Ann Arbr, MI: Ardi Publihing,1985), 65 (hratr citd in txt a NA). Th ida that Nabkv k t trancnd timand fnitud i th guiding thrad in all Byd tudi, which in additin t th bkn Ada includ Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years(Princtn, NJ: Princtn UnivrityPr, 1990), Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princtn, NJ: Princtn UnivrityPr, 1991), and Nabokovs Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery (Princtn, NJ: Princ-tn Univrity Pr, 1999). Anthr majr tudy that maintain Nabkv viin ali bynd dath i Vladimir Alxandrv Nabokovs Otherworld(Princtn, NJ: PrinctnUnivrity Pr, 1991). s al Alx d Jng arly ay Nabkv U Pattrn,in Vladimir Nabokov: A Tribute, d. Ptr Qunll (Nw Yrk: Mrrw & C., 1980), 6075,which prfgur Byd and Alxandrv undrtanding Nabkv mtaphyic. DJng hld that r Nabkv tim mut b dnid r vrcm in rdr t tablih thtruth, namly, that nthing i vr lt, and that apparnt l i an illuin, th cratin a partial and blinkrd cnciun (72).5 s, r xampl, Byd, Vladimir Nabokov: the Russian Years, 283, and Nabokovs Ada,73.6 s Byd, Nabokovs Ada,64, andpassim.7 Nabkv, Pale Fire(1962; Nw Yrk: Pnguin, 1973).8 Nabkv, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle(1969; Nw Yrk: Pnguin, 1971), 458 (hr-atr citd in txt a A).9 Byd diimulat th lgic chrnphilia whn h cmmnt n Van rading shad pm. Accrding t Byd, Van argumnt hw th aburdity mrly trnal-izing human li (Nabokovs Ada, 72) withut thrr dicrditing th ntin anatrli a uch. Rathr, Van argumnt wuld tach u t lav bhind ur anthrp-mrphic cnfn whn w imagin th atrli (Nabokovs Ada,72). Byd rading iuntnabl r a numbr ran. Van argu thatanytyp hratr i cntradictd


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by a lgical ban. Thi lgical ban rinrc that mmri mrtal li cannt b tran-pd t an immrtal li. Whn Byd himl dnunc th ida uch tranpitin aaburd, h dnunc th vry ida that rganiz hi wn rading Nabkv. Bydl-cntradictin i vidnt vn within ingl paragraph hi txt. Fr xampl, Bydwrit: scrupululy aviding th lgical aburdity trnalizing th ncarily fnit

cnditin human cnciun, Nabkv atif hi dir r rdm by imaginingth variu limitatin th mind trancndd in dath. Dath culd r u a cmpltlynw rlatin t tim: rdm ur bing pggd t th prnt, rdm acc tth whl th pat (73). Byd ida an alway accibl and thu immrtal pat ia clar xampl trnalizing th fnit, inc what i pat had t b fnit in rdr tbcm pat in th frt plac. Th claic tratgy t avid thi lgical aburdity i t aythat immrtal li i cmpltly dirnt rm mrtal li. But w hav alrady n thatuch an altrnativ i xcludd r Nabkv and hi charactr, inc a chrnphil turndwn trnity i it d nt rtain th trait mrtal li.10 Nabkv, The Gift, tran. Michal scammll (Nw Yrk: Putnam, 1963), 349 (hratr

citd in txt a G).11 Thu, in th lat paragraph The GiftFydr mark th mrtality vry writr andradr (Gd-by, my bk! Lik mrtal y, imagind n mut cl m day.)whil h at th am tim xpr hi dir t rtain and prlng th xprinc hi mrtal li (And yt th ar cannt right nw part with th muic and allw th talt ad.)12 s The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, d. Dmitri Nabkv (Nw Yrk: A. Knp, 1995),34453.13 Wd, The Magicians Doubts, 220.14 s Drrida ay Laphrim cntrtmp, in Psych: Inventions de lautre(Pari:

Galil, 1987), 51933, in particular 52224. Th dubl bind fnitud (a th cnditin bth th dirabl andth undirabl) i a cntant thm in Drrida wrk. s, rxampl, Drrida accunt hw th mrtal dir awakn in yu th mvmnt(which i cntradictry, yu llw m, a dubl rtraint, an aprtic cntraint) t guardrm blivin thi thing which in th am trk xp itl t dath and prtctitl. Drrida, Ch c la pia? in Points . . . Interviews: 19741994, d. eliabthWbr, tran. Pggy Kamu and thr (stanrd, CA: stanrd Univrity Pr, 1995),293. I hav lwhr dvlpd hw Drrida lgic dir anwr t th lgic whatI call chrnphilia/chrnphbia. s th lat chaptr my bk Kronofobi. Esser om tidoch ndlighet(stckhlm/ sthag: Brutu tling Bkrlag sympin, 2002), 20718.

15 Th rmark ar indbtd t Drrida inight cncrning an riginary pacing tim, which I dvlp in my ay Th Ncity Dicriminatin: Dijining Drridaand Lvina, Diacritics34, n. 1 (2004): 4071. Furthrmr, Drrida xplicitly rlatth pacing tim t an riginary tchnicity. s, r xampl, Frud and th scn Writing, in Writing and Difference, tran. Alan Ba (Lndn: Rutldg, 1978), 196231, inparticular 199, 22628, and Ulysse Gramophone: Deux mots pour Joyce(Pari: Galil, 1987).16 s Rbrt Altr, Ada, r th Pril Paradi, in Vladimir Nabokov: A Tribute, d.Ptr Qunll (Nw Yrk: Mrrw & C., 1980), 118. Nt that Rnald orangr can bprnuncd a Rnald or Angr, which rinrc th charactr trait that can b dicrndrm hi nt.

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