Nabokovian Mysterianism
Nabokovian Mysterianism
I came across the following passage in Brian Boyd’s weighty biography of Nabokov: “Space, time, the two prime mysteries. The transformation of nothing into something cannot be conceived by the human mind.”[1]Two points stand out here. First, he regards space and time as the two prime mysteries—not consciousness and free will, say. That is, the non-mental universe presents the greatest of mysteries. And not just time but space too. Second, he regards the mystery as a function of the human mind; he doesn’t think that the transformation of nothing into something is intrinsically miraculous or contrary to nature. He believes the mystery is subjective not objective. He follows this brief statement with this: “The torrent of time—a mere poetical tradition: time does not flow. Time is perfectly still. We feel it as moving only because it is the medium where growth and change take place or where things stop, like stations”. Time is not growing or changing; it exists all at once, changelessly. This is hard to understand: our conception of time is closely tied to our experience of it. Yet Nabokov seems convinced that time is objectively static and fixed. In these remarks I perceive the authentic mysterian spirit. The author of Lolita was a member of the school of mysterians.
[1] Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, p.379. It comes from a note written in 1959. When I was nine and not far along in my philosophical studies Nabokov was formulating the position I would later come to adopt.
It only confirms that he wasn’t merely an artistic genius but a genius tout court.
The man was no slouch. He also has a passage in Bend Sinister in which he says that consciousness is a mystery.
I’ve noticed you like the word ‘mysterian’. (The Google robot grammarian doesn’t seem to recognize it as a word.) Do you know of the 1960s Detroit area group (Bay City, I believe, the same place Madonna came out of) called “? and the Mysterians”? Their one big hit was called “96 tears”. It became a cult classic when people began looking back on that era. Any use of that word now brings that song to mind. I just looked the word up on Wiktionary, and the definition says (wrt ‘mysterianism’), “The view that the explanation of consciousness is not possible by humans”. Odd that a word would be restricted to such a specific application. That singing group can’t have thought of it that way. Is that your doing? Congratulations! (But that definition is now out of date.)
Owen Flanagan designated me and some others as “new mysterians”, citing that group, and the name stuck. I know the song 96 Tears.