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.
Would you mind elaborating a bit on what do you learn from or simply enjoy in Brian Boyd’s biography? Asking as someone familiar with the outline of Nabokov’s life who read a few of his books and his literary criticism papers.
“in return” for your response 😉 I think you would enjoy large portions of a book by Ben Blatt “Nabokov’s Favourite Word Is Mauve”. The book is written by a statistician and journalist with an appreciation of modern English language literature. It is not specifically about Nabokov, but contains curious information not readily available elsewhere.
You get a tremendous amount of detail about all aspects of Nabokov’s life and work with astute commentary from Boyd. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on how Lolita was written, the difficulties publishing it, the support from literary experts, and then the massive success it enjoyed.
On the space/time mysteries, which they are: FWIW I am not sure we have a better conception of this pair than Kant’s + some further refinements of his Copernican revolution. They are forms of our thought, without some sort of time, space, number and cause and a few more fundamental notions. We can have different conceptual approaches to space and time as endless interpretations in philosophy, science and literature show. Branching time, Lewis’ worlds, block theory of time etc. But we can’t have no conception of them at all.
This Nabokovian thought you highlighted: “The transformation of nothing into something cannot be conceived by the human mind.” exemplifies additional mysteries without naming them as such: nothing and its conceptual frenemy Infinity.
I quite agree: absolutely fundamental conceptually but also mind-numbingly mysterious. Nothing and infinity are opposites but equally difficult to grasp.