"I maintain that in the planning and execution of the whole thing the limit of skill was attained; that its perfect finish was, in a sense, inevitable; that all came together, regardless of my will, by means of creative intuition. And so, in order to obtain recognition, to justify and save the offspring of my brain, to explain to the world all the depth of my masterpiece, did I devise the writing of the present tale" (Nabokov, 194-195)Thus speaks Hermann, towards the end of his sordid confession. A brief retelling: Hermann discovers a homeless man to whom he perceives himself to bear an uncanny resemblance. In order to be able to escape his own mundane life, with which he has grown bored, Hermann cons his double (Felix) into dressing in Hermann's clothes, carrying Hermann's identification, and on all accounts, pretending to be Hermann himself. At which point Hermann shoots him and abandons him, intending to begin a peaceful life anew, his old identity having been eliminated at the time of his staged 'murder.'
But as I'm learning, in Nabokov, there is always a catch. Always a fly in the ointment, always a flaw in the plan, which forces the reader to regard the scene from a different angle and upends all preconceived notions (especially where the double is concerned, as I learned from Lolita and Sebastian Knight - Nabokov seems to like manipulating the idea of 'the double'). In Despair, it is revealed that we have been relying too heavily on the tirades of a delusional murderer when we discover the following:
Felix doesn't look like Hermann at all.
The authorities instantly see through Hermann's poorly-disguised crime. There is absolutely no doubt that the man is not Hermann, and the guilty party is indeed Hermann himself. Our discovery of the lack of resemblance is mitigated through Hermann, which means that it's still quite subjective, but it reveals what it is meant to reveal - Hermann is unreliable, to the highest degree. Here's what he says on the subject of the discovery of his crime:
"In getting into their heads that it was not my corpse, they behaved just as a literary critic does, who at the mere sight of a book by an author he does not favor, makes up his mind that the book is worthless and thence proceeds to build whatever he wants to build, on the basis of that first gratuitous assumption" (190-191).Zero possibility of acknowledging for a second that he might possibly be wrong. The man is delusional.
I suppose now would be an appropriate time to say that I enjoyed the second half of the novel. Not nearly as much as I enjoyed Laughter, and nowhere near as much as I adored Sebastian Knight, but certainly more than I enjoyed the first half of this novel. Hermann's absurd predicament amused me. His is not unlike the predicament of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov - a character with whom Hermann repeatedly draws some (comically derisive) parallels. When searching for a title for his confession, Hermann contemplates calling his book "Crime and Pun." He refers to Dostoevsky's novel as "Crime and Slime," and with what seems to be equal parts affection and condemnation, nicknames the author 'Dusty.'
More explicitly, he refers to himself as being "like Raskolnikov" before instantly changing his mind and revoking the comparison. According to Hermann, what differentiates his crime from those of other criminals, and what differentiates his written work from the works of Dostoevsky and Conan Doyle (another comparison of Hermann's) is the following:
"The mistake of my innumerable forerunners consisted of their laying principal stress upon the act itself and in their attaching more importance to a subsequent removal of all traces, than to the most natural way of leading up to that same act which is really but a link in the chain, one detail, one line in the book, and must be logically derived from all previous matter; such being the nature of every art" (122)For, you see:
"If the deed is planned and performed correctly, then the force of creative art is such, that were the criminal to give himself up on the very next morning, none would believe him, the invention of art containing far more intrinsical truth than life's reality" (Nabokov, 122).Herein lies the nature of Hermann's rationalization.
The invention of art containing a far more intrinsical truth than life's reality... Invention containing more truth than reality. Art being more truthful than life. Art being more than life. In one of my first posts, I compared art to a cookie-jar-emptying younger sibling, who accomplishes the impossible while reality is left to holler "MOOOO-OOOOOOM!!" and point in exasperation to the trail of crumbs across the kitchen. I think it's a similar idea: art is capable of reaching into different realms of experience. Whether that is a greater truth or an impossible truth varies, I suppose.
With my own forays into creating art, I find that the truth can be more effectively reached by using art as a means of distillation. When I write a song, the process becomes about refining the subject - be it an emotion, occurrence, idea - down to its purest, most simplistic form. Which is not to say my songs don't encompass complex ideas, but when they do, I make sure there are no competing ideas. (I save that for real life). But art, she gets the delicate treatment.
For Hermann, the intrinsical truths of art seem to deal with reaching people; touching them with his artistic creation and having it appreciated. He longs for "... the moment of an artist's triumph; of pride, deliverance, bliss ..." (183) and hopes to accomplish this through the sharing of his "intrinsical truth." Which is all entirely feasible within the perimeters of art, and could all go off without a hitch in nearly any artistic circumstance, except for one thing...
Hermann killed someone.
Although he is thoroughly convinced that his crime is a work of art, there is a leap of logic in there that doesn't hold. He is so blinded by his own supposed artistic genius that he misses it completely: "Although in my soul of souls I had no qualms about the perfection of my work ... I longed, to the point of pain, for that masterpiece of mine ... to be appreciated by men, or in other words, for the deception - and every work of art is a deception - to act successfully ..." (178).
In Nabokov, it would seem that the artist always wins. As Hermann's 'work of art' ultimately fails, and he is caught, it would seem to point to the fact that Hermann is not an artist. He is right in assuming that works of art are deceptions, but in his particular case, the defense of art is insufficient.
Whereas Humbert knows he is deceiving us, Hermann genuinely doesn't know the right answer. Humbert uses art as a defense while he self-deprecates, Hermann uses it as full justification that exonerates him from all culpability. Humbert condemns himself; Hermann does not.
I don't think so, Hermann.
Fin.
I won't be starting Invitation to a Beheading for several days (too many other books, as usual!!), so I expect to have the next post up within a week and a half or so, containing my first impressions of that novel.
Until then. Thanks for reading.
Works Cited
Nabokov, Vladimir. Despair. New York: Vintage, 1989.
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