Alejandro Mendoza 42958116 RUS 207

The Sanctimonious Perversion of Chorb

The dichotomy between light and dark or black and white appears ubiquitously throughout Nabokovs short story The Return of Chorb. Despite the seemingly restricted symbolism of this pair-wise conjunction, Nabokov expands this traditionally binary meaning into a multifarious metaphor that endows the story with numerous shades of literary significance. By including various forms and states of light as well as incorporating a variety of the mediums through which it travels and with which it interacts, Nabokov is able to extend light into a Wagnerian leitmotif that expresses connections within the text itself, allusions, and a multiplicity of metaphors. This essay will focus mainly on the use of light as a critique on sexual idealization as seen in Christian dogma and stories such as Parsifal and the Orpheus myth. From the second sentence an alliterative reference to optical phenomena sets the ambience of the scene. The lusterless (381) air of the bourgeois life the Kellers lead casts a shade of boredom on the antiquated setting described. This lack of brightness connects with the lifeless (ibid.) quality of the streets, the only source of temporary respite from the monotony of the city being the leisurely (ibid.) Wagner. Considering Nabokovs fame for word play, it is no accident that the first couple of sentences include a subtle linguistic tie between some of the main motifs in the story: the use of light as its main symbolic source, as well as the crucial parallel with Wagners Parsival.

The first two connections with the lights symbolism are politics and religion, respectively. The lusterless quality of the city after the opera, combined with Kellers semblance to Paul Krugerone of the main people in the Boer (farmer) movement, parallel to the Soviet Unions discrimination against the Kulaks that had began to grow around the time Nabokov wrote the storysignifies an ambivalent criticism to the Kellers bourgeois lifestyle. On the one hand, the opaque characteristic of the scene would seem to imply a sort of stagnation, seemingly criticizing the relatively opulent (at least in contrast to an migr) mode of living of the Kellers. However, this critique is not a severe one when one considers that Nabokov compares Keller with Oom Paul Kruger (Uncle) (381), an affectionate term to refer to Kruger. Thus, the implication is more of a

melancholic loss of vitality through age. The reference to Kellers simian (ibid.) and apish (384) face is linked to Darwins theory of evolutionthen thought to rule over socio-political aspects as welland thus implying that the Kellers are simply vestiges near the end of their age, more victims of their lusterless environment than acting on their dark personalities. The light metaphor is thus set up and its importance highlighted. A similar optical symbol is utilized to underscore Nabokovs disapproval of the Churchs anachronistic resilience. He writes how the water had shad[ed] gently the reflected cathedral for well over seven centuries (381) and portrays the clergyman in Nice as disagreeable and consumptive (382), whilst in another scene the cathedral tower was sharply set off in black against [the] sunset (383). Sources that would usually bring greater lightingthe transparent and reflective water and the sunobscure the religious buildings in the story. Along with the disagreeable member of the church, this dark portrayal of the religious

institutions across borders (Germany, France, and Switzerland) weaves a symbolic repudiation of the clerical organization. Thus, light and one of its mediums (water) is used in its complementary form as a negative literary association. The recurrent appearance of the light motif mirrors Wagners use of leitmotifs. There is an explicit allusion to Wagners Parsival, in which Parsival is described as he who is enlightened through compassion1. In contrast to his wife, Chorb is constantly associated with darkness. While he cannot remember the Swiss

landscape he easily recognizes the Black Forest (383) and tries to find that unique rounded black pebble with the regular little white belt (ibid.), a symbol of his relationship with his late wife. When he re-visits the room he and his wife stayed in, we see that the shadow of the chord glided across the green couch (385) in which he had slept the night theyd escaped. Moreover, afterwards we read of a black poodle with apathetic eyes (384) urinating on a playbill announcing Parsival. Like Parsival, we see that Chorb is chaste, kiss[ing his wife] onceon the hollow of the throatthat had been all in the way of lovemaking (385). Just as Wagners Parsival praises chastity, Nabokovlike the poodles literal insultscorns at the idea. Chorbs orphic quest to immortalize his wife (who died, like Eurydice, from the bite of an electric snakethe cable) ends up irreparably scarring her image. Just as an electric stream, the same stream which, when poured into glass receptacles, yields the purest and brightest light (382) erased Chorbs nameless wife from physical existence, so does Chorbs profuse idealization of her image vanquish her purity and transforms it into an abject concept. The author ends up equating the prostitute Chorb hires with his wife; after Chorb wakes up and see[s] his wife lying beside him (389) instead of
1 The full libretto can be found at http://www.rwagner.net/e-frame.html

the girl he hired, and, shortly after, when Keller is told Chorb is with a woman, he claims that shes [his] daughter (390). Thus, Chorbs near apotheosis of his wife ends up reducing her to a harlot (389). His unnatural chastity, like the one imposed by the Church and exalted by Wagner in his opera, yielded the exact opposite of what he ostensibly desired. Analogous to Chorbs methodology producing the contrary result that he expected, Nabokov utilizes Wagners own use of leitmotifs as a scathing symbolic counterargument to the over-idealization of sexuality and Christian dogma. Similar to light being the source of darkness (for without light there is certainly no darkness), the misguided abstraction of sex can debase it to pure perversion.

Bibliography All page references are to: Brown, Clarence. The Portable Twentieth-century Russian Reader. New York: Penguin, 1993. Print.