"Bend Sinister": Nabokov's Political Dream

Author(s): L. L. Lee
Source: Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 8, No. 2, A Special Number
Devoted to Vladimir Nabokov (Spring, 1967), pp. 193-203
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1207101 .
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BEND SINISTER:
NABOKOV'S
POLITICAL DREAM

L. L. Lee

Bend Sinister was Nabokov'ssecond novel in English, written by

a man who had experiencedboth Nazi and Communist regimes.
And, althoughthe novel is neither quite history nor an allegoryof
history,it is Nabokov'smost explicitlypoliticalnovel;that is, it deals
most concretely with living political themes. In Speak, Memory,
Nabokov states that Invitation to a Beheading,composed in Rus-
sian duringthe 'thirties,treats "the buffoonsand bullies of a Com-
munazist state."' He also says, in his forewordto the translated
Invitation,that this novel and Bend Sinisterare relatedstylistically,
which meansthematically.They areboth visionsof madness,political
and personal-a madnessthat is the dream which, carriedtoo far,
begins to act in the world.
But there are other equallyimportantthemes in Bend Sinister.
What one might call the positivemessageof the novel is contained
in the wordsof Krug,the philosopherprotagonist,when he saysthat
he esteemshis universitycolleagues"fortwo things: becausethey are
able to find perfect felicity in specializedknowledge and because
they arenot apt to commit physicalmurder."(p. 54) In otherwords,
there are human values which must be upheld against those mad
abstractionswhich, as we shall see, would destroythe mind and the
body, treatingman at best as only a machine.
Yet, Nabokovannounces,he neither writes nor reads "didactic

1 Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (New York, 1951), p. 217. Hereafter

referencesto SM will be given in the text by title letters and page numbers.
Other works of Nabokov (indicated in the text by title letters and page num-
bers in parentheses-with the exception of Bend Sinister) used in this paper
are: Bend Sinister (London, 1961) (indicated by page numbers only); Nikolai
Gogol (New York, 1961) (G); Invitation to a Beheading (New York, 1959)
(I); Eugene Onegin (New York, 1964) (EO); Lolita (New York, 1955) (L); The
Real Life of SebastianKnight (Norfolk, Conn., 1959) (SK); Pnin (New York,
1964) (P).
W ISCONSIN STUDIES VIII, 2
fiction." (L, p. 316) And "all great literary achievements . . . [are]
a phenomenonof languageand not one of ideas." (G, p. 150) One
does not need to take this entirelyseriously:Nabokov (along with
Mallarme) recognizesthat in practicewords do convey ideas. His
own creature,the writerSebastianKnight, puts this last statement
in reverseorder and makes it more accuratein asserting"that no
real idea can be said to exist without the wordsmade to measure."
(SK, p. 84) Bend Sinisteris an exampleof how wordsare made to
measure;but it is also concernedwith words and, therefore,with
literature-which is the dream of the artist, a dream that makes
nothing happen but just is.
The novel, however, is not these generalizations;it is a con-
structionof words,no doubt, but is also a story about people in a
world.And so, perhapsa summaryof the storycan help us see how
these themes come alive in the novel. The action takes place in an
unnamedbut obviouslymodern Europeancountry,somewhereeast
of France;a revolution,led by Paduk,has just overthrownthe Re-
public.As the novel begins,Krug,the hero, leavesthe hospitalwhere
his wife has died. Crossinga bridge,he has a hallucinatoryencounter
with the soldiersof the insanedictator,Paduk;and this event is the
emblem of those that follow. Krugtalkshimself past the soldierson
the north side of the bridgebut is turnedback at the south because
his pass has not been signed at the other end. The soldierson the
north side, one of whom is Gurk ("Krug"spelled backwards),are
illiterate.In brief, Krugdoes not exist as a personuntil he can get a
signaturefrom people who cannot write."Doomedto walkback and
forth on a bridgewhich has ceased to be one since neither bank is
reallyattainable."(p. 17) Krug,as human being, is caught in time.
Finallyhe and anotherman, also heldup, sign one another'spasses-
a nice irony, for the two prisonerscreate one another as persons,
throughwrittenwords,and so escape.
Krug and Paduk had been schoolmatesas children;the new
State wants Krug'sendorsementfor propagandareasons,although
there is an overtoneof homosexualityin Paduk'sdesirefor Krug.It
wouldnot be an over-reading to interpretPaduk'simpliedhomosexu-
ality as a personal and politicalcommentary:the dictator,the seeker
for power (an essentiallysterile personality),lusts after the life of
the mind at the same moment that he needs to degradeit.
Since he wishes to retain his individuality,Krug refuses to
endorsePaduk'sregime:"I want to be left alone" (p. 82); and, too,
"I am not interestedin politics." (p. 9) There is a lesson here; he
194 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
should be interestedin politics. For, one by one his friends,people
of no political importance,are draggedoff to prison as a kind of
blackmail.At last his son is taken. Krugcollapses,willing to do and
sign anything."The nightmaremay get out of control,"he cries to
a state functionary(p. 185). Unfortunatelyit does, and his son is
killed in a brutal psychological"experiment."Krug, now insane,
believeshimselfto be a school child again,attacksPadukand is shot.
Padukis the chief advocateof Ekwilism,"a violent and virulent
political doctrine" that proposes "to enforce spiritual uniformity
upon . . . [the] land through the medium of the most standardized
section of the inhabitants,namely the Army, under the supervision
of a bloatedand dangerouslydivineState." (p. 69) Nabokovpresents
Ekwilismas a basicallyconfused political idea with one clear aim:
destructionof the individual.Communistand Nazi dogmas-racism,
militarism,extreme nationalism-seem casuallytossed in, although
there is more Nazi, perhaps,than Communistdoctrinein this list.
Moreover,the emblem of the Ekwilist state bears "a remarkable
resemblanceto a crushed dislocatedbut still writhing spider . . .
upon a red flaglet."(p. 34) This is obviouslyderivedfrom the Nazi
swastikaand banner,althoughwith an echo of the Red Flag. And
Krug,certainlyironically(we must rememberthat Nabokovis quite
as awareof the rangeof meaningsof his words as Joyce), asks the
unletteredsoldiersto sign his passwith "a cross,or a telephonebooth
curlicue,or a gammadion,or something."(p. 17) The gammadion
can be in the shape of a swastikaand, possiblynot too oddly, of an
open-endedGreek cross.The swastika,in German,is a hakenkreuz,
a hook-cross;but the Christiancrosshas also been used as a symbol
by killers.
As I have written elsewhere,2however,Nabokov, pursuingthe
image of the circle that is so importantto his art, sees the ends of
the political circle joining, "a vicious circle as all circles are" (G,
p. 149)-and the death of the heart, "spiritualuniformity,"is the
result, if not the purpose,of both Communismand Nazism. The
petit bourgeoiswho does sign Krug'spass is, in his emptiness, as
viciousas any revolutionistof Paduk'skind; Bend Sinistermust not

2 L. L.
Lee, "VladimirNabokov'sGreatSpiralof Being,"The Western
HumanitiesReview,XVIII, 3 (Summer,1964), 225-236;and L. L. Lee, "Du-
plexityin V. Nabokov'sShortStories,"Studiesin ShortFiction,II, 4 (Summer,
1965), 307-315.
BEND SINISTER 195
be read as an apologiafor capitalism.Nabokovgives it explicitlyin
Speak, Memory:
... a kind of family circle . . . [links] representatives of all nations, jolly
Empire-builders ..., the unmentionable German product, the good old
church-goingRussianor Polish pogromshchik,the lean Americanlyncher,
the man with the bad teeth who squirts antiminoritystories in the bar
or the lavatory,and, at another point of the same subhumancircle [my
italics], those ruthless,paste-facedautomatonsin singularlywide trousers
and high-shoulderedcoats, those Sitzriesen,whom-or shall I say which?-
the Soviet State has broughtout on such a scale after thirty yearsof selec-
tive breeding. (SM, p. 195)

This, then, is what the illogical truth of the dream tells us: it shows
us how apparently dissimilar political ideals are really, not just super-
ficially, identical.
Above all, Ekwilism is and must be opposed to the life of the
Mind. As an acquaintance of Krug's holds (repeating Krug's
thought): "Curiosity . . . is insubordination in its purest form."
(p. 42) Ekwilism would destroy curiosity (i.e., any search for truth),
although the lower kind of curiosity, the impulse to pry into other
people's business, is made a virtue. Ekwilism would certainly destroy
art, at least art as Nabokov understands it. "Popular commonsensc
must spit out the caviar of moonshine and poetry, and the simple
word, verbum sine ornatu, intelligible to man and beast [!] alike,
and accompanied by fit action, must be restored to power." (p. 98)
These senselessly fumbled but frightening metaphors with their
accent on action, an action that can mean only violence, are the
language of the Ekwilist state-and the antithesis of art and artist.
(It is not too surprising to discover that this sentence and part of
the description of Fortinbras, which Nabokov gives to his Profes-
sor Hamm, are inspired variants of an actual sentence and certain
remarks of Franz Horn, a nineteenth-century German commentator
on Hamlet. I should add here that Nabokov levies on a number of
Shakespeare'scommentators, many more than I have room to point
out.3) Under the Ekwilist regime, there will be no more magical
dance of words, so free and yet so ordered. It is the totalitarian,
utilitarian mind, not Nabokov's art, not Krug's thought, that Krug's
friend Maximov cries out against: "But the utterly nonsensical is a
natural and logical part of Paduk's rule." (p. 80)

3 See Horn,et al., in the FurnessVariorum

Hamlet.
196 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
 The very form of Nabokov'snovel is an actualizationof this
ironic strainbetween art and politics. Form here means style, struc-
ture, and imagery,those three elements of the literarywork that
Nabokovsuggests,in the epilogueto Lolita (L, p. 315), as the truly
importantones. It is almostimpossible,however,to speakof the one
without speakingof the other two in his fiction. One cannot, for
instance, explain those digressionsthat really do not digress,those
digressionsthat Nabokov thinks of, along with Sterne,as "the sun-
shine-. . . the life, the soul of reading" (EO, II, p. 195), without
noting that they are imagisticallyinterrelatedwith the other parts
of the novel-and that the style changesbut makes, too, its corre-
spondences.Nevertheless,one must see how these things work,par-
ticularlyin the Shakespearean conversationand the long dreamthat
takesup Chapter5, in orderto understandthat the novel does have
orderand meaning.
We can startwith the novel'sbeginningand its ending.The first
chapteris apparentlyset within the mind of Krug,but one cannot
be certain.The time is a November: the observersees a street, a
peculiar,spatulatepuddle, two leaflesspoplartrees, and two houses.
The puddle will appearagain when the police spy, Dr. Alexander,
signs his acquiescenceto the State philosophyand accidentallyblots
the paper.And, almost at the end of the novel, just as Krugrushes
acrossthe courtyardat Padukwho is crouchedagainsta wall, "and
just a fractionof an instantbeforeanotherand betterbullet hit him,
he shouted again: You, you-and the wall vanished,like a rapidly
withdrawnslide, and I stretchedmyself and got up from among the
chaos of written and rewritten pages . . ." (p. 210) This "I" is the
authorin anotherpersona.It is now night. The "I" looks out upon
two windowslighted;they are windowsin one of the houses seen by
"Krug"in the first scene. There is also a poplarand "a specialpud-
dle (the one Krughad somehowperceivedthroughthe layer of his
own life)...." The season is different; it is warm and there are moths
about, "a good night for mothing" for Nabokov the lepidopterist.
Yet Krugand the authorare certainlyidentified;and of that puddle,
always"acquiringthe same form,"the "I" saysthat, "possibly,some-
thing of the kind may be said to occur in regardto the imprintwe
leavein the intimatetextureof space."(p. 211) The puddleis Krug's,
Alexander's,the "I's";they sharethe same space.The authoras God
is god of a pantheisticword world;the dreameris his own creation.
So, too, with structure:the beginningand the end of the novel
contain one anotheras well as containingthe novel. But one must
BEND SINISTER | 197
still examinethe actualline of the story.I have said that the digres-
sions are not really digressions-thereare admittedly times when
Nabokov indulges himself, but the longest of the digressions,the
Shakespearean one, is not only a functional,but an absolutelyneces-
sary,part of the novel-it is the assertionof the value of literature.
And one element of literatureis the sheer joy of using or seeing
wordsused intelligentlyand sensitively.
The figureof Shakespeare entersthe novel early:Emberis trans-
lating him; Krug and Ember entertain the absurd,marvelousfancy
of "forging"his works.One must note that Shakespeareis impor-
tant to Nabokovnot only as the greatestpoet of all time (G, p. 29),
not only as the author of the "dream-playsHamlet . . . [and] Lear"
(G, p. 54), or becauseof the complexityand mysteryof his plays,
but also becausehe is a magnificentenigma in himself, a puzzling
tricksterwho hides and revealshimself in his works.The point here
is that Shakespeare's worksare the type of literature:the poet, or,
rather,his worksare truly"not of an age, but for all time."They are
outside of time, in fact, although if Shakespearedid not exist, we
should have to invent him for our own time. Krugand Embercan
invent him, makehim meaningfulfor themselvesas individuals.But
we shall see that there is a wrongway of "inventing"him, one that
is an assaulton languageand literature.
The digression,which takes most of Chapter 7, opens with a
partialdescriptionof Ember'sbedroom.Once again we cannot be
surewho is doing the perceiving,Krug,Ember,or the author.Who,
for instance,says,"Lastchanceof describingthe bedroom"?(p. 96)
The literarydreamwill not allow us aestheticdistance:the voice of
the dreameris at our ear, perhapsin our ear. On one wall there are
three pictures,all of which have somethingto do with the Bacon-
Shakespearenonsense.Nabokovdoes not so inform us, but the first
two picturesare derivedfrom the title page of the Cryptomenytices,
etc., publishedat Lunaeburgin 1624 as the workof a GustavusSele-
nus. One of the English Baconians,Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence,
used Selenus'book to "prove"that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays
(I havebeen unableto discoverwherethe thirdpicturecomes from).
Sir Edwin'sown book, Bacon is Shake-speare, offersquite a bit more
to Nabokov, including the statement that the Droeshout portrait
from the 1623 folio "is cunninglycomposedof two left armsand a
mask."4Nabokovgives this as: "Who is he? William X, cunningly

4 Sir Edwin
Durning-Lawrence,Bart., Bacon is Shake-speare(New York,
1910), p. 23.
198 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
composedof two left armsand a mask.Who else? The personwho
said (not for the firsttime) that the gloryof God is to hide a thing,
and the glory of man is to find it." (pp. 95-96) One could argue
that Nabokovis simplypullingour legs;he saysof Pushkinthat he is
"adeceiveras all artistsare...." (EO, I, p. 50) He does not, indeed,
take the Bacon-as-Shakespeare faith seriously;Shakespeareis Shake-
speare,the "Warwickshire fellow." (p. 96) All this is, I agree,a joke,
but it is more than a joke and more than just an opportunityfor
Nabokovto make some obscureallusions.
On the immediatelevel, the Shakespearediscussionservesas a
psychologicalrelief for Krugand Ember: Olga, Krug'swife, has just
died and the Maximovshave just been arrested.It is also "comic
relief,"or, better, a relaxationthat heightensthe horrorof both the
Maximovs'arrestin the precedingchapterand the following,weirdly
farcical,arrestof Ember. But neither justify the absurdityor the
length of the digression,which is, in design,neithera wanderingnor
a psychologicalmanipulationof the reader;rather,it is an enrich-
ment, an attempt on the part of the authorto reachout and gather
in as much life (even if fantastic)as possible;it is also an attempt to
use "language"as thoroughlyas possible. One must also see that
these seemingly irrelevantbits of knowledge, these puzzles, these
creationsof new worlds,are alwaysin the main flow of the novel.
They are,to use Pnin'swords,"RamblingComparisons"(P, p. 186),
but just as the metaphoror the figuremakespoetry,so these digres-
sions make the novel. They are not just baroqueornaments;they
connect and they comment.
Nabokov'sborrowings,allusions,and images in the digressions
(and elsewhere) work in the same way. Sir Edwin is used because
he too has invented "Shakespeare"-buthe has done it stupidly,
without humor, and with a flawed language;his is the dream of
literatureand truthgone sour.He also offersan imagewith his insist-
ence on Bacon's"left-handedly" putting out his "Shakespeare" plays.
The left hand, or the idea of the left, appearsrepeatedly.The title
of the novel refersto the band runningfrom sinisterchief to dexter
base on the shield, a standardrepresentationof bastardyin heraldry.
Not that BaconfatheredShakespeare's plays,but ratherthat the true
workof artcontainsthe world,the left as well as the right;it contains
contrariesthat are dialecticallyrelated.And, too, like questions of
parentage,the work of literaturecontainsmysteries.We might add
that Nabokov'sdigressionsare a deliberatelybizarreinterweavingof
the comic and the serious,an echo of the practiceof Hamlet.
It is Hamlet and Ophelia that Krug and Ember talk about:
BEND SINISTER 1 199
"Hamletat Wittenberg,alwayslate, missingG. Bruno'slectures .. ."
(p. 101) Bruno is the philosopherof the coincidenceof contraries,
who was, by the way, burned-if not by the State, at least by a sys-
tem that could not allow variety (i.e., heretics). Bruno was also a
man who gave his faith to argumentin words;his faith and his fate
thus correspondto Hamlet'sand Krug's.Nabokov offersus Hamlet
as the indecisivepoet unwillingor unable to act so long as he lacks
the necessaryevidence or the propermoment, alwayson the horns
of a dilemma;and Krugas the indecisivephilosopherunwilling to
act because,though he knows men are irrational,he cannot believe
in their irrationality.At one moment, Ember"mighthave embraced
his fat friend [Krug]in silence (a miserabledefeat in the case of
philosophersand poets accustomedto believe that wordsare superior
to deeds) ...." (p. 96) Words are superior-but only in value. Yet
paradoxically Hamlet and Krug,and even Ember,are true individu-
als, that is, men of courageand strength.
The discussionof Hamlet is, then, an element in the satireon
the political dream. The grotesqueideas of the stupid Professor
Hamm in his "The Real Plot of Hamlet," which controls Ember's
productionof the play in the new State Theater,are a revelationof
Ekwilism:spiritualleveling on the one hand, racismon the other,
both intensely opposed to the individual. (Hamm and Durning-
Lawrence,though opposed,are true brothers,since they both deny
Shakespearein the name of political and economic classes.) One
must finally allow the other meanings of "sinister";although all
thingsin the universemaybe related,Nabokovdoes not believe that
all things are of equal value. Both Paduk and Durning-Lawrence
are sinister.
In the sameway, the linguisticgame that Krugand Emberplay
with names, their indulgencein that human and civilized pleasure
in words,is a spiritualactivitywhich the Ekwilistmentalitycannot
toleratenor comprehend(unlesswe grantthat Paduk'ssilly anagrams
on Adam Krug'sname, Gumakrad,Gurdamak,Dramaguk,can be
called a pleasurein language). Nevertheless,Paduk misses the real
significanceof Krug'sname: Adam is "the Man," the first man, the
archetypeof the individual.And Krugis Russianfor "circle,""the
circle in Krug, one Krug in another one" (p. 37), and therefore
the symbol of completenessas well as of contrariesand complexity.
Opheliaalso bringsin things Russian,or at least Nabokov'sjoy
in things Russian,as well as his joy in things sexual.But even the
Russian,the sexual,and Opheliaare essentiallyelements in the seri-
200 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
ous game of words. Ember pursuesthe meaning and derivationof
Ophelia'sname. He, or ratherNabokov,again cribs enthusiastically
from Shakespeareancommentators:Ruskin and C. Elliot Browne.
In his own text and by allusionNabokovfinds her name in Greek,
Danish, Italian, and Latin-a name associatedwith serpents (with
no Freudianmeaning) and amorousshepherds.She is "lithe, lithp-
ing, thin-lippedOphelia,Amleth'swet dream,a mermaidof Lethe,
a rarewaterserpent,Russalkaletheanaof science (to matchyourlong
purples)." (p. 103) Rusalkais Russianfor "mermaid,"in particular
a fresh-watermermaidwith legs. (EO, II, p. 246) There is surely
an allusion here to the mermaidof Pushkin'spoem "Rusalka,"a
seductresswho tempts a lonely hermit into a lake and thus to death,
physicaland spiritual.Thus, both the mermaidand Ophelia (the
creationsof Shakespeareand Pushkin, these two greatestof poets
[G, p. 29]) are linked by allusion and descriptionto the silly but
destructivegirl-child,Mariette,of Nabokov'snovel. Mariettetempts
Krugto a sexualdeath and hands him over to a physicaldeath;and
she is the youngest of the three sisters,Mariette, Linda Bachofen,
and Doktor von Wytwyl, all of whom help to wreckKrug'slife: a
kind of diabolicKore-Persephone-Hecate.
It is also in this chapterthat Nabokovmakesmost strikingand
pleasurableuse of suchconnectivedevicesas parallelisms,alliterations,
metaphor,and even rhyme.It is here he "quotes"ProfessorHamm,
whose style is a fog of cliches and blurredmetaphors.Hamm is no
Hamlet (let me laugh a little too, gentlemen): "Some darkdeed of
violence, . . . some masonic manoeuvre engendered by the Shylocks
of high finance,has dispossessed"(p. 98) Fortinbras'family of its
rightto the Danish throne;or, "the poison pouredinto the sleeper's
ear is a symbol of the subtle injection of lethal rumours . . ." (p. 99)
Once morewe have, in ProfessorHamm'slanguage,the idiom of the
bureaucraticpropagandist(state or private), a truly dead language,
but it is at least a delight in that it is a joke. Yet later, when Krug
receivesthe variousmissivesof the state, especiallyits newspapers,
the graypall is not funny;it is terrifying.
On the reverseside, though, a phraseas wild as "lustyold King
Hamlet smiting with a poleaxe the Polacksskiddingand sprawling
on the ice" (p. 102), which is paraphrasedShakespeare-Krug and
pure Nabokov, fits felicitously into its context, the sound evoking
the image. And Ember'sHamlet says of Ophelia, "Quietly,with a
kind of devilishdaintinessshe mincedher dangerouscoursethe way
her father'sambitionpointed" (p. 104), a line that elsewherewould
BEND SINISTER | 201
be arch but which, in context, is both exact parodyand significant
statement.
One can add that the languageof the countryand the namesof
the charactersare illustrationsof this complex of associations.The
languageis a made-uptongue, just as is that of Zemblain Pale Fire.
Its roots are Russianand Teutonic, althoughthere are considerable
patches of straightRussian,especiallyin the translationsEmber is
making.However,the intent of the game here is to connect Nabo-
kov's "pasts,"his linguistic worlds;and, more seriously,to suggest
that it is man'slanguagethat creates,in majorpart,man'sworld.One
may say, too, that languageis man's way of stopping (or passing)
time.
The namesservenot only as linkagesbut as humor (puns, even
if erudite, give pleasureand connect). Krug is, to repeat, "circle."
Padukis nicknamedthe Toad; his surnameis almost "paddock,"a
toad. The word "paddock"certainlyhints at somethingmore threat-
ening than "toad"does;in Shakespeareit is almost alwaysa symbol
of evil. And the name of old Skotoma,the senile "philosopher"of
Ekwilism,is a direct transliterationof the Modern Greek skotoma,
that is, "murder"or "killing."The comic strip hero Etermon,who
suppliesa sartorialstyle and a mannerof life for Paduk,is, Nabokov
pointsout, Everyman;but thereis a possiblesarcasmhere on etymon,
the "true"or originalmeaningof a word,for Etermonis completely
fake,both as individualand as symbol.Finally,we have the student
Phokus, the nucleus of a resistanceto Paduk, who appearsin the
novel only as a shapeand a sound: Phokusis fokus, the Russianfor
"focus"as well as for "conjuringtrick."Phokusis the novel's heart
but he is hidden.
It is in Krug'sdream in Chapter 5 that we see most clearly
this combinationof real and unreal,of fiction and actuality,in the
absurditythat is the art dream. "It bristled with farcicalanachro-
nism . . ." (p. 56) The dream is treated almost as a play, the play
within the play. But "who is behind the timid producers?"
And the
dreamer,not Krug, answers,"A nameless, mysteriousgenius who
took advantageof the dreamto conveyhis own peculiarcode message
which has nothing," really, to do with "Krug'sphysicalexistence,
but which links him up somehow with an unfathomablemode of
being . . ., a kind of transcendental madness which lurks behind
the corner of consciousness... ." (p. 57)
Yet the dreamis also a flashback,a witty retellingof the story
of old Skotoma.It also tells of Paduk senior and his padograph-a
202 1 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
machine that reproduceshandwritingand which "subsistedas an
Ekwilistsymbol,as a proof of the fact that a mechanicaldevice can
reproducepersonality,and that Quality is merely the distributional
aspect of Quantity." (pp. 62-63) And it tells of the founding of
the Partyof the AverageMan by Paduk junior,the future dictator
(all the schoolboymembersare most unaverage;that is, each is defi-
cient mentallyor physically-Nabokov'sironiesare sometimesneither
subtle nor pleasant). This part of Krug'sdreamis not a true dream
sequence;it is Nabokov once more entering, slyly, as guide, since
a closerinspection(madewhen the dream-self is deadfor the ten thou-
sandthtime and the day-selfinheritsfor the ten thousandthtime those
dustytrifles. . .) revealsthe presenceof someonein the know... andwe
startafreshnow combiningdim dreamswith the scholarlyprecisionof
memory.(p. 58)
Here is, in summary,the processby which the artistworks.
But for what purpose?We must agree,finally,that Bend Sinis-
ter makes the statement that there are kinds of lives and kinds of
human activities-especiallythe activity that is art-which are of
supremevalue. And so we may conclude with two quotationsfrom
Krugand one from Yeats:
Lives that I envy: longevity, peaceful times, peaceful country, quiet
fame, quiet satisfaction: Ivar Aasen, Norwegian philologist, 1813-1896,
who invented a language.Down here we have too much of homo civis
and too little of sapiens. (p. 139)

Sapiens. The man who invents languages, who invents Shakespeare

(wittily), who invents art, art that is (although Krug is thinking
directlyof the individualhuman life) "consciousness,which is the
only realthing in the worldand the greatestmysteryof all." (p. 163)
And yet "in dreams begins responsibility."
Western Washington State College

BEND SINISTER 1 203