By ERIVELTO DA ROCHA CARVALHO*
Considerations on Vladimir Nabokov's book on Miguel de Cervantes
The publication of the Brazilian translation of Vladimir Nabokov's study on the quixote by Miguel de Cervantes was preceded by the author's other studies on literature, written at the time when the Russian novelist was teaching at American universities and colleges. Before becoming an internationally recognized name through titles such as Lolita e pale fire, Vladimir Nabokov dedicated himself to teaching literature in various American locations based on a study program that addressed the history of the modern novel, which led him to organize the course offered at Harvard University during the academic year of 1951-1952.
The Brazilian edition of your Lessons on Don Quixote is a complete transposition of the North American edition by Fredson Bowers, published in 1984 with a preface by Guy Davenport. Nabokov's book undoubtedly presents itself as a valuable reference for understanding the change in the perspective of Cervantes studies in the XNUMXth century, but it also offers other clues for thinking about the reception of Miguel de Cervantes in Brazil and abroad.
Vladimir Nabokov, critic and writer
Although it is true that there is a clearly critical movement in this study on the quixote, it is difficult not to notice how the reception of the Spanish classic also involves the Russian writer's own construction of his own literary persona as an author of novels.
From this perspective, Vladimir Nabokov fits into the group of many creators in whom criticism and artistic restlessness go hand in hand, and he is not an exceptional case in relation to the novelists who dedicate themselves to glossing Miguel de Cervantes and inserting their commentary into the general framework of criticism of the novel in the 20th century. If, on the one hand, his reading of Cervantes tends to refute the hegemonic romantic version present in the critics he despises (such as the now forgotten Audrey Bell and Joseph Krutch); on the other hand, the attention he gives to Miguel de Cervantes' novel does not fail to indicate the place that this topic assumes in his vast program of readings of novels, which will inevitably serve as a support point in the construction of his two best-known novels.
To a certain extent, the obsession with Lolita in the book of the same name is parallel to that which Don Quixote has for Dulcinea, and also in pale fire the story of a found manuscript is told once again, a ploy present in the quixote and a recurring element when structuring a certain type of novelistic structure. Both themes have an evident Cervantine resonance and converge with the artistic bias assumed by Nabokov's reading of the quixote in his classes, even if this bias appears implicitly and is not announced as such. In any case, reading his lecture notes, it is not difficult to deduce that they are notes by a novelist on the work of another novelist.
In his reading of Miguel de Cervantes, he fights against the enchanting magicians of Romanticism, those who only want to see compassion in the work of the Spanish writer, but, in particular, he also recounts the gaze cast towards the intuition and artistic genius of the Manco de Lepanto. This last point unfolds in the way Vladimir Nabokov sees the tradition of readings on Miguel de Cervantes, beyond his criticism of the saturation of Romantic exegesis.
It is interesting to note the presence and absence of some vectors of criticism about Miguel de Cervantes in the 20th century in the reconstruction of the artistic conception of Cervantes' poetics present in Nabokov's reading. In this perspective, for example, the notes in Bowers' edition reveal the teacher who, in his classes, constructs his vision of quixote based on Spanish or North American references such as those of the Hispanists Salvador Madariaga and Rudolph Schevill, whose presentations and notes on the Cervantine classic fulfill the functional objective of situating the work studied in the six classes of the Memory Hall from the prestigious North American university.
In contrast to the presence of these functional readings that provide the “path” to a work, the absence is striking (perhaps due to difficulty of access; certainly also, in other cases, due to language difficulties, but perhaps simply due to the author’s lack of interest) of some references to readings or interpretations of Miguel de Cervantes already formulated during the course at Harvard, such as those by Unamuno, Américo de Castro and Ortega y Gasset; others parallel to it, such as those by Bataillon, Bakhtin and Auerbach; and, still, others elaborated by the critical reading of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Thomas Mann, to capture here the general spectrum of absences that can be traced (in the latter case, even a posteriori).
Evidently, far from being a simple calculation of absences, these absences generally indicate the limits and strategic options assumed by Vladimir Nabokov, who presents himself to the public as a kind of functional “guide” to Miguel de Cervantes, while at the same time keeping hidden the figure of the novelist that he already was (in Russian) and that he would become (in English).
Mystification and cruelty
The general perception of Nabokov's reading of quixote is that more than a novel that still made sense for its time (that of the critic), Miguel de Cervantes' work continued to be relevant due to its very peculiar artistic power and, even more so, due to the diffusion it had achieved over time. The Russian writer tends to place Cervantes on a lower scale in terms of literary importance when comparing him to Shakespeare, for example. As he will state in one of his classes, Don Quixote would be "just" a nobleman in King Lear's court. Comparisons with this specific play by the English playwright sometimes appear in classes, always favoring the situations and characters of the Elizabethan drama.
This does not prevent the reader of your study from perceiving the element that distinguishes your reading from most interpretations (romantic or otherwise) of the quixote: Nabokov devotes a central section of his study, undoubtedly the most interesting, to dealing with what he calls the cruelty of the Cervantine world, a universe formed not only by the literary form of Miguel de Cervantes, but also by the background of injustice and inhumanity that the Russian author sees in Europe at the beginning of the Modern Age and especially in the Spain of Cervantes and Philip. At times, he draws a parallel between the brutality present in court society and that of the authoritarian regimes of his time, among which he includes the Soviet regime with which he never sympathized.
Cruelty is the main mark of quixote for Vladimir Nabokov, which makes the author state that this work presents itself as an encyclopedia of cruelty where the poor souls of its two protagonists are dissected. In his reading of the Russian author's commentary in The control of the imaginary and the affirmation of the novel (2009), Luiz Costa Lima draws attention to the fact that cruelty is just the other side of the coin compared to the sharpness of the deception present in Quixote.
The recurring theme of tension between tragedy and comedy in Miguel de Cervantes (which has been present since the first Romantic readings) can, to a certain extent, be compared with the tension that has existed since the 20th century between criticism and creation, a tension that is not restricted to the work of the Spanish author. In a certain sense, true art criticism in the 20th century is that written by artists in their works or in their reinterpretations of the works of their peers. For the novel, this is no different.
Criticism and creation
As Davenport points out in his preface, despite Vladimir Nabokov's interest in distancing himself from the traditional romantic view of Cervantes, the Russian author nevertheless surrenders to his cult by highlighting piety as his coat of arms and beauty as his standard (signs that thus categorize the Spanish novelist). In his introduction to the world of Miguel de Cervantes at Harvard, the rigorous professor is present who criticizes commentators who only want to see compassion in quixote, but there is also the novelist who sympathizes with certain passages and some of the tricks of the game of mirrors forged by the Spanish author. This is, without a doubt, a reader who is much more concerned with his readings of Tolstoy or Gogol, but who nevertheless reserves a particular space for Cervant's text in the general framework of literary history.
Perhaps this is a point that makes Vladimir Nabokov's reading and book lose in self-interest: his readings of the quixote are linked to his classes on Russian and universal literature, especially the tradition of the modern novel (published in Brazil by the same publisher that published the study discussed here). From this perspective, Miguel de Cervantes ceases to have an intrinsic interest and becomes a stepping stone to reach authors closer to the commentator, such as the Russians already mentioned, but also others, especially some from the English-speaking world, such as James Joyce or Charles Dickens. The negative comparison in relation to Shakespeare reveals the primacy that the author of Russian origin gives to English-speaking cultures, despite the value he recognizes in Cervantes as a novelist.
When situating your vision of the quixote in the general framework of the history of the novel and modernity in crisis, Nabokov approaches an essay that is contemporary with the original publication of his lessons, which is The art of romance (1986) by Milan Kundera. His critique of Cervantine prose (in its fragmentary form and lack of prior planning) would certainly be well received by strict critics of the ilk of Paul Groussac (mentioned by Nabokov in his book), but would make fiction writers less attached to the form like Borges smile (who, according to certain critics, would have alluded to Groussac himself to create the figure of Pierre Menard).
Finally, despite the restrictions on Miguel de Cervantes and his time, despite the restrictions on romantic readings of quixote, Vladimir Nabokov ends up recognizing in the Spanish novelist a unique, unrepeatable artistic quality. Whether or not this is the subject of great works is something that critics will have to continue to ponder for some time to come. And the Brazilian reader will be able to prove it by reading Cervantes himself and also the translation of Nabokov's study carried out by Jorio Dauster.
*Erivelto da Rocha Carvalho é professor of Spanish and Hispanic-American literature at the University of Brasília (UnB).
Reference
Vladimir Nabokov. Lessons on Don Quixote. Translation: Jorio Dauster. New York, New York, 2023, 302 pages.. [https://amzn.to/4fEOUea]
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