From imago to image (representation of America in the novels "Speak, memory" and "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov)

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УДК 821.161.1-31.09

FROM IMAGO TO IMAGE (REPRESENTATION OF AMERICA IN THE NOVELS “SPEAK, MEMORY” AND “LOLITA” BY VLADIMIR NABOKOV)

L.V. Tokarieva

World literature has been inhabited by national representations since classical antiquity. These national images have influenced the literary works themselves, the works of further literary generations, extraliterary spheres (art, mass-media, politics etc). Although we observe the early interest of writers in national images, genuine literary research of the following phenomena started only in the beginning of the twentieth century. Such branch of Comparative Literature as literary imagology addresses the problems of national representations in literature. Imagology or image studies have got an interdisciplinary nature, and it operates within various Humanities. In our article we observe literary branch of imagology. In the second half of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century next terms have been circulating in the frames of European imagological paradigm: mirage and image (J.-M. Carre, M.-F. Guyard, H. Dyserinck), ethnoimage (H. Dyserinck), national stereotype (W. Chew), imagotype (G. Blaicher), cultural image (D.- H. Pageux), image (auto-and-hetero-images, counter-image, imageme, metaimage) (J. Leerssen), imagene (A. Ditze). In the works of most European researchers the term image is applied to the sphere of imagology. Manfred Beller interprets it “as the mental silhouette of the Other who appears to be determined by the characteristics of family, group, tribe, people or race” [1, p. 4]. He also points out that it is the selective observation that forms the images of Other and that in the text we obtain “limited pictorial presentations”. “Once textually codified, the partial representation will represent the whole. This is an issue of information, or information processing, which together with our tendency towards value judgments will generate prejudices. Prejudices involve, then, an a priori information deficit. This often engenders negative valorizations, or else starry-eyed idealizations, both of which stand in need of correction” [1, p. 5]. According to J. Leerssen image as all discursive constructs has such features as mobility and changeability [see: 1, p. 343].

Nowadays such discipline as imagology is in its rise in European studies, the imagological studies in Ukraine if we talk about its contemporary trends have evolved due to the work of D. S. Nalyvaiko. In the researches of Ukrainian scholars we observe on the one hand following the trends of European imagology, on the other hand new terms are emerged and new definitions are given to imagological concepts. In our article we consider views of Ukrainian scholars on the problem of imago and image. These terms are often confused and supposed to be synonymous. According to D. S. Nalyvaiko, “Imago is a phenomenon of culture that correlatively represents Other in certain culture, the one that enters the space of its culture preserving in this or that way its autochthonous contents and structure” [2, p. 11]. Emergence of imago may take place spontaneously or deliberately according to certain ideological or political aims.

G. M. Syvachenko supposes the term imago to be too broad for usage in literary analysis as “it comprises both stereotype and personal experiences of the recipient” [3, p. 143] and contains extraliterary aspects (cultural, ethnic etc) and will complicate the researcher's work in literary analysis. Therefore, the scholar proposes to use the term ethnoimage (introduced by H. Dyserinck) as it gives opportunity “to operate in the scale of one writer's work as well as in applying it to general literary image, created by a group of writers” [3, p. 149]. She summarizes that “literary ethnoimage of Other is totally different from the stereotype as the first contains personal reception and interpretation of Other through the prism of author's vision. These categories are not inherent for stereotype as it only reflects public opinion of society” [3, p. 157].

T. N. Denysova has been the first to talk about the necessity of differentiation of two concepts - imago and image. Researching “in the parameters of imagology” the image of Ukraine in the novels by Ascold Melnychuk, “imago” is used as “an imagological category” and “image” is applied as “an artistic topoi in certain contexts constructed on imago” [4, p. 217]. In her opinion, “... image in literary studies during , at least, twentieth century is associated with an artistic image, and afterwards it can't adequately reflect the contents which is inserted by imagology which is constructed on fixed stereotyped ethnoimages” [4, p. 216].

We see literary image of Other in the literary works of one or some authors as subjective, unique, artistic and aesthetic creation of author's imagination and genius. As for imago we use it as condensation of this powerful informative and aesthetic individual and creative image. Imago may be related to a reduction model that starts circulating in national and cultural space and expanding on cinema, mass media, art etc. However the process of imago is double as it can form base for constructing literary image of Other and such imago can derive from various sources - historical information, the things heard from someone who visited the country, literary works of previous generation where the view of Other is given, political sources, mass media. However, literary image may be an impulse, a kind of initiation and gradually in the further generations, cultural and historical epochs succeeding in the form of imago, that is a simplified variation and a minimal informative component. If representation of Other doesn't get a key or focal position in the literary work or an artistic value of it is poor, then depiction of Other can stay on the level of imago. In the literary work both imago and literary images can circulate and sure to research and distinguish these phenomena is the scholar's mission. Imago/ Image opposition is significant in our study as the first one easily corresponds to the sphere of imagology as for the second one it refers to the field of literary studies, and its aesthetic nature takes the prevalent position. Imago is a minimal informative component about the Other though it functions as a general view of Other in various spheres. While literary image is the phenomenon of aesthetic nature and comprises a unique, artistic perspective on Other. Imago deals with limited number of aspects about Other. However, image of Other in literary work has got multitude of meanings, its infinity is opposite to limitedness of imago. imago frame literary image

Imago is a representation of Other (ethnic, cultural, social, natural) in literary work and comprises minimal informative component which is viewed as a general picture of Other, as such as it reflects its autochthonous features.

Literary image is a representation of Other that has a focal position in the textual space of the literary work and reflects a unique subjective multifaceted perspective on Other.

In order to prove our point of view we'll consider novels of the celebrated American-Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov from the perspective of imago and literary image of America. In one of the interviews the writer was asked what language he thought in and his answer was not Russian, French or English but images and it's quite significant for writer to have these images in his mind and give life to them in the creative work. “Speak, Memory” and “Lolita” are two works which will help us to shed light on the problem stated above. Brian Boyd wrote about the first novel the following: “No one has felt more passion than Nabokov for the radiance of a personal past, and no one has recollected the past with more precision. That alone would suffice to place his autobiography among the greatest ever written. But above all, Speak, Memory is the most artistic of all autobiographies” [5, p. 149]. The novel was written at the beginning of his life in the United States of America. In the interview to Peter Duval-Smith and Christopher Burstall in 1962 he writes: “In America I'm happier than in any other country. It is in America that I found my best readers, minds that are closest to mine. I feel intellectually at home in America. It is a second home in the true sense of the word” [6, p. 10]. As Nabokov writes, his method is “to explore the remotest regions of his past life for what may be termed thematic trails or currents” [5, p. 157]. Some researchers call them themes (Boyd speaks about theme of America in “Speak, Memory”), in our article we'll use another term according to imagological perspective of our research - imago of America. Though the setting of “Speak, Memory” is mostly Russia (native Vyra, years spent in St. Petersburg) and Europe (French Riviera of his childhood, his study in Cambridge, life as an immigrant in Europe), America appears through Russian and European settings however it doesn't play a key role or take the focal part in the work. In childish imagination a Russian bog is perceived as the embodiment of unknown land heard from relatives: “ <...> the vast expanse of a misty-blue sphagnum bog, because of its mystery and remoteness, the Rukavishnikov children had baptized America” [7, p. 58]. Vladimir as a boy also imagined America through “ <...> large, flat, glossy picture books”. The characters of these books such as “the blue-coated red-trousered, coal-black Golliwogg, with underclothes buttons for eyes, and his meager harem of five wooden dolls” [7, p. 59]. American flag is seen as the frocks of Peg and Sarah Jane. Together with his brother Yuriy Vladimir played games according to the script of westerners popular in Russia at the beginning of century and here America is seen through literary projections of previous literary generations. American Wild West of Maine Reid and Fennimore Cooper is another imago of America in his autobiography. The author describes in every minimal detail the edition of “Headless Horseman”: “I see this leaf as it disintegrated - at first folded improperly, then torn off - but the frontispiece itself, which no doubt depicted Louise Pointdexter's unfortunate brother (and perhaps a coyote or two, unless I am thinking of The Death Shot, another Mayne Reid tale), has been so long exposed to the blaze of my imagination that it is now completely bleached (but miraculously replaced by the real thing, as I noted when translating this chapter into Russian in the spring of 1953, and namely, by the view from a ranch you and I rented that year: a cactus-and-yucca waste whence came that morning the plaintive call of a quail - Gambel's Quail, I believe - over-whelming me with a sense of undeserved attainments and rewards)” [7, p. 151].

Nabokov also writes about happy “collecting trips” almost every summer in the United States. Museum of Comparative zoology was the place where he worked for some time and his lepidopterological skills found the proper surroundings. America is shown through the attitude of common Americans towards author's hobby: “America has shown even more of this morbid interest in my retiary activities than other countries have - perhaps because I was in my forties when I came there to live, and the older the man, the queerer he looks with a butterfly net in his hand. Stern farmers have drawn my attention to NO FISHING signs; from cars passing me on the highway have come wild howls of derision; sleepy dogs, though unmindful of the worst bum, have perked up and come at me, snarling; tiny tots have pointed me out to their puzzled mamas; broad-minded vacationists have asked me whether I was catching bugs for bait; and one morning on a wasteland, lit by tall yuccas in bloom, near Santa Fe, a big black mare followed me for more than a mile” [7, p. 100].

Nabokov interprets his life as something common to spiral and American period of it is characterized in the following way: “A colored spiral in a small ball of glass, this is how I see my own life. The twenty years I spent in my native Russia (1899-1919) take care of the thetic arc. Twenty-one years of voluntary exile in England, Germany and France (1919-1940) supply the obvious antithesis. The period spent in my adopted country (1940-1960) forms a synthesis - and a new thesis. For the moment I am concerned with my antithetic stage, and more particularly with my life in Continental Europe after I had graduated from Cambridge in 1922” [7, p. 215]. In “Speak, Memory” the reader has in general mostly positive view on America but in this novel it stays on the level of literary imago. As we observe according to the quotations given above imago is changing in different life periods (childhood, boyhood, youth and mature years).

In the article “On a book entitled Lolita” Nabokov admits that after inventing Russia and Western Europe “I was faced by the task of inventing America. The obtaining of such local ingredients as would allow me to inject a modicum of average `reality' (one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes) into the brew of individual fancy, proved at fifty a much more difficult process than it had been in the Europe of my youth when receptiveness and retention were at their automatic best” [8, p. 330]. The book was mostly written during summer collecting butterfly trips in the US motels and in the family car. The author characterized his American world in Lolita as “fantastic and personal” [8, p. 333] as well as his Russia and Europe. America is shown through the perspective of European intellectual sick consciousness of Humbert Humbert for whom a twelve-year old American girl becomes an embodiment of his first European love Annabel. On the one hand, Humbert raises Lolita to some divinity, poetic heroine of the world literature in his imagination, on the other hand animal instincts and predator's position is shown in association with ape (Humbert) and monkey (Lolita), but through different episodes a common child is seen. American girl is shown through Humbert's characteristics, her mother's complaints, everyday situations. In this novel the focal role is given to Lolita and escape travelling through American states in perspective of European intellectual with a traumatic past and maniac propensities and to our mind, “Lolita” is the novel in which imago of Other gradually transforms into literary image of America. Due to “Lolita” Nabokov's image of America is the most sensual as smell; sight, touch, and taste are involved in representation of main heroine in Humbert's narrative. The first meeting with Lolita is a bright acknowledgment of it: “a blue sea- wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, half-naked, kneeling, turning about on her knees, there was my Riviera love peering at me over dark glasses.

It was the same child - the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair” [8, p. 41]. Humbert uses geography of America in order to enchant Lolita and підтримувати her interest in this trip. Love of high speed of American mentality is passed through the metaphor of “the crazy quilt” of the U.S. Brian Boyd considers that “Humbert fixes his gaze intently on his dream-child. En passant, however, he guides us through all of America's forty-eight contiguous states, casting his outsider's ironic eye over glad ads and Screen Spleen, teenage America, housewives' America, the tidy turf of suburban lawns and the loud signs of a thousand quiet Main Streets” [5, p. 228]. According to ironic Humbert's European perspective American settings and characters are presented as plain, consumer, uneducated, vulgar, pragmatic, tasteless and ignorant but at the same time Lolita's positive features such as resilience, frankness and ingenuousness, life energy attract and deny the simplicity of the main character. Brian Boyd also points to this important factor: “Nabokov refuses: he creates a Lolita far more rounded and rich than that flat image - and allows even Humbert himself in the last third of the book to recognize that that portrait does her no justice” [5, p. 236].

Distinguishing the terms “imago” which refers to the imagological field and “literary image” which is on the borderline between literary imagology and theory of literature is crucial in our study. As literary image of the foreign country is constructed according to the laws of artistic image which theoretical base has been worked out well in domestic literary studies, the consideration of literary image as an aesthetic category has got further perspectives for theoretical grounding and revealing the basic constants as for its formation and creative author's embodiment into the space of fiction.

References

1. Imagology. The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters: A Critical Survey / Ed. by Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen. - Amsterdam - New York (NY). : Rodopi, 2007. - 476 p.

2. Наливайко Д. Теорія літератури й компаративістика / Дмитро Наливайко - Київ : Києво-Могилянська академія, 2006. - 347 с.

3. Сиваченко Г. Емігрантська творчість Володимира Винниченка: імагологічні інтенції в ідеологізованому дискурсі / Галина Сиваченко. - Літературна компаративістика. - Вип. ІУ : Імагологічний аспект сучасної компаративістики: стратегії та парадигми. - Ч. І. - К. : ВД „Стилос”, 2011. - С. 140 - 183.

4. Денисова Т. Біфокальна оптика Аскольда Мельничука (Образ України в романістиці американського письменника) / Тамара Денисова. - Літературна компаративістика. - Вип. ІУ : Імагологічний аспект сучасної компаративістики: стратегії та парадигми. - Ч. ІІ. - К. : ВД „Стилос”, 2011. - С. 214 - 257.

5. Boyd B. Vladimir Nabokov. The American Years / Brian Boyd. - Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1991. - 783 p.

6. Nabokov V. Strong Opinions / Vladimir Nabokov. - New-York: 1st Vintage International, 1990. - 335 p.

7. Nabokov V. Speak, Memory. An Autobiography Revisited / Vladimir Nabokov. - London : David Campbell Publishers Ltd., 1999. - 268 p.

8. Nabokov V. Lolita / Vladimir Nabokov. - London : David Campbell Publishers Ltd., 1992. - 335 p.

Annotation

Стаття присвячена проблемам імагологічної парадигми, у рамках якої фігурують різноманітні терміни на позначення репрезентації Іншого та іноземної країни. Автор пропонує розмежовувати поняття „імаго” як таке, що придатне до фреймів імагології оскільки розуміється як загальна, стереотипна перспектива щодо Іншого у різних сферах. Щодо концепту „літературний імідж”, то в нього абсолютно інша природа - естетична та художня, і його слід долучати до літературознавчої інтерпретації. Аби висвітлити вище зазначену проблему проаналізовано романи талановитого американсько-російського письменника В. Набокова.

У романі „Говори, пам'ять” імаго Америки передано у формі асоціативних зв'язків, які були пов'язані із країною Іншого у дитинстві, юнацькі та зрілі роки. Америка не посідає центрального місця у романі і репрезентація країни залишається на рівні імаго. У „Лоліті” завдяки образу головної героїні та фокалізації чужорідного простору, репрезентація Америки трансформується у літературний імідж.

Ключові слова: імагологія, імаго, літературний імідж, репрезентація Іншого, перспектива.

Статья посвящена проблемам имагологической парадигмы, в чьих рамках фигурируют различные термины обозначающие репрезентацию Другого и зарубежной страны. Автор предлагает разделять понятия „имаго”, которое подходит к фреймам имагологии поскольку понимается как общая, стереотипная перспектива Другого в разных сферах. Что же касается концепта „литературный имидж”, то у него абсолютно другая природа - эстетическая и художественная, и его следует применять в литературоведческой интерпретации. Для освещения выше поставленной проблемы проанализированы романы таланливого американо-российского писателя В. Набокова.

В романе „Говори, пам'ять” имаго Америки передается в форме ассоциативных связей со страной Другого в детстве, юношеские и зрелые годы. Америка не занимает центрального места в романе и репрезентация страны остается на уровне имаго. В „Лолите” благодаря образу главной героини и фокализации чужоземного пространства, репрезентация Америки трансформируется в литературный имидж.

Ключевые слова: имагология, имаго, литературный имидж, репрезентация Другого, перспектива.

The article deals with the problems of imagological paradigm within which various terms are used for naming representation of Other and foreign countries in different spheres. Lack of terminological precision in the works of European and Ukrainian scholars attracts attention to the problem of Imago/ Image opposition. Imago is defined as a reduction model of the representation of Other or foreign country that starts circulating in national and cultural space. As far as literary image is concerned, it is the phenomenon of aesthetic nature and comprises a unique artistic perspective on Other.

The author proposes to distinguish the term imago as the one apt for using in the frames of imagology as it is understood as general, non-specific, stereotypical perspective on the Other in various spheres. As for the concept of “literary image”, it has absolutely different nature and is associated in the article with an aesthetic and artistic phenomenon and should be applied to literary interpretation. The novels of the talented American-Russian author Vladimir Nabokov are used to shed light on the problem stated above. In “Speak, Memory” imago of America is passed in the form of associating links of childhood, boyhood, youth and mature years. America doesn't take central position in the novel and representation of the country stays on the level of imago. In “Lolita” due to the main heroine and focalization of foreign space in the novel, representation of America transforms into literary image. Basic constants of the formation of image in the space of fiction are significant for further research and will enrich the theory of literature and literary imagology.

Keywords: imagology, imago, literary image, representation of Other, perspective.

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