November 17, 2017

This week, we’ll be running a series of dreams from the forthcoming Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time. For nearly three months in 1964, Nabokov recorded his dreams upon waking, as a way of testing J. W. Dunne’s theory that dreams offered not only “fragments of past impressions,” but also “a proleptic view of an event to come.” In other words, that dreams were a sort of reverse déjà vu, a way of subconsciously working through not only the past but the future.

In this fifth installment, Nabokov wakes from an erotic dream to bloody sheets.

Dec. 13, 1964 8.30 am 50.

Skipped four nights

(Did not take down the banal dreams I had lately).

Intensely erotic dream. Blood on sheet.

End of dream: my sister O.,^[1] strangely young and languorous. Then V. tells me I must not forget to go to the oculist. I find his street but cannot remember the house number. Am agonizingly searching in the telephone book but do not recall his name and, moreover, do not know how to dial the vague number I have in mind—something ending in 492. Then stand near a window, sighing, half-seeing view, brooding over the possible consequence of incest. Read More

November 16, 2017

Dream Diaries

The Insomniac’s Dream Diary: Part Four

By Vladimir Nabokov

This week, we’ll be running a series of dreams from the forthcoming Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time. For nearly three months in 1964, Nabokov recorded his dreams upon waking, as a way of testing J. W. Dunne’s theory that dreams offered not only “fragments of past impressions,” but also “a proleptic view of an event to come.” In other words, that dreams were a sort of reverse déjà vu, a way of subconsciously working through not only the past but the future.

In this fourth installment, Nabokov has a confrontation with his father.

38. 22 Nov. 1964 3.15 am

In a kind of lecture-hall during an informal performance or rehearsal of lecture. On the platform my father seated at a small table is reading and discussing something. Several people between the stage and me. Am eagerly taking down what he says. My mother is among the four or five people sitting in front of me. My father is now elucidating a point. I see and appreciate it and clear my throat a trifle too loudly while trying to jot down his argument as fully as possible. From the stage he suddenly addresses me—I nod my head supposing he is making the possible objection I have foreseen; but instead, he says to me: “Even if you are <new card> bored you might have the decency to sit quietly.” I feel deeply injured and reply (textual words [transl. from Russian], chosen and uttered with great care and dignity): “I think your observation to me is most unjust. I was listening attentively and with enormous interest.” I get up and start to leave hoping I shall be called back. But I hear behind me my father’s voice resuming his speech with a little less force than before. I visualize in a medallion of light to-morrow morning’s interview with him—imagine him in his beige dressing—<new card> gown. Shall I ignore what happened? Will he refer to it? I decide philosophically—a similar case has come up before within dream experience—that time will decide (curious that I saw myself imagining the future in my dream and vaguely recalling a past and that a sense of future, of time, clearly though somewhat crudely existed in my mind, i.e. I distinctly perceived the degree of difference in comparative reality between the dream vision and the dream prevision). It is odd that my father who was so good-natured, and gay, is always so morose and grim in my dreams. Read More

November 15, 2017

Dream Diaries

The Insomniac’s Dream Diary: Part Three

By Vladimir Nabokov

This week, we’ll be running a series of dreams from the forthcoming Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time. For nearly three months in 1964, Nabokov recorded his dreams upon waking, as a way of testing J. W. Dunne’s theory that dreams offered not only “fragments of past impressions,” but also “a proleptic view of an event to come.” In other words, that dreams were a sort of reverse déjà vu, a way of subconsciously working through not only the past but the future.

In this third installment, Nabokov tries to console a girl, with sympathy that is “genuine” but “not free from desire,” and contemplates Dobuzhinsky’s autobiography.

Nov. 13, 1964 6.30 am 31.

Poignant bitter-sweet dream permeated with tenderness and hopelessness. Short girl, rather dumpy, slatternly dressed, bare-necked, face very attractive but not flawlessly pretty, broadish jaws, flattish nose, wonderful complexion, smooth, warmly colored skin, pale-blue eyes, bedraggled fair hair. Am trying in vain to console her: she has been badly hurt by faithless heartless young husband, a shadowy gay-dog figure in the background. I am doing my best to make her understand how dreadfully sorry I am for her, but she is completely wrapped up <new card> in her taciturn grief, is absolutely impenetrable no matter how I strain to “reach her,” «пробиться к ней»,^[1] as I tell her in Russian—but all in vain, she looks up at me with apprehensive hunted gaze, ready to stiffen, bothered, resenting my sympathy which is quite genuine but not free from desire. (The young man is—a very obscure feeling—related to me—perhaps Dm.?!) Read More

November 14, 2017

Dream Diaries

The Insomniac’s Dream Diary: Part Two

By Vladimir Nabokov

This week, we’ll be running a series of dreams from the forthcoming Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time. For nearly three months in 1964, Nabokov recorded his dreams upon waking, as a way of testing J. W. Dunne’s theory that dreams offered not only “fragments of past impressions,” but also “a proleptic view of an event to come.” In other words, that dreams were a sort of reverse déjà vu, a way of subconsciously working through not only the past but the future.

In this second installment, Nabokov dreams about his childhood tantrums after rereading Speak, Memory.

18. Oct. 31—8.00 am

Among several dreams was a really stunning recollection of early childhood. I was again immersed in these dreadful tantrums, those storms of tears with which my mother had to cope when I was 4–5 years of age and we were abroad. The dream beautifully brought back the sensation of utter disaster when letting myself completely go I simultaneously realized that I was removing further and further, with every sob, and howl a reconciliation with my helpless, distraught mother. In to-night’s dream, I was <new card> already in such a tempest as I rushed from my and S.’s^[1] bedroom in a hotel into the white corridor and endeavored to break into mother’s room. She would not let me in—cried out abruptly and jarringly that she was trying on something. I dashed into a water closet and next moment was oddly standing on the lid and hugging the whitewashed pipe that went upward to a basin-like affair in which I plunged my face (the dream rather eccentrically gave the measure <new card> of my height by means of this position which apparently had no other purpose or meaning). My mother with bright eyes and flushed face opened the door at the end of a kind of vestibule leading to the place where I sobbed. There I let myself go completely. Unfortunately at this moment my brother S. whom the English governess was dressing heard my sobbing and joined in. This double performance spoilt the matter and M.^[2] instead of consoling me broke into tears herself.

Had been rereading (Oct. 29) the Russian version of Speak, Memory.^[3]

[1]. Here the initial stands for Sergey Nabokov, VN’s younger brother (1900–1945). See p. 27, note 27.

[2]. Elena Nabokov, née Rukavishnikov, Nabokov’s mother (1876–1939).

[3]. In 1954 Nabokov revised and translated into Russian his autobiography (Speak, Memory, originally Conclusive Evidence, 1951) under the title Drugie berega (Other Shores).

Excerpted from Insomnia Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov. Compiled, edited, and with commentary by Gennady Barabtarlo. Copyright © 2018 by the Estate of Dmitri Nabokov. Compilation, preface, parts 1 and 5, notes, and other editorial material copyright © 2018 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission.

November 13, 2017

Dream Diaries

The Insomniac’s Dream Diary: Part One

By Vladimir Nabokov

This week, we’ll be running a series of dreams from the forthcoming Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time. For nearly three months in 1964, Nabokov recorded his dreams upon waking, as a way of testing J. W. Dunne’s theory that dreams offered not only “fragments of past impressions,” but also “a proleptic view of an event to come.” In other words, that dreams were a sort of reverse déjà vu, a way of subconsciously working through not only the past but the future.

In this first installment, Nabokov dreams about eating rare soil samples. Three days later, the soil samples appear in a documentary he’s watching on TV.

17 Oct. 1964—8.30 am (see Oct. 20) 4.

Sitting at round table in the office of the director of a small provincial museum. He (a stranger, a colorless administrator, neutral features, crewcut) is explaining something about the collections. I suddenly realize that all the while he was speaking I was absent-mindedly eating exhibits on the table—bricks of crumbly stuff which I had apparently taken for some kind of dusty insipid pastry but which were actually samples of rare soils in the compartments (of which most are now empty) of a tray-like wooden affair in which <verso> geological specimens are kept. Although he had pointed at the tray while speaking, the director has not noticed yet anything wrong. I am now wondering not so much about the effects upon me of those (very slightly sugary) samples of soils but about the method of restoring them and what exactly they were—perhaps very precious, hard to procure, long kept in the museum (the labels on the empty compartments are reproachful but dim). The director is called to the telephone and <new card> [17 Oct. cont.] abruptly leaves the room. I am now talking to his assistant (German, wears glasses, youngish) who is very hard on the doctor who had been looking after me before I came to this clinic (ex-museum). In fact, that doctor’s treatment (rather than the exhibits I have just consumed—which surely must aggravate my condition) has resulted in the possibility of an “iron-infection”. He says I will be threatened by it at least during a whole year, will “live under the menace.” <verso> He mispronounces this word as “mans” and turns apologetically and questioningly to the director of the clinic (who has now returned to his place at the table). The director whose native language is English nods and says “yes, there will be a mans.” I correct him: menace, and am aware I have offended him.

(Quite recently—the day before yesterday—I had read of edible mushrooms, dry samples of which were offered, to be handled and sniffed at, to the visitors^[1] to an exhibition. And last year we had been highly critical of one of D’s doctors).^[2]
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