Obwohl ich lesen, also den Akt als solchen, wirklich nicht als meine Leidenschaft bezeichnen kann, hat mir der leider verstorbene Autor Vladimir Nabokov so einige Male bewiesen, dass es doch irgendwie Spaß macht. Wenn auch nur sporadisch. Sein bekanntestes Werk, das wohl nur
aufgrund seiner darin beschriebenen Perversitäten eines gewissen Humbert Humbert so bekannt geworden ist, nämlich "Lolita", dürfte wohl eher mit ihm in Verbindung gebracht werden. "Pnin" ist im Gegensatz dazu eher harmlos, aber wunderschön geschrieben und unheimlich vieldeutig. Da ich aufgrund universitären
Pflichterfüllungen dazu genötigt wurde, über eben jenes Buch eine Hausarbeit zu schreiben und die nicht nur wegen einem Dozenten angefertigt haben möchte, will ich hier mein "Werk" online
stellen. Hauptsächlich für mich...es hat schon was für sich, wenn sein Geschreibsel online steht :-)...und für all jene, die es eines Tages lesen:
Das Buch handelt von einem russischen Professor, der kaum und wenn nur brüchiges Englisch spricht und nach Amerika zieht und dort seine Arbeit als Professor
aufnimmt. Dort wird ihm nicht der nötige Respekt zuteil und er kann sich eher garnicht mit amerikanischen Sitten und Bräuchen gutstellen, und gewinnt eher zaghaft Freunde oder Befürworter. Das
Buch ist richtig lustig geschrieben, also man kann es als Satire ansehen und es am Strand lesen, oder man kann sich an Nabokovs Erzählstil erfreuen oder eben auch nicht und "hinter die Fassade"
schauen...ich habe letzteres getan.
Es folgt meine Hausarbeit (auf Englisch) mit dem Thema : The Theme of Civil Rights and Segregation in America in Vladimir Nabokov's "Pnin":
1. Introduction
“Pnin” seems to me not just a narrative about the ups and downs of a poor, exiled hero, who is locked into a world and bound to a fate
that the narrator designed for him. Above all the intention of my seminar paper is to point out the parallels of Pnin in his being at somebody’s mercy to a fate that he cannot influence and the
characters (people) who had to face a time of segregation, racists and non-equality in America.
Pnin has been written within a time in which Blacks were still not treated equal to White people, e.g. the separation of schools for Black and White children, the unequal treatment of Blacks
concerning compulsory levels or the fact that Blacks weren’t allowed to take the front seats of buses. Due to these reasons it seems to me possible that Vladimir Nabokov converted that “idea” of
America in his novel Pnin. The strengthening of the Civil Rights Movement with the help of people such as Martin Luther King, led to the fundamental idea to receive freedom for the Black people.
They succeeded just like Pnin, who at last makes his way without his narrator and inventor “Vladimir Vladimirovich”.
The following chapters will outline the narrating technique in Pnin and the relation between Pnin and the narrator. Moreover I would like to point out the parallels of Black Americans and Pnin
with help of Pnin’s adventures and experiences of Black Americans. At last I will compare the “act of liberation” of Black Americans with that of Pnin.
2. Narration technique in Pnin and the relation between Pnin and his "inventor"
A central point in “Pnin” is the superiority of the narrator and his relationship tp his protagonist Timofey Pnin. The book is written in the perspective of an omniscient narrator, who talks
about Pnin as his “friend” and makes the reader see and judge through his point of view. This way of narrating is actually more common in children’s books with a strong morally advice. (as for
instance “Max und Moritz”)In Pnin this technique leads to a stronger separation of the reader and the narrator on the one hand and Pnin as the laughingstock on the other.
“But we in turn are the accomplices of this narrator who from the moment he promised us the story of Pnin’s discomfiture en
route to Cremona at the beginning of the novel as done nothing but describe Pnin’s misadventures”.(Brian Boyd,
Vladimir Nabokov: the American years, page, 278)
Every event, every adventure, every sentimental thaught of Pnin is the idea of the narrator and every development in Pnin’s life the disposal of the same. This fact is easy to discover in the
first chapter of the novel, when Pnin takes the wrong train to Cremona. The narrator who of course can rule the proceeding events pretends as if he has no influence on the events at all. That
makes it hard for the reader to find out more about the relationship between Pnin and the narrator. But both are parts of the story. In the moment, when Pnin’s story ends the story of the
narrator begins. But even in Pnin’s story he seems to have an influential personal part, in this case not as a narrator but as a character in Pnin’s life.
Right from the beginning the reader is forced to differentiate and balance the information that is given by Pnin and the information that is given directly from the narrator.
Vladimir Vladimirovich, the narrator for instance wants the reader to believe that the two men met already in their childhood and that they both cheated during a test. This assertion is disproved
by Pnin two times in the novel:
“However he denied everything. He said he vaguely recalled my grandaunt, but had never met me. He said that his marks in
algebra had always been poor and that, anyway, his father never displayed him to patterns; he said that in Zabava (Liebelei) he had only acted the part of Christine’s father. He repeated that we
had never seen each other before” (Pnin, page 180, 1st stanza)
“Now, don’t believe a word he says, Georgiy Aramovich. He makes up everything: He once invented that we were schoolmates in
Russia and cribbed at examinations. He is a dreadful inventor.” (Pnin, page 185, 1st
stanza)
Through the novel it seems as if the basic attitude of the narrator towards Pnin is friendly, worried and compassionate. But with the knowledge that he is actually Pnin’s inventor and with the
attitude of somebody who hates happy ends (page 25) the reader gets aware that he should be seen in a totally different way. The more the reader knows about the way of the narrator the more Pnin,
the hero gets the part of the victim in the novel. But not even that the narrator does influence Pnin’s fate. Also the person Vladimir Vladimirovich doesLiza once had to make the decision if she
should stay with Vladimir Vladimirovich or marry Pnin instead if the first refuses her. Not even the inner thoughts of Pnin are save, as he wrote a personal letter to Liza which is now in a
“private collection” of the narrator himself. (page 45)
The laughingstock Pnin seems to have no luck at all. He takes the wrong train to Cremona, his ex-wife convinces him to overtake the expenses for her son Victor, although Pnin is not even the
father and was left be HER. He also takes the wrong road to the Pines when he visits his friends etc. Whenever he is fortunate, the reader is almost expecting a misfortune that is certainly
coming. But in contrast to “Don Quichotte”, a novel that has often been compared with “Pnin”, because of the plot about a man who is always experiencing misfortune in a comical way, Pnin loses
it’s comical effect very soon. Because different to “Don Quichotte”, the reader is interested in Pnin’s emotions, his pain. He is not just a laughingstock but a person whose feelings are crucial.
A very important scene in the novel are the sequences when Pnin visits the couple Al Cook and Susan Marshall at “the Pines”. For the first time in the novel, the reader learns more about “Pnin”
himself. Pnin, a well sportsman, who likes to mingle with people. A man who seems to be more competent and the real Pnin when he is together with other exiled Russians.
“Pnin(…) , was by far the best player of the lot. As soon as the pegs were driven in and the game started, the man was
transfigured. From his habitual slow, ponderous, rather rigid self, he changed into a terrifically mobile, scampering, mute, sly-visaged hunchback.” (Pnin, page 130)
The Chapter also includes the most private emotion of Pnin. It is the chapter in which the reader learns about his relationship to Mira Belochkin, who got killed in a concentration camp in
Germany during World War II in Buchenwald. His feelings for her and every experience with her are not mocked by the narrator.
But the narrator points out that “Mira kept dying a great number of deaths in one’s mind, and undergoing a great number of resurrections, only to die again and again.” (Pnin, page 135)
This statement by the narrator refers of course to the death of Mira, but also to the deaths of all people who died senseless. Of course it includes people who were killed in the same senseless
and cruel way as the people who were killed during World War II.
Pnin’s negative attitude towards his narrator is pointed out when he remarks, “we are friends, but there is one thing perfectly certain. I will never work under him” (Pnin, page 170)
Calling the narrator a friend seems as if Pnin, despite all the negative developments and influences in his life, likes his inventor. But due to the knowledge that Pnin knows his colleague and
the narrator of his story well enough lets the reader doubt on the meaning of the word “friend” in this case. Maybe it is meant more as a “false friend”, or just as another word for “colleague”,
or it is again the narrator himself who puts the wrong words into Pnin’s mouth in order to manipulate the reader. However Pnin is not willing to work under him or with him. The reason for this
could be a not mentioned discussion or “just” because of Liza’s relation to him.
3. The Parallels between Pnin and Black Americans
The relationship between Pnin and his narrator and the superiority of the narrator is in a few ways comparable to those of Black Americans and their opponents.
During the time, when Nabokov lived in the U.S. Blacks were still not able to decide on their own for their own life. White people decided how they were treated in public, where they had to sit
and where they live. Still the ghettos and America show a superior number of Black people, where they are not able to live with the same quality and norm as white people in America. The
suppression and segregation is comparable with that of the exiled Pnin. Although he is a Professor he got treated like a silly, stupid, totally incompetent stranger who doesn’t have a home and a
fixed job. He faced the prejudices of colleagues at Waindell College, especially Mr. Cockerell who is also imitating him for fun. With this narrator-protagonist relation, Nabokov showed a moral
aspect that is pointed out also by Brian Boyd:
“To see others as simply figures of fun, as objects of mockery, is for Nabokov a failure of imagination that can have
disastrous consequences.” (Boyd, Brian: Vladimir Nabokov: the American years, page 279)
Parallels of the exiled Pnin and the Blacks are for instance:
- The language
- No privacy
- Prejudice
- Character change
The language
The uppermost parallel of Pnin and Blacks in general is the language. Pnin, an exiled Russian professor, has crucial problems to communicate with the Americans. Even after he spent a long time in
the USA it is almost impossible for him to understand American people or to speak with them. His speech and pronunciation is totally wrong and reminds more of Russsian language.
“If his Russian was music, his English was murder. He had enormous difficulty (dzeefeecooltsee” in Pninian English) with
depatatization, never managing to remove the extra Russian moisture from t’s and d’s before the vowels he so quaintly softened. “ (Pnin, page 66)
“By the time Truman entered his second term, Pnin could handle practically any topic; but otherwise progress seemed to have
stopped despite all his efforts, and by 1950 his English was still full of flaws”. (Pnin, page
14)
Also Blacks who were brought by ships to America in earlier times of slavery, had no possibility to learn proper English. Most of the people with whom they were in touch, didn’t speak appropriate
English anyway, so in order to detach from the White people they invented a new form of dialect. This dialect is called “Black English” nowadays. So even the narrator invented the term “Pninian
English” in order to refer to a particular anomaly of appropriate English.
No privacy
The next parallel between Pnin and the Blacks is that both sides had to renounce the luxury of privacy. Pnin lived in the house of acquaintances or totally strangers for a long time until he, in
the end of the novel, considers to buy a house just for himself. As Pnin is no friend of non private homes and needs his privacy he disliked that condition.
“special privacy is now to me absolutely necessary” (Pnin, page 34)
“The sense of living in a discrete building all by himself was to Pnin something singularly delightful and amazingly satisfying
to a weary old want of his innermost self, battered and stunned by thirty-five years of homelessness. One of the sweetest things about the place was the silence – angelic, rural, and perfectly
secure, thus in blissful contrast to the persistent cacophonies that had surrounded him from six sides in the rented rooms of his former habitations.” (Pnin, page 144)
Black people also are still living in narrow apartments with their whole family or in caravans with no kind of privacy at all. After the Civil Wars and the official ending of slavery they had to
find a place to live. Many people failed to find a place for their families and to receive that privacy their wished. Although a lot of them escaped the vicious circle, there are still too many
of them who did not.
Prejudice
Pnin the “zerstreute Professor”, who cannot handle the American way of life had to face a lot of people whose prejudices against him did not make his life in America easier. He is from Russia,
therefore carrier of the so called “Nansen-passport”, a special governmental treatment. Due to that fact it seems as if every prejudice is justifiable. But it is not. In his country he is a well
known Russian Professor and the embodiment of a competent academic. In America instead he is the fun object for lot of his colleagues. His host Laurence Clements said about him “Professor Pnin,
by God. I know him well: he is the brooch – well, I flatly refuse to have that freak in my house.” (Pnin, page 32). But after a while the Clementses “began to appreciate Pnin in his unique
Pninian worth, and this despite the fact that he was more of poltergeist than a lodger.” (page 39)
Instead of accepting Pnin as he is and accepting his accomplishments as a professor the most people are mocking about him, as for instance Mr. Cockerell who imitates him. “I must admit that Jack
Cockerell impersonated Pnin to perfection.”(Pnin, page 187)
Mr. Bodo von Falternfels, head of the German Department is considered to be a strong “ anti-Pninist”, who is not willing to keep Pnin as a lecturer without the presence of his protector Hagen.
His prejudices against Pnin are actually the reason for Pnin’s misfortune at Waindell. Almost the same kind of prejudice had been the norm (and are still the norm in some particular regions)in
the USA. Black people were treated inferior to White people whether they were well constituted, academics or not. Somehow they were treated as if they are stupid by nature.
There are of course people who change their mind after learning more about a special person, like Mr. and Mrs. Clements, but there are also people who never got to know a person but despite not
appreciating the person at all.
Charakter change
The sequences at the Pines show exactly how Pnin acts and feels when he mingles together with person’s who appreciate him and understand his conditions. Together with other exiled Russians, who
speak his language and have the same background, read the same authors and know the same persons, he is no longer the laughingstock. Instead he acts like a respected man who is self confident and
socially absolutely competent. The same it is with every kind of outsider, who is new in a country s/he doesn’t understand concerning language and culture – also Black people. Most of them were
separated from their families. The most important thing to feel comfortable for them is to be together with their people, who feel the same way, maybe isolated, misunderstood or disintegrated.
The Pines seems like an Oasis in between a series of misfortune for Pnin. The Paradise in between a strange country that he, from old Europe, cannot understand. This strangeness of America seems
to be forgotten, during “the Pines” sequences.
4. Freedom for Pnin and the Success of the Civil Rights Movement
America, the “land of liberty”, as it is beautifully called by Dr. Wind, the second
husband of Pnin’s ex-wife Liza, is realistically seen, still not even that for many Black people. Like Pnin in the hands of his narrator and inventor Vladimir Vladimirovich, also Black people
weren’t free.Within the story, a glimpse of the past and also a hint to the end- the final escape from his narrator – is recognizable by the dream of Pnin. Pnin is dreaming of his escape from the
Bolsheviks. Although this is actually a dream about the past, but it is also a compound to the final escape. The topic of a refuge is not just an important part in the history of old Russia, that
leads to “one of those dreams that still haunts Russian fugitives” but of course is fixed in the minds of people who fight for their right of freedom. Many slaves tried to flee in the North in
order to escape a life of slavery and capture. That particular kind of escape is described in the end. After Pnin received notice by Hagen that he got fired, he leaves Waindell. Vladimir
Vladimirovich takes over his work at Waindell and begins his own story in the last chapter. At the particular moment when Pnin leaves the city he sees him and runs after the caravan of Pnin’s car
and the transporters. Without taking any notice of his “friend” and inventor, Pnin drives away, as the narrator points it out, “ free at last” and his story ends. “Free at last”, the slogan of
the Civil Rights Movement, the Outlook of a freedom without slavery, civil wars and segregation. Many people fight for it and they achieved their goal. Alike Pnin they left their opponents behind
and allegorically “drove away” into a new life, a new world and left their old life behind.
5. Conclusion
Vladimir Nabokov was a man who experienced many different countries, first due to his education and second because he had to, after his escape from Russia. In his works he describes his
imaginations from Old Europe and the America that he experienced during his stay.
He also experienced the different influences within those countries, so he escaped Russia because of the Bolsheviks and even lost his brother because of the Nazis in Germany. His life as an
exiled in America, above all an exiled Russian in America was certainly a challenge in his life. Although he never directly marks a special event concerning segregation in America at all, I am
very sure, he tried to convert his experiences with America, segregation included, in his novel Pnin.
6. References
Nabokov, Vladimir. Pnin. Vintage International, New York, 1957
Boyd, Brian, Vladimir Nabokov: the American years. Chatto & Windus, 1992
