Dana Dragunoiu's study approaches Nabokov's poetics from a new and unexpected angle. Following the studies of Nabokov's engagement with moral questions, it dismisses “the false dichotomy between Nabokov the master stylist and Nabokov the humanist” (12) and moves beyond this assumption by claiming that Nabokov's statement “style is matter” should be treated not in terms of analogy, but as a literal truth: his aesthetics and ethics form one inseparable whole. The cornerstone of the discussion is the concept of courtesy, redefined to combine form and content in a moral act seen as the ultimate embodiment of human freedom of choice that makes one rise above any form of self-interest.
The key argument of the book is the Kantian idea that “an action must be voluntary to count as ‘moral’” (6), essential for Nabokov's ethical aesthetics. Thus, courtesy is seen as the truly moral act, since it does not result from a passion (like love and pity), but constitutes a fully conscious choice which has nothing to do with utility. Detached, often sacrificial courtesy is demonstrated as the hallmark of Nabokov's ethics through comparative analysis of his fictions alongside works by William Shakespeare, Aleksandr Pushkin, Lev Tolstoi, Marcel Proust, as well as chivalric literature and other texts.
The book is constructed around four key scenes from Nabokov's fictions: the generosity of Mrs. Luzhin to an obnoxious acquaintance in The Defense; in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Helene Grinstein's kind attention to “fantastic affairs of a completely superfluous stranger” (106) during the funeral of her brother-in-law; Queen Disa's self-denying self-possession in observing the rules of politeness while racked by jealousy in Pale Fire; Lucette's courageous act of genteel consideration for family friends while her deepest heart desire is withdrawn from her in Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle.
Chapter 1 introduces these scenes and establishes the key distinction between love, pity, and courtesy. Chapter 2 follows the evolution of the concept of courtesy through the chivalric and Renaissance texts and includes an insightful analysis of Nabokov's poem “Youth,” confirming his insistence on courtesy as free from self-interest. Chapter 3 links Immanuel Kant and Pushkin with Nabokov to arrive at a complex definition of the concept of honor, and the discussion ranges from the dueling rules in Russia to the ethics of suicide in Kant's philosophy and Nabokov's writings. Chapter 4 continues following the intricacies of allusions linking Nabokov to Shakespeare, to observe courtesy as the act of welcoming of the other by allowing them to remain strange, instead of “possess[ing] the other through knowledge” (100). Chapter 5 tackles deception as an essential part of courtesy, spinning a web of correspondences between real and fictional characters and introducing Tolstoi as Nabokov's silent opponent in The Gift, Invitation to a Beheading, and Pale Fire. While “lying is a straying from a moral path in Tolstoy's universe” (125), Nabokov's view of deception as part of artifice is shown as much more sophisticated—he “endows deception with a complex moral purpose” (126).
Chapter 6 examines Nabokov's Pnin and Lolita against the texture of Proust's great novel, not merely finding echoes, but productive contrasts. Kant's maxim “genuinely moral acts are those that are immune from the passage of time” (164) is shown as the pivot in Nabokov's two darkest fictions: Humbert, after all his crimes, knows that time cannot erase the harm he has done to Dolores, while the innocent Pnin desperately tries to forget the past, because he finds it impossible to exist in the world that produced the Holocaust. It is here that the idea of courtesy as the highest moral value in Nabokov's world suddenly spins upon itself: “the world brought into being by the Holocaust turns courtesy into an anachronistic luxury that is incompatible with human decency” (167). The Epilogue, however, restores courtesy to its “place of supreme ethical and aesthetic importance” (193), which is demonstrated through the analysis of Ada alongside Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and leads the argument back to Kant: the failures of the protagonists appear all the more grave because these are moral failures of courtesy, failures to realize that style and matter are indeed inseparable.
The book is stimulating in the sophistication of its argument, elegant in its writing and extensive in its scholarship. Establishing Kant as “the presiding spirit over Nabokov's ethics” (7), Dana Dragunoiu is able to introduce new and thought-provoking readings of Nabokov's works, as well as construct a conceptual framework that Nabokov scholars will find productive for further studies.
