Despair

Abstract

Despair is a shorter, arguably less complex novel than Pale Fire or Lolita but one that engages equally closely with a Bergsonian/Shklovskyite model of mind. I argue that the novel constitutes a literary exploration of Bergson’s concept of the dyadic personality. Furthermore, I suggest that through his portrayal of murderous Hermann, yet another narrator prey to an elaborate delusion, Nabokov has provided us with a study of the automatized mind and a practical demonstration of the dangers of the Symbolist epistemology. Finally, I shall characterize Despair as a sustainedly ironic inversion of the Bergsonian/Shklovskyite notion of art as revelatory of reality.

Something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed—a knife—a purse—and a dark lane. Design, gentlemen, grouping, light and shade, poetry, sentiment, are now deemed indispensable to attempts of this nature. de Quincey, On Murder Considered as One of the

Fine Arts and On War: Two Essays 3