‘Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.’ With this epitome, Nabokov opens his novel Laughter in the Dark. The title of the Russian original version of this novel, Camera Obscura, Latin for ‘dark room’, possibly refers to the dark room – a cinema – where Albinus first meets his mistress, and the room where she kills him. The last room is ‘dark’ because he has become blind during the affair. ‘Camera obscura’ might also be related to the device used by painters: a darkened room with a small hole in one of its walls through which external well-lit objects are projected – in an inverted way – onto the opposite
wall.1Renaissance painters used such a contrivance to be able to copy as precisely
as possible the outline of the image they selected for their paintings. A ‘camera obscura’ operates like an eye, the hole being the lens and the wall the retina. Nabokov said of Laughter in the Dark that, ‘in that novel… I tried to express a
world in terms as candid, as near to my vision of the world, as I could’.2The
sinister undertone produced by the darkness, implied in both the Russian and English titles, should not be neglected. The obscurity of the characters of Margot, the mistress, and of Rex, her clandestine lover, can be noticed only in the light of moral values. Margot’s vile nature is in sharp contrast with her physical beauty. To Albinus, an ‘art critic and picture expert’, Margot had been ‘his most brilliant discovery’ (8; 257). His first impression of her reminds him of beauty as exquisite as that rendered by a famous painter: ‘the melting outline of a cheek which looked as though it were painted by a great artist against a rich
dark background’(20). Her long eyes strike him as ‘Luini-esque’(22).3(See colour
illustration 1.)
Laughter in the Dark has many overt references to the arts. Wagner’s Lohengrin is
mentioned, as well as music by Hindemith. Literary allusions include Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina, Butler’s The Way of All Flesh and Shakespeare’s Othello. Proustian
dependent on the sense of sight. Apart from Rodin’s Thinker, many painters are mentioned: Barcelo, Baugin, Botticelli, Bruegel (Proverbs), Cumming, Holbein (Henry VIII), Leonardo (Mona Lisa), Linard, Luini, Lotto, Ruisdael and Fra Sebastiano del Piombo. The details given of the paintings by Baugin, Linard and Lotto, although few in number, suffice to identify these as Still Life with
Chessboard (1630), Basket of Flowers, and Pietà (1545) respectively. The most
noticeable reference to the visual arts is Albinus’s idea to animate pictures, which was suggested to him by the fictitious author Udo Conrad. Like in a cartoon, figures in a painting could be brought into motion, passing sceneries from the same painter and finally returning to the setting in the first picture. To begin with, Albinus thinks of the Dutch School, ‘say, a pot-house with little people drinking lustily at wooden tables,’ which tableau recalls the many inns and tipplers painted by Adriaen Brouwer, Jan Steen and David Teniers the Younger (8).
Then, according to Albinus, ‘you could try the Italians: the blue cone of a hill in the distance, a white looping path, little pilgrims winding their way upward’(9). The image of travellers climbing along mountain paths returns in
Lolita: ‘pilgrims and mules winding up wax-pale roads in old paintings with blue
hills and red little people’ (212/3). In ‘Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster,’
we meet these travellers again, ‘labouring upwards’ (Stories608). Many Italian
Renaissance painters have rendered their versions of the adoration of the Magi, but, as might be expected, their retinue is descending rather than rising. This is, for example, the case in Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Adoration of the Shepherds: the blue hills are present, the travellers wear red clothes and the winding paths are white, but the cavalcade is coming down. Benozzo Gozzoli’s The Journey of the
Magi is an exception to this rule; it satisfies all the features in the description.5
(See colour illustration 2.)
The repeated recollection of the image of these travellers suggests that it was imprinted in Nabokov’s mind. Udo Conrad, whose phrase suggested introducing motion into pictures to Albinus, has been regarded as Nabokov’s representative
and their affinity is acknowledged by the author.6 Although Nabokov repeated
Conrad’s idea of bringing movement into a picture in Lolita and in one of his stories, he usually did the contrary in his writings. As a storyteller, Nabokov relied heavily on images. The course of a story is frequently interrupted by pictorial interludes. In this way, Franz’s voyage to Berlin in King, Queen, Knave might be regarded as a succession of colourful vignettes. ‘I think,’ he writes in ‘A Guide to Berlin’, ‘that here lies the sense of literary creation: to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times.’ Instead of bringing images into motion, he makes stills out of movements. A fine example of this is the celebrated passage in Lolita in which Dolly is captured on a tennis court, just as she is about to serve. In that split second, in an attitude allongée, she is waiting
for ‘the small globe suspended so high in the zenith of the powerful and graceful cosmos she had created for the express purpose of falling upon it with a clean resounding crack of her golden whip’ (231/2). The expressiveness of this depiction of Dolly can easily compete with that of Truth in Botticelli’s allegory Calumny of
Apelles, who, captured in the same posture, resembles her presence in many
respects: bent knee, raised arm and face turned up to the sky. In his ‘Afterword’, Nabokov says that when he thinks of Lolita, he always returns to certain images, and the passage just mentioned is one of these.Then he continues: ‘these are the secret points, the subliminal co-ordinates by means of which the book is plotted’ (316). Surprisingly, a most gifted storyteller like Walter Scott adhered to the same view, considering his dictum: ‘What the devil does the plot signify, except to
bring in fine things?’7
Whatever the course may be, when creating a plot which engenders fine images or pictures assembled into a story (or, most likely, a simultaneous process), a writer, unlike a painter, has to attend to what precedes his images and what follows from them. For this reason, when regarding a picture, authors are predisposed to ponder on the foregoing or ongoing events. William Wordsworth thus, upon the sight of
a beautiful picture, wonders what ‘stopped that band of travellers on their way.’8
The best-known example of such a retrospective prevision is presented in Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’ In this ode, Keats considers the superiority of the plastic arts compared to literary art because of its suggestiveness: ‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter;’ and its thought-provoking spell: ‘What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?/ What pipes and timbrels?’ The perfection of great art may, once the stupefying amazement resulting from the first confrontation has been overcome, unleash artistic expressions which rival the excellence of the igniter. In writing his ‘Ode’, Keats was probably inspired by various masterpieces such as Raphael’s The Sacrifice at Lystra, Claude Lorraine’s
View of Delphi with a Procession, the Sosibios Vase and the Elgin Marbles.9In his
cartoon, Raphael – a favorite of Keats’s – depicted many images which return in the ‘Ode’: the small chubby-cheeked piper completely absorbed in his play, the altar, the priest and the multitude of people attending or participating in the oblation. Keats is also incited to question the origin of this company: ‘What little town by river or sea-shore,/Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,/Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?’ Keats is contrasting the multivalence of the timeless ‘silent form’ with the desire to understand it. The more artful the ‘silent form’ of the Grecian urn is, the more numerous the ideas and interpretations it engenders are. This proliferation, however, is not easy to reconcile with common sense, which says that, in reality, a unique episode belongs to one single course of events. It might be that this dissociation between artful imagery and reality is what teases Keats ‘out of thought’.
Paintings have the great advantage over novels and poems in that they do not tell a story, yet their perfection may suggest a story of equal excellence. Comparing prints taken from the fresco of a church in Milan to the works of Shakespeare, Keats prefers the former because ‘there was left so much room for
Imagination’.10Of course, this preference is highly dependent on the imaginative
powers one has at one’s disposal, and it is improbable that Albinus’s idea to baste accomplished masterpieces in an effete row by the jejune technique of animated cartoons, could be traced back to Conrad’s phrase. Finally, it is suggested that Bruegel’s Proverbs might serve as a painting to be set in motion. (See colour illustration 3.)
The selection of this picture has received some attention. Dewey refers to the red-robed lady in the centre of the painting, who covers a man with a long, hooded cloak, illustrating the proverb which denotes a wife’s infidelity to her
husband. Appel directs us to another proverb: the blind leading the blind.11
Bruegel’s picture contains about a hundred representations of maxims and several apply to Albinus’s fate. As this painting is singled out with the purpose of animating it, we might as well look at the movement enclosed in it. Pictures are read from left to right, and diagonals coming from the left are interpreted as
advancing.12 In Bruegel’s Proverbs, there is a clear movement visible: passing
through what might be called the main street of the village, crossing the ford and then proceeding along the hedgerow. At the far end of this avenue, the last icon,
are gallows.13Albinus’s death is the logical outcome of his life, and although he
has not committed a crime, his sins are many. Bruegel’s painting may be regarded as a commentary on Albinus’s life.
In Laughter in the Dark, almost everyone has something to do with art: Albinus is an art critic and a picture expert; his wife the daughter of a theatrical manager, his mistress an artist’s model; her lover a draughtsman (‘a very fine artist’); and among Albinus’s acquaintances we count authors, painters, poets and a singer. As an actress, however, Margot is a failure. To some extent, as an expert, Albinus is also a failure. His collection of paintings contains a ‘sprinkling of fakes’ (146). A Lotto might be a forgery, the Baugin is one. His Still Life with Chessboard strikes Albinus as modern, ‘almost surrealistic’ (146), an impression which might result from the fact that in Baugin’s picture its vanishing point lies well outside the painting. The most artistically gifted person seems to be Albinus’s child, Irma. In the pattern on the ceiling cast by the light of a bedside lamp, she detects ‘a fisherman and a boat,’ which shows that she possesses what Leonardo calls ‘the
spirit of invention.’14 And when her uncle, who cuts his face shaving, shows ‘a
bright red patch… spreading through the froth on his chin,’ she is prompted to
respond with: ‘strawberries and whipped cream’ (156). In contrast to this creative
form of imagination is the unreliable superficiality of the appreciation Albinus has
for the arts, which make him vulnerable to the attraction of speciosity. He becomes aware that ‘everything… in his past life was overlaid with the deceptive charm of colours’. Not only are some of his paintings fakes, also ‘his most brilliant discovery’ – Margot – proves to be a most catastrophic blunder. Although he deems her ‘better than the most loyal wife’, she appears to be willing to kill him (257/8). Albinus notices the downcast eyes of the Virgin in several of Luini’s paintings celebrating the Nativity, but during the birth of his own child his feelings are not at all devout. He is tempted by the thought how he ‘might find a friendly girl and bring her back to his empty bedroom’(17). And Lotto’s Pietà, that adorns his room, in which the tremendous sorrows of Mary after her son’s death are represented, is by no means an example or a reminder to Albinus, who doesn’t even attend the funeral of his child. (See colour illustration 4.)
Although Albinus seems to value the Lotto so much that he exhibited it in his house, he must have been a complete stranger to its emotions, such as the prostrating grief of Mary that is at the heart of his painting. For these reasons,
Laughter in the Dark has often been regarded as a demonstration of ‘the ultimate
kinship of moral and artistic vision.’15
Religious themes, too, underlie the two still lifes shown in the rooms of Albinus’s apartment, a painting after Baugin’s Still Life with Chessboard and Linard’s Basket with Flowers. Far from being detached representations of art objects, utensils, flowers and food, these paintings from the seventeenth century harbour an iconographical wealth of religious motives. Together with Stosskopf, Baugin and Linard belong to an isolated Protestant community in Paris, strongly oriented towards their Dutch co-religionists, among whom painterly realism
flourished.16
Linard’s painting attempted to glorify God’s honour with pictures of flowers. Cut flowers soon fade, in contrast to the everlasting glory of God. Proverbs, taken from the Bible to illustrate this disparity, are often represented in such
depictions of bouquets.17Linard is purported to have been the first, in 1627, to
have painted an allegory representing the five senses, and he composed another one in 1638; this subject was chosen by Stosskopf and Baugin as well. The latter three paintings all show a purse, a deck of cards, flowers, a mirror and a music book. In Stosskopf ’s and Linard’s paintings, the music displayed has been identified as psalms to honour God’s creation, and Baugin’s music will certainly have the same purport. The purse ands cards denote man’s inclination to ruin and perdition, and Linard’s picture presents a ruined castle. In Baugin’s painting, imitated by Rex, the five senses are easily to discern: hearing is represented by the music book and the mandoline; touch by the purse, cards and chessboard; sight by the mirror; smell by the flowers; and taste by bread and wine. The latter two
allude to the Eucharist as well, one of the main events of the Last Supper. Baugin’s painting, and the changes Rex made in his forgery, synopsise the story which is related in Laughter in the Dark. Destruction is caused by Rex, a card- player and a thief, and Margot, the vicious lover, is symbolised by the big pearl
which can be seen in the painting next to the deck of cards and the purse.18The
carnation, symbol of pure love, suits the unselfish love of Albinus’s wife. Conspicuous in the otherwise realistic painting is the mirror without
reflections.19The mirror, symbolising ‘sight’, is blinded, just as Albinus is. In a
letter, Rex reminds Albinus of his blindness: ‘beauties of colour and line… make sight the prince of all our senses’(246).
Baugin’s masterpiece is the perfect apologue of Nabokov’s novel. Moreover, the painting demonstrates the limitations of Albinus as an art expert. The ‘power of art to perpetuate sensuous enjoyment called forth, in the mind of the religious,
the need to counteract such sinful leanings’, writes Gombrich.20 Clearly not a
religious man, Albinus as an art expert must have been aware of the wealth of
the ‘mad pursuit’ in L AU G H T E R I N T H E D A R K
35
Jacques Linard, Basket with Flowerspious connotations in Baugin’s and Linard’s paintings. His superficiality, however, prevented him from integrating this knowledge in his daily life. Like Rex, Albinus shares much of Margot’s callousness. Their lack of responsiveness is accentuated by a reference to another sense, that of hearing. During a dinner, Albinus watches Margot while ‘she was listening to things she did not understand’, in this case, someone’s ‘ideas about Hindemith’s music’ (127).
Hindemith has emphasised the importance of the responsive mind: ‘music, whatever sound and structure it may assume, remains meaningless noise unless it touches a receiving mind.’ If this is the case, ‘music structures impress us; we receive them, either submitting our minds to the ethical power of music, or
transforming the impression into moral strength.’21In the same way, Albinus has
always been blind for the meaning of his paintings beyond the beauties of colour and line.
Some of the paintings mentioned in this novel seem to make a serendipitous appearance. Nabokov was familiar with the portrait of Henry VIII, which he saw
daily in the Hall of Trinity College in Cambridge where his meals were served.22
Fra Sebastiano del Piombo was an old acquaintance as well. In September 1924 Nabokov wrote the story ‘La Venezia’ which centers on Piombo’s Portrait of a
Young Roman Lady. This painting together with Bruegel’s Proverbs and one of
Van Ruisdael’s best-known pictures, View of Haarlem, belong to the Berlin Gallery, which has some Lottos and Botticellis as well. Among the pictures by Lotto is Christ Taking Leave of His Mother, in which, like the Pietà, the swooning Mary is the central figure. At the time of writing Laughter in the Dark (winter 1930-31), the Nabokovs lived in the Luitpoldstrasse about a kilometre south of the Tiergarten. The Berlin Gallery, at that time housed in the Kaiser-Friedrich
Museum, was a mere kilometre away from the park’s eastern border.23As Dmitri
Nabokov suggests with regard to Piombo’s picture, Nabokov might have seen
these paintings there.24
Besides these pictures, a reference is made to another one, though not explicitly. In one of the most suggestive passages in the novel, Nabokov powerfully depicts a beach scene. It is so evocative that one is compelled to stay with this inspiring visualisation, imbued by hues. This passage ends with: ‘gay parasols and striped tents seemed to respect in terms of color what the shouts of the bathers were to the ear’ (113). This sentence evokes the numerous parasols as well as the black shadowy strips and bleak columns of the tree trunks in Seurat’s A Sunday on La
Grande Jatte. (See colour illustration 5.)
At the time of the painting of this picture, Seurat was heavily involved in Sutter’s studies. One of Sutter’s statements was that ‘the laws of aesthetic harmony in
colour can be taught as the rules of musical harmony can be taught’.25 This
correspondence is nicely echoed in the similarity Nabokov notes between the clamorous colours and the bright shouts of the bathers, quoted in the sentence